LOGAN SQUARE — A pizzeria with two imported wood fired ovens is set to open in Logan Square next month.
The highly-anticipated Paulie Gee's will be the first Chicago location of the Brooklyn-based shop when it opens on Milwaukee Avenue.
The restaurant, 2451 N. Milwaukee Ave., will feature a full bar and seats for about 100 people.
The initial menu features 17 regular pizzas and six vegan pizzas, all of which use Paulie Gee's dough and sauce recipes.
Once the restaurant is fully operational, about half the menu will be Paulie Gee creations and half will be in-house recipes, according to franchise owner and operator Derrick Tung.
Paulie Gee's is awaiting its liquor license while completing some final renovations to the interior of the space and is hoping for a June opening.
Tung previously ran a mobile pizza operation called Za Pi, serving up wood-fired pizzas out of an oven he built on a trailer.
Tung is following in the footsteps of Paulie Giannone, who opened his first restaurant in Brooklyn in 2010 at the age of 56 after working in the tech industry for much of his earlier life.
Like Giannone, Tung became a pizza fanatic while holding down his day job as a health care consultant.
After eating a Neapolitan-style pie at Pizzeria Neo with his wife, Tung decided he needed to get into the pizza game.
"That kind of kicked off my obsession," the 36-year-old said.
In 2012 Tung said he convinced his wife to allow him to build a wood fired oven on a trailer, instead of in their backyard in suburban Woodridge, and turn it into a mobile business making pizzas at farmers markets and private events on weekends.
"At some point I was like 'I'm doing health care consulting, telling hospitals where to fire people, how to save money, blah blah,' which is OK, but on the weekends I was serving up pizzas to people and making them happy," Tung said. "I thought 'This is far more fun, let me see if I can make this into a career.' "
So he emailed three pizza makers from around the country who followed a similar mid-life career move and Giannone replied within 20 minutes.
"I wanted someone who did a mid-career change so they could understand what I was going through," Tung said.
Tung said the elder pizza man mentored him over the phone and via email, and the two visited each other over the past two years.
Giannone had been looking for a Chicago location with Tung for more than two years, they finally settled on Logan Square in the former Candela Latin Cuisine & Bar.
Tung, a self-taught pizza man, estimated that he made between 400 and 500 pizzas in his home oven before building the wood-burning oven on wheels that launched Za Pi.
"My first couple looked like amoebas," he said. "I wasn’t letting the dough proof enough or rise enough but you learn. It’s like everything in life, you do it enough times and you learn and you slowly improve and improve and get better and better.”
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