Pizza + Aioli = PIZZAioli!
We hope you brought your appetite to this edition of Palm Beach Stories! We serve up a fun tale about West Palm Beach's newest pizzeria and its subtle nod to a dubious past.
Not your typical pizzeria
I can’t remember how many times I’d ordered pizza from Pizza Mambo before it shuttered in 2020, but it was way more than I’d like to admit. They usually had a weekly special and always delivered it quickly to my house less than a mile away.
What I can remember is my reaction to news that state health inspectors shut Pizza Mambo down that summer after finding a dead 80-pound iguana inside a chest freezer in the pizzeria. It was not pleasant.
I was not wise-cracking “I-guana my pizza shop back!’’ Instead, I struggled to reconcile, as I am sure many others did, the unsettling image of a dead iguana inside my neighborhood pizza shop.
Recounting this bit of history is important in light of the latest news about the space that Pizza Mambo once occupied: A new pizzeria is about to start pumping out pies from the same spot — and it will have its very own iguana, just the kind that won’t attract the attention of state health inspectors.
PIZZAioli opens March 31 on the south end of West Palm Beach across the same plaza from its mothership bakery Aioli, which has legions of loyal customers, including this writer.
I was one of the lucky Aioli regulars invited to attend one of PIZZAioli’s private taste testings in early March. My verdict: The pizza is so delicious, and the new place is so spick-and-span clean, that the old pizza joint will soon be long forgotten.
Still, when I heard last year that Aioli owners Michael and Melanie Hackman were gearing up to make pizza in the former Pizza Mambo space, a nagging question lingered like an elephant (or, in this case, iguana) in the room.
Isn’t it a bit risky to open another pizza joint in the same place where the previous pizza joint once stored a large dead lizard?
That’s the first question I asked Melanie many months ago. She smiled and explained why PIZZAioli will live up to its motto — ”pizza reimagined” — and how the new pizzeria will pay subtle homage to the old one.
No spoiler alerts, but I think you’ll enjoy reading my PIZZAioli story as much as you will enjoy PIZZAioli pizza!
Hurry up, Man Ray!
Speaking of new restaurants, I caught up with Rodney Mayo the other day and asked for an update on when his restaurant Man Ray, a spinoff of his popular Dada restaurant in Delray Beach, might finally open in downtown Lake Worth Beach.
“Soon,’’ he replied.
That was kind of the same answer he gave me last September when I first wrote about his plans for Man Ray. At the time, he said he was aiming for a December opening.
Here we are on the eve of April and Man Ray still ain’t open, although there is one sign of progress. Not a sign, but a mural. A Man Ray mural has gone up on the west side of the eatery at 522 Lucerne Ave., a tease of things to come.
Rodney said his immediate plans are to open a Subculture Coffee shop in downtown Delray Beach. Once that opens (“soon,” he said.), he will focus on getting Man Ray up and running.
There’s island time and there's Rodney time. But knowing his track record for delivering tasty and trendy places, it will be worth the wait.