The Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau proudly presents the third annual Providence Pizza Week, taking place from April 14-20, 2024. The week of pizzas showcases the most scrumptious and creative pizza pies that pizza joints, restaurants, and even food trucks from across the state can dream up.
The celebration of one of the most popular foods in America started in 2022. “Each year we’ve seen an increasing number of restaurants participate,” Alana O’Hare says, senior director of communications and special projects at the Convention Bureau. “We are almost to 40 [restaurants] now.” Pizza Week was created to “encourage people to stop in their favorite pizza place (or even restaurant that doesn’t usually serve pizza!) or branch out and try someplace new,” O’Hare explains. It is a way to support small businesses across the state and for Rhode Islanders to discover the plethora of unique pizzas and treat their taste buds to new and exciting offerings.
The participating restaurants have each submitted a special Pizza Week pizza to represent their business, culinary mastery, and creativity. The competition is fierce, and to entice hungry customers to try their pizza (and later vote for their dish, of course), each restaurant has concocted wild ideas of topping combinations, pushing the boundaries of what “pizza” means and can be. “The pizza concoction that the chef submits is entirely up to them,” O’Hare says. “Some do a breakfast pizza, or even a dessert pizza,” like Trattoria Appia in Providence and their Nutella Pizza with strawberries and whipped cream. Trinity Brewhouse in Providence pokes fun at the meaning of pizza with their “It Doesn’t Go on Pizza” pie (pineapple, ham, and barbeque), and W’s Mobile Wood Fired Pizza Oven makes pizza a two-in-one meal with their Loaded Mashed Potato and Spaghetti and Meatball Pizza offerings.
There are three categories competitors may win for Pizza Week: Most Delicious, Most Creative, and Most Instagrammable. Voters pick one pizza per category. Francesco’s Pizza on Hope Street in Providence has won all three categories for two years in a row. This year, Francesco’s is providing a General Tso’s Pizza. “I’m running with the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach,” owner Frank Schiavone explains. “The General Tso’s has been a staple for us since day one.”
Schiavone hopes to take all three categories again this year. All three categories are “equally as important and we set that standard for ourselves.” He believes that the quality of his ingredients and his chef team will be the secret to a third year of grand success. “Without giving away too many secrets, we use a dough recipe that dates back over 100 years,” a key component of which is Caputo flour from Naples, Italy. Schiavone calls it the “Lamborghini of flour.” He is the only person who makes the secret dough, and his team only consists of three chefs “which is not a lot for the volume we do, […but] the smaller the group, the closer the staff is and the harder they work for each other.” The pizzas are always crafted with passion, and you can taste the difference.
But with nearly 40 restaurants, Francesco’s will have some competition. Kristine Teto, Owner of Tumblesalts Café Pizza Station in North Providence, wants to win Most Delicious. Tumblesalts is competing with two pizzas: Antipasto Pizza, which is inspired by “old school antipasto platters,” and Shrimp Scampi Pizza, “inspired by our love of classic favorites combined in a new way,” Teto describes. Tumblesalts entered the competition “for the love of pizza,” which is evident through their dough made daily – also with flour imported from Italy – and their in-house pizza sauce.
Also on the docket for the competition is the popular Pizza Marvin in Providence. Robert Andreozzi, the chef and own of Pizza Marvin, will submit his pizza called the Big Dipper. “It is a riff on a spinach and artichoke dip,” he explains. “When I was living in New York City, there was a pizzeria near where I worked called Artichoke Basille’s. The pizza was a super messy and a popular late-night order. Ours is maybe the grown-up version of that.” This pie will be topped with grilled Italian artichokes, spinach from Ward’s Berry Farm in Massachusetts, and it will be finished with ricotta and garlic cream. “Marvin is at its heart inspired by nostalgic pizzerias we grew up with,” says Andreozzi. “We love taking inspiration from something we all love and understand, and figure out which rules to break so we can modernize it a bit.”
View all the competing pizzas at GoProvidence.com. Once Pizza Week officially begins, voters will be able to cast their votes there.
