Click here for our story on semifinalist Milena Pagán of Little Sister in Providence, and click here for our story on Sherry Pocknett of Sly Fox Den Too in Charlestown, who on March 29 became one of five finalists for the award.
Rob Andreozzi didn’t plan on opening a pizzeria. His culinary background includes places like Frasca in Colorado, and del Posto in New York City. So after working at such distinguished restaurants, why did he open a pizzeria?
“I’ve never really been the pizza guy,” he said. “I’m still not.”
But Andreozzi and his business partner, Jesse Hedberg, were looking for a business opportunity when they saw an empty restaurant at the corner of Governor and Wickenden Streets in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence.
“I would love to do anything, but it’s, what does the community need? And that’s super important,” Andreozzi said. “Yes, there’s a lot of famous pizzerias here in Providence, but the community needed a pizzeria like Marvin at the time.”
They opened the restaurant in December of 2020.
“We built our business around, like, opening and surviving throughout a pandemic,” Andreozzi said. “We were takeout only five days a week, dinner only from five to nine. And we grew on our own terms very organically. We didn’t have an investor, like, breathing down our neck, saying ‘you need to meet these numbers.’ And honestly, it was wonderful for us.”
Pizza Marvin is simple and casual inside. You order at the counter next to an open kitchen. You can enjoy your pizza inside perched on a stool at a high-top table, or in the warmer months you can sit outside at a picnic table on a small square. That’s where we sat when I stopped by to talk with Andreozzi, on an unseasonably warm day in March. I asked what inspired him to become a chef.
“I think food has just always been the centerpiece at all, all of our family events,” Andreozzi said. “Two grandfathers are Italian, who love to cook. One grandmother Portuguese, who was a baker. She worked at a bakery in Bristol, Batista bakery, for a little bit. And so every time we’re at our house, always cooking, and then the other grandmother is Jewish, so we always had like, the holidays.”
“There was always moments where I was learning how to cook, I think,” he said. “Even before culinary school it was, like, trying to like replicate my my grandfather’s Sunday gravy. It’s just always, there was opportunities. It was encouraged. It was a very exciting moment to participate, for sure.”
After college at Roger Williams, Andreozzi went to Johnson and Wales in Denver, Colorado. He then went on to work in several different restaurants in Colorado and New York, including del Posto.
“That moment at del Posto was really powerful for me,” he said. “I became obsessed with Italy. And I think I just, I went all in.”
One of his coworkers had moved to the Friuli region of Italy and raved about the food there. So Andreozzi went to stay with him for a few months, and immersed himself in the culture.
“The food is like, it’s the mountains and the sea,” he said. “You could just as easily see a venison dish as you would raw shrimp. And it’s a very fun region to cook from. And not well known, which was always something that made me very excited to go deep. Wild vegetables, for sure, and herbs.”
He’d find wild fennel, nettles, arugula, asparagus just growing on the side of the road. “It was a dream,” Andreozzi said.
After returning to the U.S., he went to work at a restaurant that specializes in the food of Friuli.
“Their motto was, you know, you wake up in the morning, and you think about Friuli,” Andreozzi said. “And then you think about the rest of northern Italy. And then you can think about the rest of the world.”
It’s a philosophy he brought with him to Pizza Marvin.
“We wake up in the morning, we’re like, we think about Rhode Island. Then we think about New England, and then it’s the rest of the world,” he said. “A lot more seafood than I think people are ready for.”
The menu includes things like littleneck stuffies, Caesar salad with smoked blue fish, raw oysters and clams. You can also order seasoned fries that are spiced like a New York System wiener, and you can get a Chowdah Pie topped with clams, potatoes and bacon. But a good way to tell if a pizzeria is doing it right is to try their cheese pizza. And that’s what Andreozzi made for me.
“Right now I’m pressing our dough in the flour. This is our New Haven-inspired recipe for our round dough. It’s a four day ferment. We use about 20% Maine grains. It’s a sifted whole wheat flour. And the rest of it is another local flour from Vermont,” he said.
“I’m not definitely one to soapbox about, you know, sourdough fermentation, stuff like that. Like, I think like at the end of the day, it’s just pizza. There’s a lot of sauce on it and a lot of cheese,” Andreozzi said. “I think really, what the fermentation adds is a level of digestibility [that’s] very important.”
He said it also adds color, and plays a key role in the signature texture they look for at Pizza Marvin. “To me, the most important part about this pizza is that, like, it’s a crispy cracker with toppings on it.”
For this particular pizza, he keeps it simple. “I’m making just like our house cheese right now,” Andreozzi said. “For sauce we use about four ounces of just, it’s just crushed tomatoes and that’s literally it. We crack the cans of sauce, we don’t add salt, we don’t add oregano or garlic or anything like that.”
The cheese pizza has three different mozzarellas, one of which is made in house.
“We call it the house cheese with triple mozz,” he said. “And then to finish that, just a little bit of Parmesan Reggiano before it hits the oven. And that’s literally it. That’s our cheese pizza.”
He slides the pizza into a 540-degree oven, spinning it a couple of times to make sure everything is consistent, then pulling it out to let it cool.
Once the cheese is set and not molten, Andreozzi cuts into it. “It should sound exactly like that. You can hear it crispy and cracking everywhere,” he said. “We just finish it with some fresh basil, more Parmesan Reggiano and a little bit of Sicilian olive oil.”
The crust hits the right balance of crispy and doughy, and the brightness of the tomatoes really comes through. The cheese adds depth without distracting from the sauce and the crust, and the basil is a pop of flavor for contrast. It’s a perfectly simple slice from a chef who says he’s not a pizza guy.
I asked Andreozzi what it means to him to be nominated for the James Beard award.
“I sort of feel uncomfortable and don’t love the fact that it says Best Chef Northeast. I think we really do look at this as a team award. That’s the thing that bothers me is that, like I said, there’s this fascination with Chef,” he said. “If you want a successful restaurant, the chef is the smallest part of it.”
