Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo famously love pizza. But if those crime-fighting turtles stopped battling the Shredder long enough to stop at Pizzeria Corinna in Essex, they’d love the sandwiches, too.
Modeled on pizzerias of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shane Corbett’s pizza shop opened in the Essex Towne Marketplace off Susie Wilson Road on February 20. The classic menu is small but mighty: seven pizzas, ranging from a simple red-sauced tomato pie to one topped with hot honey and arugula; garden, Greek and kale Caesar salads; chips; chocolate-chip cookies; and sandwiches.
All but one of those sandwiches are named in honor of characters from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, which started as a comic book series in 1984 and got its first animated TV adaptation in 1987. Pizzeria Corinna’s odes to the green guys are variations on classic Italian subs, piled high with meats such as prosciutto, hot capicola, sweet soppressata, salami, pepperoni and bourbon ham.
The shop’s vegetarian sandwich is the only non-ninja outlier: It’s named for an inside joke involving Corbett’s friend Andrew Rowan, who helps out a couple nights a week. During a conversation about a certain New Jersey sub chain, Rowan said he’d had a “not so good vegetarian sandwich there,” Corbett recalled. “I told him, ‘They make meat sandwiches. You should choose better,’” he continued with a laugh. The resulting Andrew Hates Mike ($9.99 small, $16.99 large), with hummus, pistachio, loads of veggies, and zings of acid from lemon and banana pepper, is a veggie option Rowan fully endorses.
Back on theme, the Shredder ($8.99/$14.99) is as spicy as the comic-turned-cartoon’s supervillain, with Cajun turkey, hot cappy ham and hot pepper relish. The roast-beef-and-cheddar Casey Jones ($12.99/$20.99) is a double reference, both to TMNT’s hockey stick-wielding vigilante and the folk-hero railroad engineer immortalized by the Grateful Dead.
A photo of the Dead was the first thing Corbett, 43, hung up when he took over the long-empty Wicked Wings space on Halloween. (Unlike its predecessor, Pizzeria Corinna doesn’t serve wine or beer; the shopping center’s rules now prohibit booze consumption on premises, Corbett said.) The Essex resident had worked in restaurants for several decades before taking a break to sell insurance. His family and friends helped bring the 800-square-foot space back to life; among them was David Quintana, the former owner of Burlington’s Despacito, from whom Corbett bought his pizza oven.
A couple of months in, Pizzeria Corinna, named for Corbett’s young daughter, has caught on with locals and food industry folks alike, he said. Regulars roll into the shop mostly for slices at lunch and whole pies for dinner — especially on Fridays. Sandwiches are popular all day long.
Baker Olivia Clemons now makes 60 loaves of seeded semolina bread per day — yielding 70 or 80 sandwiches between halves and wholes, Corbett said. Customers can snap up rare leftover rolls the next day ($3 for three).
Clemons has been running her central Vermont small-batch sourdough biz, Oh Live Bakery, for the past year. Before that, the self-taught baker focused on bagels. Living in Colorado, Clemons missed the East Coast ones she’d grown up with; plus, she’d quit drinking and “needed an activity,” she said. She found a recipe for two bagels: one each for herself and her boyfriend, which she made every night.
Clemons and Corbett are old friends. While he was building his team, he called her and “asked her if she wanted to bake in a bread oven and have a mixer and a proofer,” Corbett recalled.
The sub rolls Clemons makes for Pizzeria Corinna are a departure from the naturally leavened loaves she sells at the Barre Farmers Market, since they feature yeast rather than sourdough. She used to bake yeasted cinnamon rolls with her mom when she was a kid, but it had been a while, she said, and the processes are completely different.
Corbett had a vision for his shop’s rolls based on the subs of Italian delis in New York and New Jersey. The recipe is still a work in progress, Clemons said. But two months in, the already excellent rolls are half their original weight. Along with the pizza dough she preps, each batch of bread dough ferments for two full days in the fridge. Then, the long, skinny semolina rolls are coated in sesame seeds and baked golden brown — crusty on the outside, light and fluffy inside.
To preserve that texture, Corbett, sandwich expert Mike Salvo and the kitchen team have a rule: “Nothing wet on the bread.”
While mayo (used in one sandwich) does go directly on the rolls, staff keep condiments such as oil and vinegar, pepper relish, and pesto tucked between the layers, keeping things from getting soggy.
I got my first Pizzeria Corinna sandwich — the Michelangelo ($10.99/$18.99) — not long after the restaurant opened, and accidentally started eating without taking the time to admire its thoughtful layering.
I did notice that it was completely loaded. The Pizzeria Corinna team weighs each sub’s meats for consistency, and a mutant-worthy mound of prosciutto and hot soppressata was piled on the bread with fresh mozzarella, eggplant caponata, arugula and balsamic glaze. It was a little messy, as all good sandwiches are, but structurally sound and a perfect balance of sweet and savory, thanks to the caponata and the balsamic. The “small” version was more than I needed for lunch.
I’m more of an April O’Neil, but if I were a Ninja Turtle, I would have let out a “Cowabunga.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Turtle Power | In Essex, Pizzeria Corinna’s Italian subs are worth shelling out for”
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