Ten months ago, the building housing Brick Pizza Co., fronting Wood Street at Unity Park, was about as rough as a building can be: crumbling concrete floors, no roof, entirely open to the elements. Today, that’s a distant memory.

Brick Pizza Co. opened the weekend of Jan. 22, and that opening was anything but “soft”.

“From Thursday to Monday we served 1,200 people,” said owner Jordan Sawyer, who also owns the Bristol Oyster Bar. “We ran out of pizza on Monday.”

Once the staff has a chance to catch its collective breath, Sawyer will be ramping up the operation further; currently open for dinner only and closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, he plans to expand service to seven days a week, lunch and dinner, by spring.

His seasonal menu will change three or four times a year, with a selection of entrees, appetizers, and salads in addition to an assortment of pizzas that includes a special that will change weekly.

Senior staff includes Andy McWilliams, who serves as the Corporate Chef, overseeing both of Sawyer’s establishments. Tom Lyon is the Executive Chef at Brick Pizza Co., while Matt Larish has taken over as Executive Chef at The Oyster Bar. Mike Zito is managing the bar at Brick.

“Most of us are Newport Restaurant Group vets; I did my externship at Hemenways,” said Sawyer, who attended Johnson & Wales for his Restaurant Management degree.

Challenging the menu for attention is the warm and welcoming interior of Brick, conceived and built by Project Manager Barry Lindsey.

“The design was all him,” said Sawyer of Lindsey’s plan. “He used reclaimed wood from the old roof of the original building for all the tables and the bar. Each table is an original work of art.”

“When Jordan brought me on they were taking that roof down and I said ‘Well, we have to use all that wood; bring a bit of Bristol back into it’,” said Lindsey.

In addition to the original roof boards which create a varied and visually interesting design on the bar and each table, the massive trim work from the original roof provides a dramatic backdrop for the bar.
“We built everything offsite,” said Lindsey, “Sixty-five tables, all with three to four layers of two-part epoxy.”

The walls are decorated with reproductions of original photos from the early 20th Century showing Unity Park in the old days, when it was the site of the U.S. Rubber factory. “We were able to scan them and touch them up and then blow them up to make make them larger.”

The brick oven, sited in the open kitchen that takes up much of the north side of the dining room is a Marra Forni; the stone was imported from Italy, and the oven itself was manufactured in Maryland then transported to Bristol. It’s capable of reaching temperatures of 1000 degrees, but Brick cooks their pizzas at 695 degrees, a temperature that finishes a pizza in under two minutes.

Though they had hoped to be open in August, Sawyer is gratified by the reception Brisk is receiving in January, realizing that may not have been the case had he opened in the late summer.

“I think we had so many setbacks in construction, that it just built up so much anticipation, and gave word of mouth more time to get around,” he said. “It’s not a bad problem to have,” he admits, of the crowds enjoyed since opening. “I think it was all kind of a blessing in disguise….Our staff have been stretched thin so getting staffed up here was a little bit easier because in the winter when I shut down the patio at the oyster bar, I normally have to lay off some staff. But since we were opening here, I was able to bring some of them over here. And that helped us step much quicker than we anticipated.”

Though they still hired a lot of people before opening, they are continuing to hire in anticipation of their expanded hours.