Giorgio's in Norwood Brings First Class Flavor

Giorgio’s Pizza in Norwood opened in 2007, and has since been trying to change the stereotypical view of the local pizza shop.

“It’s a pizzeria with a restaurant flare,” said co owner Jack Puccio. “Typically what you find in a pizzeria is the easiest path to get the food in the box. For us, it’s more of a chef approach.

Owners George Athanasiou and Puccio said they’re always trying to bring something different to the pizza table, and carry a wide selection of specialty pizzas and items. They said they experiment constantly, and not just with new items.

“We really concentrate on the science behind the dough,” Puccio said. “Everybody’s technique is different, but temperature control is extremely important and in an environment like this we can’t get the room cool enough to just throw in the flour and the water together and have the yeast cooperate. The method changes on a daily basis even though our recipes stay the same.”

The pair said sometimes, if they can’t get the humidity and temperature to cooperate while they’re making the dough, they’ll run next door to the local convenience store to buy bags of ice to make sure it comes out right.

“I’d put our dough up against anybody’s,” Athanasiou said.

The pair both have a long history of pizza in their background. Athanasiou said he started working for his family’s restaurants when he was a kid.

“I’m from a family pizza place background and I was born and raised in the business at Cappy’s on Huntingon Avenue,” he said.

Puccio said he first started at Dominic’s in Hyde Park in 1984, and was a 1994 graduate of Johnson and Wales. He said he had enough scholarships to only have to pay for two of the six years he studied there.

Puccio went on to study and get his certification at the International School of Pizza, founded by chef Tony Gemignani. According to the school’s Web site, they only certify about 10 people a year.

“When you go to the school you’re trained by three world champions and they hold world titles in different aspects of pizza making,” Puccio said.

The pair agreed the biggest part of a good pizza is all the little things that good into it. They said they take their ingredients seriously and work with a distributor that closely follows grocery markets to get the freshest ingredients possible.

“We use a specialty produce company that hand picks everything fresh,” Athanasiou said. “The product is really top of the line.”

Then they said they take it a step further.

“Everything we buy we buy in the smallest quantity possible so it’s as fresh as it can possibly be,” Puccio said.

The pair said they have a lot of different types of foods not typically associated with a pizza place, like for instance a spaghetti and meatball pizza or a ghost pepper salami. They said they use only Boar’s Head or Zoe’s Specialty meats for their cold cut selection.

“You can find a lot of things in here you’re not going to find in other places, like sweet potato fries, jalapenos; our steak is porterhouse loin tails and we only use meat that is USDA Choice or higher,” he said.

The pair added they also serve a variety of hot pepper products as well, including habanero and ghost peppers, which rate pretty high on the Scoville Scale, which officially rates hot food in a scientifically devised manner.

“We even have the Trinidad Scorpion Pepper if the ghost pepper isn’t hot enough for you,” Puccio said.

The pair said they’re in there most days making almost everything in the shop from scratch. Alfredo sauce to red sauce, cheese to marinara, meatballs to chicken, they prepare everything they sell that day in that day.

Giorgio’s is located on 641 Washington Street and is open Monday - Thursday, 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.; Friday, Saturday, 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.; Sunday, noon - 9 p.m.