When are we opening?

It’s the question that’s on everyone’s mind. We here at Pizza Delicious haven’t actually thought about that at all. By that I mean, it consumes almost every moment and thought of every day. If that’s all you were wondering, it’s looking like the beginning of October as the tentative opening for the new Pizza D!

As far as your Kickstarter rewards go... We have been working hard to get these all together! They will be ready for pickup or delivery sometime in August! We apologize for the delay (we originally planned to have everything ready this month) but if you read the rest of this post, you can see we’ve had a lot going on!

For those of you who want some more details on what exactly we’ve been doing for the past couple months here you go:

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
-Ernest Hemingway

True... but Hemingway probably wasn’t thinking about a journey that ended in eating pizza for lunch and dinner six times a week! But yes, we’ve learned a lot about gas lines, LED lights, leaky roofs, framing inspections, and how to plan for everything and have almost nothing the way you expected it to and realize everything might still be okay. Of course we say this now and we’re still over 2 months away from opening our doors.

Last we left you it was May and there were some giant holes in the ground. Let’s take a photographic trip to the present!

We were on NPR’s Planet Money! Check out the story about us running a Facebook ad!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/16/152736597/pizza-delicious-bought-an-ad-on-facebook-howd-they-do

Here’s Mike in the WWNO studios. We had a three way connection going from New Orleans, San Francisco and New York. We’re pretty important.

Our friend, Matt Sheard donated his time and sweet skills to help us put in this giant steel lintel to open up this wall. Right where Mike is standing will be the kitchen and that opening will be the location of where you order your pizza!

We framed all the rooms! These were the first OMG moments, being able to get a sense of the space and what it was going to feel like to walk through the different rooms.

Here is a view from the prep kitchen, looking through the bathrooms and out into the dining room

This a shot taken from what will be the dining room at the little hallway leading to the two new bathrooms!

Meet our architect, Jeff Treffinger, looking very creepy while holding a powder actuated nail gun!

One of the craziest parts of this project was knowing that we had to build a steel stud wall to separate our front space from the rest of the giant warehouse. It took months of worrying about getting up 16 feet on the sides and 23 feet in the center. Our friend Gavin came in and framed it in two days! It was amazing!
Action shot: Wilson cutting some steel!

Sergio and Gav-dawg framing it out!

Ever heard of rammed earth? It’s what it sounds like, you shovel in a mix of sand, clay and cement = earth and shovel it into board forms and RAM IT down. Rammed earth, get it? We hadn’t heard of it either. It’s an ancient building technique used on parts of the great wall of China and isn’t hard, just takes a lot of planning and labor. Our friend, Michael Cohen, convinced us to build the only rammed earth walls/benches in the city of New Orleans. If you’re confused.. just watch.

Step 1: Get the earth

Step 2: Build the board forms to fill with earth and locate it where you want your structure to be.

Step 3: Get a lot of people to help you and begin to mix and wet the earth.

Step 4: Shovel in the earth and RAM IT!

Step 5: Pull away the boards to reveal greatness!

Step 6: Install benches and welcome to the centerpiece of our outdoor seating area!

We salvaged and milled down the old floor joists of the office that used to be in our building. Turns out, it’s incredible cypress wood!

Again, Michael Cohen created a masterpiece. Behold the counter, where you will order your pizza at the new spot!

We started having the New Orleans Community Printshop, screenprint our boxes with original artwork!! Check out their Kickstarter ( http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/846316519/the-new-orleans-community-printshop-is-moving-and?ref=live) right here for their move to a new location!

Neptali brought in a crew to sheetrock the place and make the rooms look real.

The kitchen hasn’t been quiet either. In preparation for the opening we’re starting to create some new menu items.
Here’s recent local salad special with mizuna, frill, peach, radish, fried capers and mint sherry vinaigrette!

That's about it for now.  By the way... it's really hot here.  Talk to you soon!