Pete's New Haven Style Apizza Eyes an April Opening in Silver Spring

One of the restaurants that will soon feed downtown Silver Spring is a bit of a transplant, at least in style. Pete's New Haven Style Apizza is readying a location at Wayne Avenue and Georgia Avenue that will bring a type of pizza famous in the Northeast to the neighborhood.

Joel Mehr, one of three owners of the business, said the company plans to open the restaurant in the latter part of April 2013. He told Patch that the owners, who already operate two Pete's locations in Washington, DC, and one in Clarendon, VA, have been eyeing Silver Spring for some time. 

"The question was always finding the right spot," said Mehr. "A good location is not so easy to come by, so then when we found one we liked, we jumped on it."

Mehr and co-owners Thomas Marr and Tri Nguyen are all veterans of the restaurant business who started the company, in part, to have access to a style of pizza that isn't so easy to come by in the DC area. 

"We're kind of filling that void that most people in the Atlantic Northeast are used to growing up, which is a local Italian restaurant where they make everything from scratch and make each pie to order," Mehr said.

He describes the set-up as "fast casual," a median in-between what he describes as "conveyer-belt" pizza chains like Pizza Hut and fancy places that sell individually sized neopolitan-style pizza. 

"Those two ends of the scale seem to kind of dominate the pizza market," Mehr said. 

Pete's uses local and fresh ingredients and artificial ingredients are avoided. (The website says only sodas with cane sugar are allowed in the restaurants—so, no Pepsi or Coke.) 

Still, Pete's is a restaurant that strives to create a neighborhood feel. 

"We're still just a place where you come with your friends and family and you put a big pizza on the table and everyone just sits around and eats it," Mehr said.