User:258/Mozzeria

Mozzeria is a deaf-owned restaurant in San Francisco, California.

Menu
Mozzeria offers Neapolitan pizza, which is cooked in a wood-burning oven with almond wood. The pizza uses Buffalo mozzarella, 00 flour, and Californian plum tomatoes. By its first year, the restaurant was offering the dishes of Japanese pumpkin ravioli, duck pizza, and Mozzeria Bar—a block of mozzarella cheese encrusted in panko. Beverages include wine from California and Italy, local beer, and vintage sodas. It also serves pasta and small plates, the latter inspired by founder Melody's Chinese upbringing.

As of 2016, it offered gourmet toppings that included "Yukon potato and pea sprout, brie and goat cheese, hoisin, coppa, and honey truffle".

Founding
Mozzeria was established in 2011 in San Francisco, California by a Deaf couple, Melody and Russ Stein. It is the first deaf-owned restaurant in San Francisco. The restaurant is located in the Mission District, replacing the shuttered Italian restaurant Il Cantuccio. At the time of founding, Mozzeria was one of the few deaf-owned restaurants around the country.

For founding Mozzeria, Melody studied hospitality management, and she toured Italy in 2010 to take cooking classes and improve her recipes. She learned to make pizza in Rome and pasta in Sorrento and Positano, while Russell practiced making pizzas in their backyard for two years.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that there were two years "of planning, fundraising, real estate bidding wars and the usual construction adventures" before Mozzeria opened.

The restaurant is located in a historical building constructed in 1908, and the Mozzeria founders discovered 100-year-old hardwood floor that was hidden under old tile. They imported from Italy a new Stefano Ferrara wood-burning oven that weighs about 5000 lb. They hired people through the deaf community for refinishing the wooden floor, installing electric and HVAC systems, woodworking, and interior design. Melody said they sought "a combination of modern and vintage styles" in the layout.

Deaf-friendly design
For accessibility, the owners installed abundant lighting to ensure visibility for deaf customers and ensured permanently-activated closed captioning on their big-screen television. They also ensured that the restaurant's emergency lights would be strobe-enabled and that their phone and doorbell systems included light-based alerts. External communications were also made accessible through having customers being able to book reservations online and to call the restaurant through video relay service.

Reception
The San Francisco Chronicle praised Mozzeria's pizza crust "for its flavor, char and chewy texture". Seth Mazow, reviewing for Serious Eats, said, "Mozzeria undeniably makes great Neapolitan pizza," highlighting the crust as "the winning element", being "crispy on the outside, slightly chewy on the inside and not too doughy". Mazow also commended the sauce for balancing "notes of acidity and sweetness well without letting one overpower the other". He applauded most of the topping combinations, though a few did not impress him.

Jonathan Kauffman, reviewing for SF Weekly, said, "Mozzeria is a destination precisely because it's not a destination restaurant. A place where you can drop in with friends and, after spending $25, feel like you've eaten a good meal." Kauffman described the crust, "The centers of the pies are no more than a millimeter or two thick, and the charring is perfect — just enough to leave the pizza a little smoky, but never so concentrated that it tastes bitter. If the crust has a flaw, it's that the dough is a shade too dense, so that the lip doesn't yet develop those high, wild bubbles that give it loft and elegance." The food critic said the pizzas, small plates, and desserts mainly had polish, though it was sometimes lacking.

San Francisco Chronicle's Janny Hu said, "At Mozzeria, the pies might not hit the standards of the city's best, but they aren't far behind." She said of the crust, "Blistered and bubbly in the all right places, the chewy crust becomes almost paper-thin in the middle. The dough also tastes good, which is no small short order. Well salted with the slight tang of fermentation, Mozzeria's version should appeal even to those who normally forsake crust."

In its first year, the restaurant drew deaf diners from all over the world, including Japan, Sweden, Australia, China, Brazil, and Italy.

Owners
Melody and Russell Stein are the owners and operators of Mozzeria.

Melody was born in Hong Kong, where her father ran two restaurants. When her parents learned that their children—Melody and her younger brother—were deaf, they sought out deaf schools. The deaf children briefly went to schools in the Philippines and in Singapore. When Melody was six years old, the family relocated to Northern California in the United States. There, the children attended the California School for the Deaf, Fremont. Melody's father continued his restaurant business, opening a venue at the Rincon Center in San Francisco, California.

Russell was born in New York City. He grew up in NYC as part of a large deaf family, and eating pizza was part of his upbringing. He and Melody went to Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., and in 1995, while they were graduate business administration students, they met at a fraternity party. Russell first went to San Francisco as part of a job with Relay America.

The two married and had two children. They also worked in the US state of South Dakota for a nonprofit for a decade. In December 2006, they moved permanently to San Francisco, where they started a management consulting company. Melody sought to open a restaurant, and Russell encouraged for the restaurant to make pizzas. While Russell advocated for a New York-style pizza restaurant, Melody did not find the style special. The two agreed on Neapolitan pizza for the restaurant.