Our story
A family obsession with char, carried from Naples to Wooster Street to Crown Street.
Since 2016
It started with a grandfather who judged every crust.
Elena Russo grew up in a house where pizza night had rules. The crust had to leopard-spot. The sauce stayed uncooked until the oven touched it. Her grandfather, a baker from Naples, called anything else “bread with toppings,” and he was not smiling.
After years cooking on Wooster Street, Elena found a gutted space on Crown Street with room for one thing that mattered: a real coal oven, built brick by brick to the same design New Haven has used for a century.
Ten years later the room is bigger and the menu is longer, but the rules are still his. Thin, charred, and out of the oven in four minutes, or it does not go out at all.
How we work
A small crew, a hot oven, no shortcuts.
- 01
Dough mixed every morning, fermented 48 hours, never frozen.
- 02
Tomatoes crushed raw, mozzarella pulled in-house, clams delivered Thursdays.
- 03
One oven, one temperature, one person per pie from stretch to slice.
Milestones
Ten years on Crown Street.
2014
Elena Russo stages at two Wooster Street institutions and comes home obsessed with coal.
2016
Fuoco opens on Crown Street with a secondhand mixer, nine tables, and a 90-year-old oven design.
2019
The dining room doubles. The oven stays exactly where it is, because it weighs four tons.
2024
Marco DeLuca, our first dishwasher, becomes head pizzaiolo. The circle of (pizza) life.
