Thomas Breen photo
Pizza restaurant brothers Gazmir, Aleko, and Jeshar Zeneli. Below: a Zeneli-made Queen Margherita pie.
Gazmir Zeneli spent nine years perfecting the Neapolitan “Queen Margherita”-style pizza as the head pizza chef for New York City’s Eataly Italian market and food hall.
Now, the Naples native and two of his brothers have brought their cheese and pizza-making prowess to their own new restaurant at the center of the city’s Pizza Row in Wooster Square.
Gazmir, Aleko, and Jeshar Zeneli joined Mayor Toni Harp and a host of local foodies and economic development boosters Thursday morning for an official ribbon cutting for their new restaurant, Zeneli pizzeria e cucina napoletana, located at 138 Wooster St.
Thursday’s ribbon cutting.
“New Haven is all about pizza,” Gazmir said with a toothy smile when asked why open another pizza place right next door to such local legends as Pepe’s and Sally’s.
Why not go to the center of the pizza universe, he said, if he and his brothers want to prove themselves as the exceptional pizza makers they know themselves to be.
Zeneli and Mazzoni apply the extra virgin olive oil finish to the Margherita.
The Zeneli brothers were born in Albania but grew up in Caserta, Naples, Gazmir said. That area of southern Italy is best known for its buffalo mozzarella, he said, as well as for the simple, fresh ingredients that go into a traditionally Neapolitan pie.
Standing just in front of the gold-plated, wood-fired oven that anchors one corner of the SEEDnh-designed building, Zeneli walked through those ingredients and the few steps necessary to put together his signature “Queen Margherita” pie, supposedly named after an Italian flag-colored pizza made by a Neapolitan chef to celebrate the Margherita of Savoy’s 1889 visit to the city.
Zeneli and Marco Mazzoni.
He pulled a Caupto flour-made ball of pizza dough out of the container where it had been rising for 24 hours. He flipped in the air, spun it flat, pinched the air‑y dough’s edges and slathered on fresh tomato sauce, pieces of basil, and homemade buffalo mozzarella cheese. He and fellow pizza maker Marco Mazzoni, who worked with Zeneli to help open Eataly restaurants in Chicago and Las Vegas, slipped the tri-colored pizza onto a wooden pizza bar, leaned it into the wood-fired oven for just a few minutes, and then poured on top some Sorrento-sourced extra virgin olive oil as cameras clicked and mouth salivated.
Inside Zeneli pizzeria e cucina napoletana.
“Instead of taking 11 hours on an airplane,” Gazmir said, “we want to bring Naples right here.” Not just the pizza, he said, but the pasta, the bread, the cheese, the culture.
Mayor Toni Harp (right): “You’ve haven’t tasted anything yet until you’ve tasted Zeneli’s.”
“I have tasted their pizza,” Harp said at the ribbon cutting. “I’ve tested their crust. I’ve tasted their cheese. And you haven’t tasted anything yet until you’ve tasted Zeneli’s right here.”
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Thursday’s press conference.
Can you please post the hours?
[Reporter's note: 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Thanks for asking!]