As hungry pizza fans stood in line to get into New Haven’s iconic Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana on a recent sunny September afternoon, Tim Cabral and Avi Szapiro were across Wooster Street working toward the opening of their own new culinary project, Gioia.
A pedestrian walked by and scoped out the building’s gelato window at the corner of Brown and Wooster Streets, bordered by a bright mural of citrus fruits painted by local artist Jaime La Jones. “When do you open?” he called out to Cabral.
“October 19,” Cabral called back.
Gioia (Italian for “joy”) is joining the group of storied Italian food and beverage businesses on Wooster Street, opening next month in the former Tony & Lucille’s space. The multi-use building will house a restaurant and bar, a market with provisions, produce and specialty items and a gelataria with housemade sweet offerings. In another phase later this year, Cabral and Szapiro will introduce a nearly 2,000-square-foot rooftop deck atop the building, with its own dedicated food and drink menu.
“Since I’ve been living (in New Haven), I’ve always wondered why there’s no market in Little Italy,” Szapiro said. “If you go to any Little Italy in Philly, New York, Chicago, Boston…you’ll see (markets). So we figured that would be a good addition to the neighborhood.”
“We also liked that it was a neighborhood,” Cabral said, noting recent development in the area like higher-end apartment buildings. “We’ve been talking to people in the neighborhood who just want a place where they can go hang out.”
The two seasoned New Haven restaurateurs — Cabral is a partner in Chapel Street cocktail bar Ordinary and Szapiro owned ROIA in the former Taft Hotel — said they’ve always wanted to work together on a project, and first looked at the 5,000-square-foot space in May 2021. With the COVID pandemic at the forefront of their decision making, they began considering offerings that would accommodate guests conveniently and safely: a heavy takeout program, outdoor dining options and market items that visitors might need or want to have at home.
Cabral and Szapiro have shifted their priorities a little in 2023, they said, including not prioritizing takeout as much as they would have two years ago.
“It was still very much in our face,” Cabral said of the pandemic at the time. “A couple of years later, it’s still present, but it’s a lot different.”
The restaurant, on the first floor of the space, features an airy open kitchen with a wood-burning grill and rotisserie. Szapiro is working with chef de cuisine Mark Bestmann, whose resume includes time at Boston’s Coppa, an Italian enoteca. Their menu is still being finalized, but will offer starters and shareable items like cheese and salumi boards, eggplant parm bites, burrata, meatballs and salt cod arancini. Housemade pastas, available in two portion sizes, may include selections like smoked butternut squash agnolotti, bucatini amatriciana and spaghetti carbonara.
The wood-fired grill will be used for dishes like whole local mushrooms, grilled chicken piccata, hanger steak, Italian sausage and grilled tuna, and larger “for the table” entrees include rotisserie chicken and whole stuffed fish. And though Gioia is surrounded by pizza heavyweights (it’s also next door to traditional Neapolitan pizzeria Zeneli), Cabral said he and Szapiro still want to feature their own pies, which they’re calling “Wooster Squares” — 16-inch square pizzas in varieties like margherita, potato with taleggio and ricotta, sausage with broccoli rabe and clam with pancetta and giardinera.
Read More: Inside New Haven’s Gioia Italian market and eatery on Wooster Street