Fat Lorenzo's - Minneapolis

Up in the Twin Cities earlier this year, I was in the mood for pizza.  One place that I've had my eye on for awhile is a place called Fat Lorenzo's.  Not only are they known for their pizza, they also have quite the following for their selection of gelato.  On a beautiful Monday evening, I stopped into the original Fat Lorenzo's on S. Cedar Ave. just south of Lake Nokomis.  (see map) 

Fat Lorenzo's was the brainchild of Larry Neck, the owner of the 5-8 Club just down Cedar Ave. from Fat Lorenzo's.  (Click here to read the Road Tips entry on the 5-8 Club.)  Taking over the business in 1985, business was tough at the start of their venture.  Neck and his then-partner had one employee, Laura Siegel, his partner's sister.  She was out of work and needed a job.  But business still wasn't all that great and Neck's partner walked away from the business, but Laura Siegel stayed on.  The 5-8 Club eventually grew to be one of the iconic burger places in the Twin Cities.

Larry Neck grew up in New York City, and with the exception of one little Italian market in the Twin Cities he declared that there was no such thing as good pizza in the area.  After things started going with the 5-8 Club, he decided he was going to try his hand at making pizzas.  He knew the dough was the key to a good pizza so he spent a month working on making dough for pizza.  

The spot of a competitor restaurant down the block from the 5-8 Club became available in 1987.  Neck thought that he didn't want to have any more competition in the neighborhood, so he ended up leasing the place.  That's how Fat Lorenzo's got its start.  Larry - who was the "Lorenzo" in the name - teamed up with Doug Rix - the "Fat" in the name to start the pizza place.  With Larry Neck working primarily at the 5-8 Club, Doug Rix did everything at Fat Lorenzo's - he made the sauce, he sourced the ingredients, he made the pizza, he waited tables, he bussed tables, he washed dishes and pans.  In the early days, a busy night at Fat Lorenzo's was 20 to 25 people total.  

Doug Rix got sick and Larry Neck had to close down Fat Lorenzo's.  However, not long after he shut it down, Fat Lorenzo's garnered a "best pizza in the Twin Cities" award by a local publication.  Suddenly, people were clamoring for a Fat Lorenzo's pizza and Neck had to open the place back up again with new employees.  Once the buzz of the best pizza award wore off in a few months, Neck closed the place again.  

Guess what?  Not long after he closed it a second time, it won another best pizza award again!  He was forced to reopen with other employees and repeat the cycle.  This happened at least twice or maybe three times in the first four years Fat Lorenzo's was open.  

In 1995, Larry Neck had had enough of the restaurant/bar scene and was wanting to divest himself from the 5-8 Club, Fat Lorenzo's, Whitey's Tavern, and a place called BB Dixon's that eventually became the Groveland Tap in St. Paul.  Neck went to Laura Siegel's husband, Scott, and said that he was looking to sell everything he had.  He offered Siegel all of the places or just one of the bars or restaurants.  Siegel had just lost his job at the Ford Tractor division when it closed and was looking for something.  Scott Siegel decided on trying to get Fat Lorenzo's and he went home to talk it over with his wife.  

At first, Laura Siegel was dead set against owning a restaurant.  But Scott Siegel was 40 years old, out of work.  He went back to Larry Neck and made him an offer on Fat Lorenzo's.  A month later, Neck came back and accepted his offer, and in 1995 the Siegel's were the new owners of Fat Lorenzo's.  A few years ago, the Siegel's opened a second location in a VFW hall in Bloomington.  

I was able to find a parking spot in the small lot behind Fat Lorenzo's and I went in.  The open kitchen was very visible as you come in and it was a beehive of activity.  The original gas pizza ovens that had been there for 30 years were still being used today.

Also up front was the gelato counter.  In 2005, Scott Siegel went to the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas and he encountered an Italian company that was serving gelato.  Siegel knew that the building that housed Fat Lorenzo's was built in 1921 as an ice cream shop.  He thought it would be neat to have gelato at Fat Lorenzo's, sort of closing the circle of the original business in his building.  In an impetuous moment, Siegel agreed to buy the gelato machine for Fat Lorenzo's.  

