Think back to your fondest childhood memories. The dances. The parties. The little league victories. The family dinners. The days when the school lunch ladies were really cooking.
Now, try to visualize what you ate in each of those happy scenes. A whirl of red and gold coalesces in your mind’s eye. It gives form to an image. It’s very faint, at first, but refining increasingly.
Ah. You see it now, plain as day. It is pizza – that uncontested best food of all time since whenever pizza was invented.
“Pizza is a happy place,” said Mark Kaufman, general manager of Pizza Novara. “It always has been for me. And I can tell when our guests share that feeling. Their faces light up the instant they walk into our restaurant.”
Mark has been in his happy place since his very first job; at his father’s buddy’s pizza place, over in Robbinsdale. Once previously an enthusiastic enjoyer of pizza, his early professional experience would set him on the path to becoming a pizza scienziato and artista rolled into one.
As fortune would have it, Mark knows just the two men who can keep him where he likes being most: Pat Woodring, CEO of Nova Restaurant Group (which includes Eden Prairie’s beloved neighborhood hangout Tavern 4&5), and Scott Foster, COO of the same – “a wonderful chef and brilliant mind,” continued Mark. “We all worked together to open Joey Nova’s Pizzeria alongside Hazelwood Tonka Bay in 2006. We sold it three years later, but that ultimately gave way to an opportunity to open our newest pizza concept next to Hazelwood Bloomington in 2022.
“These past four years have been great. You might think being right near the airport would deprive us of regulars, but it’s exactly the opposite. We’ve become the preferred pizza night destination for families all over the Twin Cities, because Minnesotans who know the best way to recover from a return flight always do it right here!”
Enough Background, Already. Get to the PIZZA.
“One of the biggest reasons why I respect Pat and Scott so much is that they respect pizza,” said Mark. “They’re both right behind me on my mission to make the world’s best. To that end, Pat had a secret weapon: a recipe for Connecticut-style pizza that had been preserved since the 1940s.”
Don’t worry. Mark’s not talking about Barbara Bush’s original ultra-secret pizza recipe, which is guarded at Fort Knox and illegal to reproduce. He’s talking about one that was fine-tuned in the state with the highest percentage of Italian ancestry, in the wake of a war that, among other things, put everyone in the mood for really good pizza.
“It combines the three essential elements of pizza brilliantly,” Mark continued. “The dough – a sacred commodity – is made fresh, with high-gluten flour that gives the crust a firm yet elastic consistency, and baked on the flawlessly even conduction of granite. We use a conveyor belt to ensure baking time is perfect to the second. The sauce? Simple, like it should be; just good, ripe Roma tomatoes, water, and salt with a touch of oregano. The cheese? No more complicated. Whole milk mozzarella. Full fat. Full flavor.”
The Novara Deluxe: a tarantella of pepperoni, sausage, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and fresh basil. The Hot Honey: genoa salami and jalapenos, drizzled in feisty bee sauce. The BBQ Chicken: with sharp cheddar and onions, and a zesty [kisses tips of thumb, index finger, and middle finger] – muah – BBQ sauce. These are only an itty-bitty cross section of Pizza Novara’s specialty pies.
“And we’re more than just pizza,” Mark added. “Come try any of our amazing sandwiches, like our Chicken Parmesan which we make from scratch and with our own marinara. We serve baked pastas, such as our Penne Rosa with garlic cream and marinara sauces and spicy sausage. We have wine, liquor, beer, and a wide selection of appetizers to go with them. And if all of that wasn’t enough, stick around for a real malt or milkshake. My favorite is vanilla and fresh strawberries!”
Pizza Novara also serves salad and pizza by the slice, so you can conveniently adhere to or cheat on your diet the next time you are near 8170 26th Avenue S, Bloomington. PizzaNovara.com
"To that end, Pat had a secret weapon: a recipe for Connecticut-style pizza that had been preserved since the 1940s.”
"The sauce? Simple, like it should be; just good, ripe Roma tomatoes, water, and salt with a touch of oregano."