Cuisine
Q+A with Goodfellas Co-owners Alex Coats and Eric Boggs What is your personal favorite pizza? Alex: A plain, which is what New Yorkers call pizza with just cheese. That’s how you can tell a good recipe. If it’s masked with other flavors, you can’t tell the quality of the sauce, the dough and the cheese, which are the basics of pizza. Eric: Chicken and bacon. We make a pie called The Boss, which is chicken bacon and red onion, drizzled with ranch. It’s a winner. What’s your favorite place to dine out in Lexington? We love anywhere local, but one of our favorites is Blue Door Smokehouse. The owners have passion that carries into their food. Jeremy Ashby (AZUR, Brasabana), Cheapside, and Locals are all close friends. It’s good to see everyone’s success. Are there any food trends you’re not a fan of? We have a lot of requests for gluten free dough. Some people don’t understand why we won’t evolve, but you can’t do everything at every establishment. We stick to simple, traditional New York and Italian recipes. Besides pizza, what do you love to eat? Alex: My mom has been baking professionally for 30 years, and I love anything she makes—Italian pastries, Christmas cookies. But my favorite thing that she makes is her white bread. That with a little butter? Fuhgetaboutit. Eric: I’m a sucker for cheeses. I love snacking on a nice salami and gruyere with crackers. What do you do for fun when you’re not working? Drink. [Laughs] We just did a couple of barrel picks, where you hand-select a barrel of bourbon. They roll out five or six and you can taste it directly from the barrel and experience the different variations. If someone told you they wanted to start a restaurant, what would you say? Alex: Work hard and continually educate yourself. It’s taken a lot of trial and error and a lot of sacrifice. We operated out of a 650-square foot restaurant for five years, barely paying ourselves before we decided to take a gamble and open another location. Eric: Be a jack-of-all-trades. We fix computers, plumbing, leaky ceilings, and we even wash dishes. We call ourselves firefighters because we are always putting out fires. Also, never be too big for your job. Our company slogan is “One heartbeat, no tears.”
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April 2017 | TopsInLex.com