Business Profile: Gelardi’s Pizza, Cortlandt
Photo credit: Neal Rentz
You could say, metaphorically speaking, that pizza sauce runs through the veins of Mohegan Lake resident Brendan Gelardi.
He began working in a pizzeria at 16 and his passion for hot pies has not wavered. About six months ago he opened his first business, Gelardi’s Pizza in Cortlandt
“I wanted to do pizza since I was a kid,” Gelardi recalled last week. “I’ve been working towards opening my own place ever since.”
Gelardi also cooks as his eatery. “There’s a lot of work, a lot of hours, long days but it’s something that I really enjoy, so for me it doesn’t really feel like work,” he said. “I really enjoy cooking. I like to make pizza. It feels really good when we put out good food and people enjoy it.”
“The specialty of the house” is the Grandma pizza, a thin crust Sicilian with crushed plum tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. “It’s a very popular item,” he said. “We try to be a little bit more creative than your average pizzeria.”
Another specialty pizzas served at Gelardi’s is chicken with sausage on hot cherry peppers. “We try new stuff all the time,” Gelardi said. “We’re going to try to come up with new ones as often as we can.”
Business has been good at the new eatery, Gelardi said. “We have a very good base of regulars,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is get out the word to more of the community that we’re here.”
“We pride ourselves on quality and the freshness of our ingredients. And you don’t see that too often at pizzerias anymore,” Gelardi said. “At a lot of places they try to cut corners or they just don’t want to spend the money to get the highest quality ingredients and that’s what we pride ourselves on – getting the best ingredients we can.”
“You have to do something to separate yourself from the competition,” Gelardi added.
Gelardi said he originally looked at locations in Poughkeepsie but could not find one “that had the right feel” for what he wanted. “The first time I came and looked this place I saw everything around here and I did a little bit of research on the Town of Cortlandt itself and after that I said this is perfect for us,” he said. “We want to be a family place with a family environment.”
Cortlandt “has the small town feel,” Gelardi said. “We want to become like a neighborhood pizzeria. People get to know us and we get to know them.”
Gelardi’s Pizza is located at 2093 E. Main St. in Cortlandt. For more information call 914-739-5237 or visit gelardispizza.com. The restaurant also has a Facebook page.
