Linda Falkenstein
A person putting toppings on pizza and a pizza oven.
The handmade oven is made especially for Neapolitan-style pies.
The former Sally K’s Salon, a beauty shop next to Lost Lakes Tattoo at 521 N. Sherman Ave. near the corner of Commercial Avenue, is now remodeled. It opened Feb. 2 as It’s Good For You Pizza.
It’s a project from Alessandro Monachello and Chris Guglielmo, who started the business with a mobile pizza oven in 2016, catering and selling pizza at the Northside Farmers’ Market and other events.
The new brick and mortar location boasts a beautiful tiled wood-burning oven handmade by Manna Forni in Naples, Italy, designed especially for baking Neapolitan-style pizzas at over 800 degrees.
While the new restaurant has several tables for two, it’s not yet open for indoor dining. Come summer, there will be patio seating out back.
Right now, it’s takeout-only, with a menu of five basic 12-inch pies and three special pies, which will change up from time to time. Tomato sauce is housemade as is the sausage for the Salsiccia; there’s also pepperoni, mushroom, margherita, and a calabrese made with Calabrian sausage. Recent specials included an eggplant pie, a Sicilian street pizza and a Neapolitan calzone. Diners can also mix and match with a few added ingredients including bell pepper, anchovies and kalamata olives.
Linda Falkenstein
A pepperoni pizza
A pepperoni pie fresh out of the oven.
Pizzas come uncut; staffers say that keeps the pie crisper and helps if you need to give it a bit of a reheat at home. A recent order of a margherita and an eggplant special survived a ten-minute car ride with no ill effects and did not last, at this reporter’s home, long enough to need a reheat.
House and caesar salads round out the menu and for dessert, there’s butterscotch budino. It is the beloved pudding recipe from downtown’s Osteria Papavero, where Monachello used to work.
It’s currently still undecided whether It’s Good For You will return to the Northside Farmers’ Market for the season, in part depending on if it can find enough staff.
The shop currently has no signage facing the street, but there is a parking lot behind Lost Lakes Tattoo; enter the lot from Commercial Avenue.
It’s Good for You is open for takeout only Thursday-Saturday from 5-9 p.m.
