Our story

A dream, and a year of looking

Akim came to Volusia County from Albania and learned the trade the long way — twelve years of hand-stretched dough and Friday dinner rushes at Luigi’s and Alberto’s. He knew what people here order and where a menu could be better. What he did not have was a room of his own. He and Hope spent more than a year looking for one, and in May they found the space on Commonwealth Boulevard that JoJo’s Tastes of Chicago had just left. By the last week of June they were serving.

“This is our first restaurant together, and it’s actually my husband’s dream come true. He’s always wanted to have a pizza place.”

Hope Zendeli

Dough made here, every morning

The dough and the sauce are made in this kitchen every day, from a recipe more than fifty years old. Fourteen and sixteen inch New York pies, hand stretched. Akim is particular about how they come out of the oven — how they look as much as how they taste — and that is the whole reason the menu reads the way it does.

“(Akim) takes his pizzas to heart, you know? He’s very picky about how they turn out — what they look like and what they taste like.”

Hope Zendeli

A menu built so a whole table can eat

That is why there are gyros and cheeseburgers and strombolis next to the pies. Nobody should be the person at the table with nothing to order.

“He wanted to incorporate not just pizza, but add to the menu so that if somebody comes in, everybody can find something that they like and eat together as a family.”

Hope Zendeli

Hope’s mother’s baklava

The rice pudding and the baklava are made here too, from the recipe of Hope’s late mother. Ask whether there is any that day — it is not always on, and it is hers.