GILROY
– Two San Martin men with a penchant for wood-fired pizza will
lease the old Fifth Street fire station, where financial success
has eluded four consecutive restaurateurs.
GILROY – Two San Martin men with a penchant for wood-fired pizza will lease the old Fifth Street fire station, where financial success has eluded four consecutive restaurateurs.
Steve Gearing and Lyn Kerby plan to open Happy Dog Pizza Co. inside the historic firehouse on Feb. 1, Super Bowl Sunday. The site most recently was leased by Station 55 restaurant which closed its doors in November.
The restaurant, as Gearing describes it, is a pizza parlor for adults. Of course entire families will be welcome, but it will not have a Chuck E. Cheeze type of feel. Instead, wood-fired California-style pizzas and other moderately priced gourmet foods will be the norm here.
“This is the place to bring a family or a date without killing your pocketbook,” Gearing said. “The 20-somethings will appreciate this place, families will want to come here and it will appeal to the Eagle Ridge folks, too.”
Gearing said a wood-fired oven, which will bake everything from traditional style pizza to oysters, is being imported from Italy and soon will be installed in the restaurant. Gearing said he and his partner plan to use the upstairs portion of the firehouse for live music in the near future.
Station 55 restaurant opened in summer 2002 after an extensive remodel of the historic firehouse location. However, the covered-patio for leisurely outdoor dining did little to attract new and regular customers.
After owners Koosha Saii and Hassan Iravani didn’t see their business venture pay off, they put the restaurant up for sale and called Gilroy’s downtown the worst in the Bay Area. Before Saii and Iravani restored the Station 55 name, the previous owners had called it Classico Ristorante.
Gearing says things will be different for Happy Dog.
“We believe there is a gap in the marketplace for a reasonably-priced, casual and fun place that does gourmet food,” Gearing said. “I was a customer of Station 55 and Classico (Ristorante). It was great food, but it was a fine dining experience. It took two hours to have a meal and it was expensive enough to make you think, ‘Hey, I can only do this once about once a year.’ ”
Gearing said both he and Kerby have opened restaurants before, but he would not say where. This is the first time the two are opening a restaurant together.
