We were able to get some rest over the weekend and went shopping for equipment to go in the bar area at Mozzeria. We are going to make some significant progress this week.

You saw photo of the entrance ramp in our last blog posting. We poured concrete and leveled it to meet the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirement. We had to wait until the concrete was completely dry before asking Michael E. Sharnov and Samuel Reynolds to return to Mozzeria.


Michael and Samuel continued to complete installation of wood flooring on the ramp. Michael said it wasn’t easy to install wood strips on the ramp. It was a good thing Douglas Fir is a softwood as it allowed them to bend each wood strip slightly and apply glue to make sure it adheres to concrete. After a couple of hours later, ta-da! What beautiful-looking wood.


We have our fingers crossed as the building inspector is coming in for the final inspection. We hope the ramp will meet his satisfaction. Please cross your fingers for us too!

Nathan Dingel and Russ Stein have started to build supports for the bar countertop. We just ordered marble slabs and expect them to arrive shortly. I cannot wait to see how the marble slabs look on the counter and against the pizza oven!


Ron Trumble brought over custom-made wood doors from his workplace. The doors are really beautiful. We are proud of Ron's workmanship. Russ had the door frames painted in black to match the exterior facade look.


Ron also brought tabletops that he made for Mozzeria. We love how it looks and we know the red chairs we ordered a while ago will look great with it.


We will share the latest on the chimney situation on Thursday. Tell your friends to sign up and follow our progress at Mozzeria. :)

 

 

 

Sometimes things don’t go as you visualize, plan or expect. We got great comments about the original Mozzeria logo. People said they loved the style, the lettering and how red letters plays off the black background. Some liked the iconic graphic to the right, an abstract resemblance of a glass of wine, a pizza, or even a tabletop pizza stand!

But early on we ran into challenges with this logo whenever we needed to reduce the logo to fit a business card, a newsletter or a webpage. As the iconic graphic is bigger than the text, in reducing the overall logo, the text gets smaller and becomes difficult to read. The thin font begins to disappear in the pool of black.

Inasmuch as we all liked the logo, it just wasn’t practical. Real-life applications of that logo weren’t panning out. We needed to solve this problem!

When we were visualizing what the interior look for Mozzeria should be, we took another look at the logo and realized the colors and font wouldn't come across well on exterior signage. We pondered on what approach to use.

While contemplating the new look, I went through business cards I had collected from restaurants. Patty Foo Hampton, an interior designer also shared some business cards. A few particular cards caught my eye – these designs were clean and simple. I told Patty it was what I wanted for Mozzeria. I loved use of the colors, black and white, and suggested incorporating red as an accent color. You can’t go wrong with classic black and white colors. Patty then incorporated these colors into her design plan for Mozzeria.

David Rosenbaum of Deaf411, Inc. and I then worked together on the new logo design and we came up with this new logo. We are pleased to roll out this new design.


In the meantime, I called the exterior signage company that did signage for the previous tenant and it took several weeks for them to produce new Mozzeria signage. It just arrived! Wow, the name Mozzeria now looks sharp on the new signage. I hope when people drive by, they will notice the new signage. :)

This new logo will begin to make its appearance on Mozzeria.com.

 

 

We have been going back and forth on a flooring issue and it has gotten to the point where I would "scream" if I hear any more issue about it.

Really, it gets ridiculous. Let me tell you what we have been through on the flooring issue alone.

We wanted to give the Mozzeria restaurant space a new and fresh life. The previous restaurant had older reddish ceramic tiles. Our vision for Mozzeria didn't really blend in with these red ceramic tiles. We also had other reasons for removing the ceramic tiles, so we removed all ceramic tiles.

While discussing where to place the pizza oven, we checked what was under the cement board and discovered TWO things: original Douglas fir flooring that was quietly lying under high traffic ceramic tiles for years. Secondly, when Russ checked what was under the Douglas fir flooring, we were surprised to see a crawl space across most of the space. Uh-oh, that wasn't good news, as our pizza oven weighs almost 5,000lbs!

Janet Campbell, our architect called a structural engineer to check underneath the proposed pizza oven area. The structural engineer reported to us that we needed to build posts in the crawl space to support the pizza oven. Ok. This isn't bad, and we have Nathan Dingel for this project.

The structural engineer pointed out that Douglas Fir flooring is actually sub flooring and with San Francisco being on San Andreas fault - in other words, earthquake prone - ceramic tiles wasn’t appropriate due to the weight on the floor.

We went through a limited list of choices on what we could do with our flooring. No polished concrete, hardwood or ceramic tiles. Only a few choices of commercial vinyl sheets are approved. We were wondering about Douglas fir flooring. As it turns out, Douglas fir is considered softwood, not hardwood and we need to be careful when sanding it. The hardwood contractor showed me ‘before and after’ photos of actual Douglas fir and it was truly beautiful.

We hope to tackle the flooring issue soon for everyone's sake.

 

 

 

Yay! I found tomato under my pillow! No, I am kidding. If that was true, my pillow will be stained forever with tomato. :) See the photo above. Yes, that's right. Not the one, SEVERAL different kinds of tomatoes have their purposes. They can be made specifically for the pizza or/and pasta.

What do you see behind the scenes in a restaurant that makes for a great pizza? The secret to perfect pizza are dough, cheese and tomato sauce. We are searching for perfect tomato product.

I’ve been busy trying out different tomato products through contacts made at Pizza Expo, the local San Francisco restaurant scene, following up on suggestions from others in the industry, and some old fashioned research.

Since my trip to Pizza Expo, the tomato fairies have been stopping by my house to deliver tomato products. We have been busy trying out different tomato products and keeping an open mind. There are all sorts of tomatoes - may it be San Marzano tomatoes, those imported from Italy, Italian style tomatoes, or organic tomatoes from California.

Finding vendors is key to the success of Mozzeria. As we sample their products, we have this opportunity to develop great relationships with them. These vendors are a great help when it comes to having questions about the products and recipes.

We are so close to finding the right tomato products for Mozzeria and we cannot wait to have you try our sauces! May the Tomato Fairy thrive?