<\/p>\n
Jared Delamora remembers the night clearly when he tried the best pizza of his life \u2014 and it wasn\u2019t along the wisteria-lined streets of Italy but at a Fresno food trailer.<\/p>\n
That night in 2022, Delamora discovered Nuovo Pizza when it was just starting out at Willow and Shepherd avenues. It was so good, he had to take some home to his wife, who isn\u2019t a huge fan of pizza. When she tried it and loved it, Delamora said he knew he stumbled onto something rare.<\/p>\n
That same night, he went to track down the owner, Christian Tufenkjian.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018By the way, your pizza took me straight back to Naples, Italy,\u2019\u201d Delamora says.<\/p>\n
The two hit it off and decided to become business partners. Today, Nuovo Pizza sets up shop at Willow and Shepherd avenues from Wednesdays to Saturdays and has accumulated a loyal following. Delamora says the line sometimes stretches across the entire lot.<\/p>\n
Delamora says there are too few options in Fresno for this style of Neapolitan pizza that uses fresh ingredients, handmade dough and bakes in a wood fired oven. You can easily find places that produce this type of authentic pizza in cities like San Luis Obispo and San Francisco. In Fresno, the pickings are slimmer, he says, especially when it comes to finding a place that lugs around a 3,000 pound oven four days a week.<\/p>\n
Delamora says that the massive oven in the back of the Nuovo trailer offers a unique wood-fired pizza experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo find something here that has a wood fired oven inside a trailer \u2013 it\u2019s hard enough to find restaurants that even have that in itself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Making of Nuovo<\/p>\n
What began as a way to evade boredom during the COVID-19 era has grown into Tufenkjian\u2019s entrepreneurial dream.<\/p>\n
At 21-years-old, Tufenkjian decided to build a wood fired oven in his parents\u2019 backyard with a pile of discarded fire bricks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just staked my corner out in their backyard, and I promised it was gonna add value to the house,\u201d Tufenkjian says. \u201cIt took a lot of convincing and it took a lot of trust from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
After messing around with different recipes and perfecting his idea, Tufenkjian officially launched Nuovo Pizza.<\/p>\n
Four years later, their eyes are fixed on expansion. Nuovo just recently implemented a coffee menu, and they\u2019re currently on the lookout for an espresso machine.<\/p>\n
Tufenkjian says they were set to establish a storefront at the developing complex across the street, but the deal fell apart at the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned a lot from it and that was really cool, and it only strengthened us for the next opportunity that comes our way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He says the original backyard oven is a permanent fixture at his parents\u2019 house, and they still use it for cooking around the holidays.<\/p>\n
Loyal fan base<\/p>\n
If passersby didn\u2019t notice Nuovo from the wafting smell of pizza in the making, they\u2019d probably hear the classic jazz and acoustic music coming from the front of the trailer. Or, the lights dangling down from the tent above the wooden tables.<\/p>\n
Sandra Zanjas and her boyfriend, Matthew Stramvi, come to Nuovo every week for date night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like their pizzas a lot more,\u201d Stramvi says. \u201cThey\u2019re a lot more handcrafted I feel here, and it\u2019s not a super corporate feeling. It\u2019s more of a home style feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zanjas brought up Nuovo\u2019s hospitality, specifically, the warm welcomes they receive from Delamora promptly upon arrival.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe greets you, and he explains the whole menu through and through,\u201d Zanjas says.<\/p>\n
So far, Nuovo has a staff of just four people but a loyal following on an up-and-coming corner in Fresno.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s excited for what Nuovo can be,\u201d Tukenkjian says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jared Delamora remembers the night clearly when he tried the best pizza of his life \u2014 and it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[26,112,114,113,23,25,12095,3454],"class_list":{"0":"post-13420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-fresno","10":"tag-fresno-headlines","11":"tag-fresno-news","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-newsbreak","14":"tag-nuovo-pizza-in-fresno-started-as-backyard-experiment-it-took-a-lot-of-convincing","15":"tag-the-fresno-bee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}