After almost three years in Montpelier, Dave Penzo has brought his family-run business, Penzo Pizza, home to the town where he started it as a food truck in 2021. The pizzeria closed at the Inn at Montpelier on November 1 and opened at 3 Maple Street in Essex Junction in early December.
The new counter-service restaurant, with about 20 seats, was formerly a location of Nomad Coffee. There, Penzo, 64, and his two sons, Luke, 21, and Tyler, 24, make Neapolitan-style pizza in an oven imported from Italy. He said his third son, Max, 25, may soon join the crew.
Penzo said he’s “done a million things.” Those include being the drummer for Boston-area alternative-rock band Tribe, which released two albums with Slash Records/Warner Bros. Records. Penzo got into cooking in the early ’90s after the band started to “fall apart,” he said.
Penzo Pizza established its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in early 2023 at 147 Main Street in Montpelier, where the family moved from Essex Junction to run the business. The 120-seat venue offered table service with a full bar and large menu that expanded beyond pizza to appetizers, pastas and desserts.
“We gave that a shot for three years,” Penzo said, noting that challenges with flooding “didn’t help.” The decision to return to Essex Junction was partly about coming home and partly about scaling back, he said: “It was time to refocus on what we did best: pizza.”
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!