Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Pizza renaissance
Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times
Michael Gucciardo, the chef at Mountain View Italian Kitchen, finishes making a dish Saturday. The place closed in 2006 but recently reopened.
Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Mountain View Italian Kitchen was once one of the area's favorite local spots. It was usually packed after Virginia Tech football games.
Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Mountain View Italian Kitchen reopened initially as carryout only, but it is now serving guests in its dining room.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Here's a little story about an out-of-the-way mom and pop restaurant that happened almost by accident, the dark hints behind a reputation it never deserved, and how those added to the place's charm and made it an even bigger success.
All that and some really great pizza.
Mountain View Italian Kitchen in Ironto shut its doors in the summer of 2006. Recently it reopened. Soon it may be back to its glory days.
If you recall the Italian Kitchen, perhaps you discovered it one day in eastern Montgomery County, heading down North Fork Road, four or so snaking miles off Interstate 81.
You did a double take when you noticed a roadhouse, its gravel lot jammed with cars and motorcycles, sandwiched between a small graveyard and a family farm.
If you went inside and ordered a pie, you never forgot the place. Real, mouth-watering New York-style pizza. Served by counter folk with unmistakable New York accents, in an unassuming cinder-block dining room. Eaten beside a huge picture window that looked out onto three Blue Ridge peaks. Washed down with tall pitchers of cold beer.
In the middle of nowhere.
Like a fur coat in a PETA parade, it was way out of place -- but that was part of the fun.
'Witness Protection Pizza'
All those elements gave rise to dark suspicions about what was really going on.
Those spawned the rumors: the owners were hiding from some bad guys they crossed up north. They fled to the last place anyone would ever look for them. And they were doing what they knew best -- making awesome pizza.
It was as if the Sopranos had fled to Ironto.
That tale was almost 100 percent untrue, says the Italian Kitchen's former owner, a big lunk of a guy with a barrel laugh and a decidedly Anglo-Saxon name.
"There was an artist, he worked at Virginia Tech, a professor in the art department," Dick Hamilton recalled between guffaws. "It was something he told the college paper. That's where they gave me the name 'Witness Protection Pizza.' They just started the rumor. And it kind of stuck."
Two tiny slivers were factual: Hamilton hailed from Long Island. He retired to Ironto after 30 years in the heavy-equipment business up there.
And the pizza was awesome.
Accidental success
Hamilton, who's now 72, and his wife Linda, now deceased, moved down here in 1989, lured by a conversation with his nephew, who had already moved to Smith Mountain Lake.
"He went on and on -- Virginia this, Virginia that, how great it was," Hamilton recalled. "One day I said to my wife, 'Let's take a ride down and check it out.' "
After only one long weekend down here, they were persuaded to put their New York home up for sale.
Not much later, they bought a house on North Fork Road in Ironto. Life was good, but the Hamiltons got a little antsy.
That's why Hamilton bought a closed-down convenience store, with the idea to fix up the place and sell it.
But before long, the couple changed plans and opened it up as a sandwich place.
That was Linda's brainchild, Hamilton said. The place was her baby.
Linda Hamilton always had lots of menu and decor ideas for the restaurant: the picture window, the Italian landscape posters on the wall.
"She knew just how she wanted it," Dick Hamilton said.
One day, Linda Hamilton decided she wanted to sell pizza by the slice. She made it in a small, tabletop oven smaller than the ones in most homes. Its limit was two pizzas at a time.
They couldn't make it fast enough.
Soon they had bigger ovens. An enlarged building. A new chef. An expanded menu.
Business boomed. After Virginia Tech football games, you couldn't get in the joint.
"I couldn't believe success was so easy," Dick Hamilton said.
Changing owners
Linda Hamilton succumbed to cancer in 1994. Dick Hamilton ran the Italian Kitchen until about 2002, when he suffered a heart attack and decided to sell it.
But it wasn't exactly easy finding a buyer for a restaurant out in the middle of nowhere.
Enter Ray Enste and Darlene Powell.
Enste, 63, also hails from Long Island, where he's owned and operated an equipment-rental business for decades. He and Hamilton have been friends for more than 40 years.
On one of Enste's visits down here, Hamilton had introduced his pal to a friend, Powell, who for a time had worked at the Italian Kitchen. Before long, Enste and Powell were a couple, living in a doublewide along North Fork Road. Enste began "commuting" to Long Island, where he rented a small apartment, to run his business.
Powell decided she wanted the restaurant and told Enste. So they formed a partnership and bought it.
Closing and reopening
Enste and Powell ran the place until 2006. But there were a lot of headaches. Finding and keeping good help for a restaurant was one of the big ones, Enste says.
In 2006, they pulled the plug and the Italian Kitchen closed.
They tried to sell the place but found no buyers.
Last fall they decided to give it another go. They reopened Mountain View Italian Kitchen as a carryout. In April, Enste regained the restaurant's liquor license. He hired a new chef, Michael Gucciardo, most recently of Nico's in Roanoke.
The dining room opened May 15. The menu is pretty much the same old one. Many of the recipes are Linda Hamilton originals.
Though she's been dead for 15 years, Hamilton will never be far away from that kitchen.
She's buried in the cemetery next door.
