Pizza oven has Italian flavor

Newburyport restaurant imports a heavyweight

Claude Elias (left), owner of Oregano, and Chester Cappucci, chef and general manager. (Lisa Poole for the Boston Globe)

The city's latest culinary star, a native of Genoa, Italy, started cooking pizzas for customers last week at Oregano Pizzeria & Ristorante at 16 Pleasant St. The restaurant's owner hopes this newcomer will give the restaurant a fast start in the crowded local dining field.

Oh, and the new guy? Weighs 5,400 pounds and has a heart of stone.

Not so much "he" as "it," actually, a gas-fired pizza oven - with a single slab of stone for a floor and a concrete dome - that really did come over on the boat from Italy. The last 30 feet of the journey was the hard part, requiring removal of the storefront window and structural improvements to the building.

"I moved to Newburyport two years ago, in July of '06, and every time we wanted to go and have a sit-down pizza where mom and dad wanted to have a beer with their pizza, we had to leave town," said owner Claude Elias, who is married and the father of two. "We had to go to Amesbury or Peabody or out to North Andover. . . . Hold on a second! We moved to Newburyport to leave Newburyport? It didn't make sense."

Of course, there's at least one sit-down restaurant in town making a brick-oven pizza - Not Your Average Joe's at the Firehouse. The Upper Crust chain plans to open on State Street soon. And there's no shortage of pizza downtown. Abraham's Bagels & Pizza serves pies on Liberty Street, and the more traditional Pizza Factory II offers pizzas and subs just a couple of doors down from Oregano. But Elias said Oregano will have a different atmosphere and a different kind of pizza.

He noticed the empty storefront on Pleasant Street, former home of a furniture store, a few months after moving to town. First thought: Great place for a pizza restaurant. Several thoughts later, Elias, the owner of a medical-laser company, decided: "Maybe I should do it." He signed a lease in July 2007.

Construction of the 60-seat restaurant began early last December. The oven arrived just after Christmas.

"I always wanted to get that authentic oven," Elias said. "You go on websites, do the research, I even went so far as calling Bertucci's and Macaroni Grill, and I inquired about the oven at Flatbread Company in Amesbury. I happened to stumble upon this California distributor that imports these Italian ovens . . . and he said 'Look, I know you're not ready, but the euro keeps going up. . . . I don't stock $15,000 ovens; I ship them to order. If you want one, I advise: get one now.' And that's what happened."

It took eight weeks for the oven to reach Newburyport, Elias said.

"And then between having the windows removed," he said, "and the riggers to come put it on the forklift and reinforcing the bottom of the first floor - we had to reinforce the whole thing as the 5,000 pounds was traveling over it - that cost more than shipping the thing."

Elias grinned and shook his head, like he knows it was a little crazy but he's happy anyway.

"I wanted it to be unique, and I wanted to be authentic," he said.

Ann Ormond, president of the Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said pizza is a staple like ice cream and "the more the merrier" among downtown restaurants.

"We just had a festival this weekend and there were a ton of people in town and a lot of places were hopping," Ormond said. "Most of the restaurateurs and retailers, when competition comes to town, would welcome it. It brings a vibrancy to Newburyport that I think you can't find in many other places."

The food at Oregano is in the hands of restaurant veteran and Newburyport resident Chester Cappucci, who looks quite happy standing in front of the blazing oven on a preopening afternoon, running a crew of young cooks through their paces while whipping together his favorite scampi pizza himself, calling out the order to "shrimp me." (The large scampi pizza is the most expensive menu item, at $18.)

An East Boston native, Cappucci has a long resume in restaurant management, but sounds just as proud of the four years he spent as a kid making pizzas at the original Regina's in the North End.

Elias is originally from Lebanon and he hopes to educate local palates with a little feta cheese here or a hummus appetizer there. But he notes his wife is of Sicilian descent.

"It's OK, he married one of us," said Cappucci.

The oven can reach 900 degrees and cook five pizzas every three minutes, Cappucci said, but probably it's best to keep it around 700 to 750 and let it take just a little longer.

"You can't take your eyes off it, or a pizza could burn," Cappucci said.