Ragazza, Gialina's Offshoot on Divis, Eying Gas Pizza Oven

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Gialina's Atomica pizza.

​Wood, shmood, asserts Gialina Pizzeria's Sharon Ardiana, who's preparing to install a gas-fired Wood Stone oven in her second restaurant, Ragazza. It's not about what lights your fire, it's about how thick your (oven) walls are. "People want the sexiness of the wood-fired oven, but pizzas are only in there a couple of minutes," she says. "As soon as the pizza goes in [the new] oven, it gets shoulders. That's all due to the heat and the heavier hearth."

Ardiana's excited about the possibilities the larger, quicker-cooking oven gives her new restaurant, which is tentatively scheduled to open at 311 Divisadero in early September. Named Ragazza, it celebrates the cooking of the women of her family, and Ardiana plans to again cover the walls with family photographs.

"We'll have great salads, like at Gialina," she says, "and everything served family style, in Heath bowls. I'll have enough room in the oven to do a couple of baked pastas, a couple of roasted things, and other entrees I can't do at Gialina because that oven is always crammed with pizzas." She's also hoping to have enough space for a walk-in refrigerator, something she doesn't have in the Glen Park restaurant. 

She's currently readying Ragazza for the buildout. The dining room, with seating for 43, won't be much larger than the one at Gialina. She will have access to the back garden, courtesy of the Metro Hotel, her landlord. "Every time I walk back there, it catches my breath," she says. In the beginning, diners will be able to have drinks in the garden while they wait for a table, but after Ragazza gets going, Ardiana may serve dinner there as well.