Marc-Aurele Buholzer fell in love with making traditional, chewy, thin-crust Neapolitan pizza 15 years ago — and he’s been honing his skills ever since. He opened Vero in Cleveland Heights in 2012 but recently expanded into the newly empty space next door, allowing him to add a full bar and double the pizzeria’s seating capacity. 12421 Cedar Road,
Cleveland Heights, verocleveland.com
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Pinkies up. Vero has always been a beer-and-wine-only joint, but new beverage director Simon Mastri is ushering the restaurant into its full-bar era. First up: a roster of light, refreshing apertivos like a limoncello-pistachio spritz ($12) and a bellini with orange and carrot juices ($12). “It’s something we’ve been putting a lot of effort into developing,” Buholzer says.
Getting it right. For a decade, Buholzer was the only pizzamaker in the kitchen, meticulously hand-fashioning every pie himself. But Vero’s expansion meant growth behind the scenes, too. “I was still perfecting my craft before I wanted to bring other people into the fold and teach them what I was doing,” he says. He still rolls out every single dough ball, but others now work alongside him to top and bake the pizzas.
Mama’s boy. Sourdough starters are also known as sourdough mothers, and it’s common practice to name them. When Buholzer started his in 2017, he named it after rapper Remy Ma, whose song with Fat Joe, “All the Way Up,” had just come out. “I was training my mother to come all the way up because that’s what [sourdough] mothers do — they rise,” he says. These days, though, he just refers to it as Mother (as in, “I have to go feed my Mother”).
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