Michael Hanna
You’ve likely read countless “pandemic pivot” stories over the past year — about recently unemployed people who’ve carved out a new path, trying to turn the moldy, desiccated lemon of the COVID-19 era into something at least resembling lemonade. What chef Michael Hanna has accomplished since the virus ground the restaurant industry to a near halt last year might be better described as a pandemic pole vault.
Hanna moved to Nashville from his native Memphis about six years ago, and — before COVID-19 hit town, anyway — he’d had a good run, including stints at The Catbird Seat (under Ryan Poli), Urban Cowboy’s Public House and Philip Krajeck’s two restaurants, Rolf and Daughters, and Folk. His most recent gig was at Pastaria, but as pandemic restrictions strangled the restaurant industry, Hanna — like throngs of his fellow hospitality workers — was laid off. Suddenly out of work and facing grim employment prospects, he started plotting his next move.
“I had been around pizza a lot,” says Hanna, who has grandparents of Sicilian descent on both sides of his family. “I just started thinking, ‘I want to cook food that is familiar for everyone but at the same time creative enough to keep me on my toes.’ … I landed on what is called sfincione-style pizza because I remember eating it as a child. I started falling in love with doughs and bread and stuff as I got older, and I started just doing it on my own time.”
What makes sfincione unique is the crust — focaccia, an airy bread that gives the pizza a lightness that belies the significant thickness of the pie. (Fear not, it’s still plenty filling.)
After being out of work for a couple weeks, Hanna started churning out sfincione from his Inglewood home. “Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights and Sundays I’d have lines of cars coming, waiting down the road,” he says. “Everybody figured out I was selling pizzas, and they started getting in on the action.”
As excited as Hanna was by the enthusiastic response, it soon became clear that running the business out of his home kitchen wasn’t viable. “We were crushing about 15 pizzas a night out of my house,” he says. “They’re bigger. Neapolitan style, your average dough ball is going to weigh 250 grams. Mine was 800. Took up a lot of fridge space, there’s dough everywhere.”
Within a couple months, Hanna had secured some kitchen space at Hunters Station, where he’d bring out orders to customers through a side door near the back of the building. He named his business St. Vito Focacciaria, a nod to one sfincione origin story that credits the nuns of the San Vito monastery in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, with the dish’s creation several centuries ago.
After a few months at Hunters Station, it became clear St. Vito was outgrowing that kitchen space, which Hanna was sharing with The Grilled Cheeserie. On Feb. 10, St. Vito reopened in Five Points’ Vandyke Bed and Beverage. In addition to serving the Vandyke bar patrons, St. Vito is offering takeout.
While Hanna fine-tunes his new setup at Vandyke, he’s keeping things simple, offering three sfincione options, occasional specials and a dessert. He plans to expand the menu in March. Two sfincione will be fixtures: the Classic Vito and the potato. The Classic Vito features fontina (studded into the raw dough), mozzarella, a simple and bright milled tomato sauce, fresh oregano and seasoned breadcrumbs. It’s a deeply satisfying balance of textures (gooey cheese, crusty edges and soft, airy dough underneath) and flavors (salty, sweet, acidic, herbal). At $28, it was enough for my wife and I to have three meals each — we don’t eat huge portions, but even those with larger appetites can expect to get four meals out of one pie. (He sells slices too.)
We loved the Classic Vito and will be ordering it again, but the potato sfincione — despite its humble name — was downright revelatory. Taleggio and fontina cheese and bits of salty roasted russet potato are embedded in the dough, and the pie is topped with a potato cream sauce, breadcrumbs and what Hanna calls “summer flake” — his blend of six different chili peppers from Rocky Glade Farm in Eagleville, Tenn., and crispy garlic, Italian herbs, salt and smoked paprika. It’s a spectacular pizza.
A third sfincione selection will rotate on the menu. For now, it’s a smoked-eggplant version, and it’s a formidable entry too, with a deep umami flavor.
Buzz about St. Vito is growing. Chicago food writer Steve Dolinsky — winner of 13 James Beard Awards for his TV, radio and podcast work — featured Hanna on the Feb. 5 episode of his podcast Pizza City USA. Here’s Dolinsky’s take: “You know, I’m always careful about grand pronouncements, and saying, ‘This will change your life.’ But this pizza could change your life. I think it changed mine, actually.” And Hanna says he’s thrilled to have local pizza luminaries such as City House’s Tandy Wilson and Nicky’s Coal Fired’s Tony and Caroline Galzin among his early customers.
And you know those scraps of uneaten pizza crust that so often wind up in the garbage? That’s much less likely with a St. Vito pie, because Hanna’s focaccia is so good. “I’ve had this dough recipe in my back pocket for years,” he says. “It’s actually a Spanish ciabatta dough … naturally fermented, really high hydration.” He plans to sell plain focaccia too.
Pop-up no more, the favorite sfincione pizza slinger will have a brick-and-mortar restaurant
Though the sfincione is the star of the show at St. Vito, Hanna offers other Italian specialties from time to time. In fact, what is easily my most memorable pandemic-era meal came courtesy of St. Vito, and it didn’t involve sfincione. I first tasted Hanna’s food after I picked up his Christmas Eve special, braciole. A traditional Italian holiday meal, braciole features thinly pounded beef spiraled around a seasoned filling, then sliced into rounds. I ordered the dinner for two, which included four generous slices of braciole, a hearty gravy, delicious caponata, creamy polenta and a delightful tiramisu cheesecake — all for $35, which was a truly remarkable deal, given that I got four generous (and exceptional) meals out of it. Hanna says the braciole may come back for Christmas, and he’s pondering offering a similar dish with rolled lamb for Easter. And a porchetta (rolled pork) is likely coming even sooner.
Another St. Vito special that knocked my socks off was the timballo di anelletti, which is essentially a baked pasta pie. For his version, Hanna used Sketti-O’s — inspired by a popular canned food item, as you might have guessed — from local pasta maker and 2020 Best of Nashville winner Mr. Aaron’s Goods. (“I want to use as much local product and support local people as much as possible,” says Hanna, who also cites Kathleen Cotter’s Bloomy Rind and the aforementioned Rocky Glade Farm among his favorite Nashville purveyors.) Both the braciole and timballo were as photogenic as they were delicious — check out St. Vito’s drool-worthy Instagram account (@st.vito_focacciaria),
For now, St. Vito Focacciaria is open Wednesday through Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. (until 9 p.m. for takeout) and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. The Vandyke bar is a comfortable, relaxed space, and the patio out back should be delightful when spring weather returns. In mid-March, Hanna hopes to start offering brunch service on Sundays.
