It’s been less than a year since chef Anthony Calleo opened Gold Tooth Tony’s, his Detroit-style pizzeria in the Heights, but he tells CultureMap he’s ready to grow. New locations and a major menu overhaul are setting Gold Tooth Tony’s on a path for sustained success.
Calleo and Blake Harris, his business partner in both Gold Tooth Tony’s and Montrose staple Rudyard’s, recently signed a lease for a second location in Bellaire. Slated to open later this summer, Gold Tooth Tony’s has claimed the former Pink’s Pizza space at 5225 Bellaire Blvd. Opening in Bellaire makes practical business sense. It has both a good daytime population of office workers who might like having pizza for lunch and a strong population of families who will definitely like having pizza for dinner.
But Calleo has an emotional tie to Bellaire, too. Pi Pizza, the food truck where he established his reputation as one of Houston’s most innovative pizza makers, used to park in Bellaire. He’s also seen friends like former Bernie’s Burger Bus owner Justin Turner and Blood Bros. BBQ — the current creators of Gold Tooth Tony’s pizza of the month special — achieve success in the neighborhood. He thinks Bellaire will embrace the restaurant just as strongly as the Heights has.
“It’s one of the best markets in the city. They’re underserved for pizza, and they’re absolutely underserved for what we do,” Calleo says. “We’ve done really well here in the Heights with all the families. The kiddos love the food. We have a ton of regulars. We know a ton of people by name. I think Bellaire is a good neighborhood to grow that same kind of thing.”
The Bellaire restaurant won’t serve wings, because it doesn’t have the necessary hardware for a fryer. To make up for it — and to better appeal to office workers looking for lunch options — the location will serve an expanded menu of sandwiches and add a new selection of salads.
“Salads are really about the ingredients you put on them. We use a lot of really great ingredients to make our pizza,” he says. “The salads we’ll offer will not be boring. We’ll be able to do better than tomatoes, mushrooms, and spring mix.”
Rudyard's now serves pizzas by Gold Tooth Tony's.Courtesy of Gold Tooth Tony's
In addition to Bellaire, Gold Tooth Tony’s has expanded to Montrose via the kitchen at Rudyard’s. Available for both dine-in and delivery via third party apps, the menu includes several of the restaurant’s most popular pizzas along with the pizza of the month. Patrons will notice a Gold Tooth Tony’s neon sign at Rudyard’s along with a section of the menu dedicated to its pizzas.
For Calleo, linking up to two businesses makes sense. It ties them together in people’s minds, and it saves him and Harris the cost of building a dedicated Montrose location.
“People have said they’d eat with us more often if they didn’t have to cross I-10,” Calleo explains. “Montrose is a very aggressive real estate market. Rudyard’s lets us increase our market share there and get to our customers without having to find a lot of money.”
To go along with the growth, Calleo will implement a major menu overhaul. A couple of underperforming pies, the veggie sandwich, and the lasagna are coming off the menu. They’re being replaced by a chicken parm — an updated version of the sandwich Calleo created for his Sandy Witch Sandwich Company concept that operated inside Montrose bar Grand Prize several years ago — along with a reworked build-your-own pizza section. As much as it pained him to move on from pies like the Outy 5 that harkens back to the Pi Pizza days, his customers weren’t buying them.
“The stuff without sauce on top wasn’t selling as much as the stuff with sauce on top. I thought about all the conversations I’d had working the front counter. People want something saucier, cheesier, ‘pizza-ier,’” he says.
Calleo is particularly excited about the BYO pies, which will allow diners to choose any four toppings for $20. When Gold Tooth Tony’s opened, it didn’t offer popular pizza toppings such as mushrooms or peppers. That’s been changed. Those ingredients are now available on the BYO menu and are part of two new pies — a Detroit-style supreme pizza and a Detroit-style veggie supreme pizza.
“The supreme is kind of my favorite thing we’ve done,” Calleo says. “I’ve been chasing the way Showbiz Pizza smelled in, like, 1988 when I had my birthday there. I think that supreme pizza is it. That is pizza.”
Guiding customers to four toppings means that no pizza will be completely overwhelmed. It’s also a good deal.
“It sets up everyone for success, and lets people pick and choose what they want. We’ve also given people a better selection of things to build their own pizza with,” he says.