The only problem is that he didn't know that it cost $45,000 dollars.  But he didn't care about that.  What he did care about was the time and cost that it took to install the machine, install the case coolers, install the electric, and install the ornate tiling around the counter.  That came to a cost of about another $150,000 on top of the price of the gelato machine.  But Siegel didn't care and in the long run he's made his money back and then some on the gelato machine and installation.  

There's a small black chalk board on the wall in the entry way to the dining room where people write their names and how many there are in their party.  I didn't know the drill and a couple came in and put his name up on the board with a "2" beside it.  As they were seated, I did the same thing for me.  But it turned out that I really didn't need to as a guy came up and said, "Just one?  Follow me."  

He took me to a high-backed booth in the center of the small and cozy dining area and gave me a menu to look over.  It wasn't long before my server, Raul, showed up to greet me.  They had a nice selection of craft beers available at Fat Lorenzo's and I went with a Bell's Two Hearted Ale after Raul told me that my first choice - the Ballast Point Sculpin - was sold out.  

The artwork on the exterior and interior walls of Fat Lorenzo's, as well as on the ceiling in the dining room were all done by a local Twin Cities artist by the name of Ed Charbonneau.  Charbonneau had actually worked as a cook at BB Dixon's when Laura Siegel was managing the place for Larry Neck.  When the Siegel's bought Fat Lorenzo's, they invited Charbonneau to come over and cook for them.  But Charbonneau declined, he said it was too far for him to travel on a daily basis from St. Paul, and he decided to go off to college instead.  

A year later Charbonneau came back in to see the Siegel's at Fat Lorenzo's.  At that time, the couple had put butcher block paper on the table tops and invited people to draw on them as they were waiting for their pizza.  The better ones, they would put up on the plain white wall of the dining room.  When Charbonneau saw that, he went to Scott Siegel and told him that he had been studying art - murals, more precisely - and said he'd like to try his hand at putting a mural on one of the walls.  Larry Siegel said, "Sure, what the hell?", fully figuring that if the mural sucked he could always paint over it.

Well, the mural didn't suck and Charbonneau continued to work on the walls off and on for six months.  His murals were whimsical and sort of like of a grand Italian style.  Charbonneau has since become well-known for his murals in the Twin Cities and he updated the artwork at Fat Lorenzo's over a 15 year period with the help of local artists Jeremy Szopinski and Neil Johnston.  (You can see more of Charbonneau's work and his resumé on his web site.)    

There's more than just pizza and gelato at Fat Lorenzo's.  They also have pasta dishes such as baked rigatoni, lasagna, fettuccine, and linguine with a clam sauce on the menu.  They have a number of hoagie sandwiches, as well as salads and appetizers.  But I was there for the pizza.  I ended up getting a small (10") sausage, pepperoni and mushroom pizza.

The pizza was thin in the middle, but more thick and spongy toward the outer rim.  It had a lot of big chunks of sausage along with plenty of pepperoni slices and chopped fresh mushrooms.  The grease coagulated toward the center of the pizza making it sort of mushy in the middle.  The thick cheese was a golden color on top of the pizza.

But that wasn't a bad thing.  Overall, the pizza was very good.  Not as good as I'd anticipated, but still very good.  The crust was a little too thick for me and I ended up tearing the crust from the edge and concentrated eating on the inner part of the pizza.   The sauce was good with a sweet tang to the taste.  The cheese was very good - they use whole milk cheese on the pizzas at Fat Lorenzo's - and that added to the rich taste of the pizza.  It was very good - not great - but very good. 

Fat Lorenzo's was worth the stop.  The pizza was very good, but from the reviews I'd read on-line over the past couple years I was expecting something more.  That's not to say the ingredients they use aren't good - they're very good with fresh Italian sausage, earthy mushrooms, salty pepperoni, whole milk cheese and a sweet and tangy housemade sauce for the pizza.  But there was just something missing in the overall finished product.  I'd probably go get one again, but I don't know if Fat Lorenzo's can still be called the best pizza in the Twin Cities.     

Comments

[Susan Thomas]

For some reason, my husband and I feel its just not as good as it used to be. Don't know if they changed something in the sauce, the dough or what. The pizza used to just melt in your mouth. Maybe others around the Twin Cities have gotten better.

[William Rakozy]

One thing he hasn’t changed since the my first order since 1988. The Lasagna is spectacular in my opinion.