Vegas couple bring Chicago deep dish to downtown’s Pawn Plaza
Tony Cimino likes to joke that when he was an infant, he had two forks: one for baby food, one for pizza. With the pizza fork being the prime utensil. How else could it have been for a child born into an extended family who had owned pizzerias and other Italian restaurants for about 50 years across the Midwest?
“It’s been my whole life,” said Cimino, who, with fiancée Ashleigh Hughes, opened Tony’s Pizzeria in late August at Pawn Plaza, the downtown Las Vegas center owned by Rick Harrison of “Pawn Stars” fame.
“You go right into the pizzeria helping out family. During high school, I was doing homework in the pizzeria. I tried new things to get the feel of something different — factory work, welding — but I always fell back into helping my parents in the restaurant.”
A place of their own
Cimino and Hughes met in the town of Freeport, Illinois, on the Wisconsin border. They connected, in part, over their shared Chicago roots and their work in restaurants.
“We thought, ‘We should do this for ourselves,’ ” Hughes said of opening their own spot, “but there were already so many family restaurants in the Midwest.” A change of venue was in order for the pizzeria they envisioned: a small pickup and takeout place.
The couple vacationed in Vegas in March, saw the Pawn Plaza space in April, drove out to Vegas in May to get an apartment, sold their home in the Midwest and were here by July to begin plying the dough.
The dish on deep
The menu at Tony’s Pizzeria — a simple name, yet so evocative of a certain slice of American pizza culture — leads with deep dish pies, in keeping with the owners’ Chicago bona fides. The other afternoon, a deep dish pie touches down, spread with a coverlet of tomato sauce and pepperoni, its cornice slightly singed, as it should be.
The circular pizza — as thick as torte — is sliced into thick wedges. No folding here — you’ll need a generous bite radius or a fork. The crust is sturdy enough to support the rich layers of sauce, meat and cheese, but still soft without being bready, the cornice imparting a gently crisp crunch and a flavorful char.
The stuffed pizza, a cousin of a deep dish pie, features a top layer of dough encasing the filling, with the sauce swiped on top before baking.
Slices for a crowd
Besides deep dish and stuffed pizzas, Tony’s offers three other crusts: thin, classic and hand-tossed. Pizzas are built from about two dozen toppings (or fillings) that range from the standards (pepperoni, sausage, ham, bacon) to banana peppers and spinach to fresh basil and giardiniera, the pickled vegetable condiment that is a beloved Chicago pizza topping.
There are also eight specialty pies, including a vegetarian pie chockablock with tomatoes, mushrooms, black and green olives, green peppers and onions, and The Capone, a mob of Italian sausage, roasted red peppers and red onions that is the owners’ take on the Italian-American pizzeria trinity of sausage, green peppers and onion.
Every pizza comes in 12-, 16- and 24-inch sizes. That last behemoth encompasses about 42 slices, Hughes said, and requires special-order carryout boxes.
Smile for the camera
The menu also runs to salads, including an antipasti version; calzones, including any specialty pie turned into a calzone; wings; and baked and cheesy things, most notably Bosco Sticks, a brand of baked bread sticks stuffed with cheese and other fillings. Bosco Sticks are popular in the Midwest.
Tony’s Pizzeria sends out its pies from a modest storefront that occupies Suite 140 of Pawn Plaza, 725 Las Vegas Blvd. South. There is the kitchen, an entry and ordering area, and a shallow counter with a few stools.
Family pictures cluster on the south wall mantled in subway tile. One photograph shows a 5- or 6-year old Tony Cimino wearing a kiddie apron, standing in front of a stack of silver pizza ovens, spreading sauce across a pizza round. He looks at the camera and smiles — as if smiling at his future self, feeding Vegas with superlative deep dish pies.
Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @JLWTaste on Instagram.
