To anyone still lamenting the shuttering of Vytauras Sasnauskas's Americano in Bratenahl and the end of his weekly pizza café, a new day will soon dawn for handcrafted pizza here on the North Coast. Sasnauskas has partnered with Paulius Nasvytis of the legendary Velvet Tango Room and food writer Claudia Young to deliver unto us Citizen Pie, 15710 Waterloo Road, which is scheduled to open later this month.

The star of the menu will of course be Sasnauskas's Neapolitan pie, which will be baked in an Italian Stefano Ferrara oven.

"It is a beautiful thing," says Young of the imported wood-fired oven. "It's like a living breathing animal." And its use requires a certain finesse. To wit, the slow curing process of bringing the oven up to its 900 degree Fahrenheit operating temperature started last week.

"This is the pizza of Naples," says Young. "For us, it's the only kind of pizza we want to eat, the only kind of pizza we want to do."

The rest of the menu is still tentative, but will include calzones, specials, beer, wine, Tartufo (an Italian ice cream desert) and ricotta cheesecake, the recipe for which Young has been laboring over for months.

While hours for Citizen Pie have not yet been set, Young says the shop will be open for lunch and dinner. The space seats 22 amid a window counter, community table and pizza bar. Including the kitchen, it's just a scant 875 square feet.

"The place is freaking tiny," says Young, adding the Citizen Pie will employ three, including chef Sasnauskas. Scalish Construction is the contractor on the project.

The components of the new pizzeria have been a long time in the making. Young and Nasvytis, a couple, have been friends with Sasnauskas and his wife for years. Both Nasvytis and Sasnauskas are Lithuanian. Lastly, Nasvytis grew up in Collinwood.
 
"We love that neighborhood," says Young. "We have put in that beautiful oven, which is definitely making a commitment in Waterloo."

The project was kindled in earnest earlier this year when Young had a conversation with area restaurateur Alan Glazen, who suggested the venture.

"I looked at Paulius and said, 'Do you want to open up a pizza shop with Vytauras in Waterloo?'" recalls Young, "And he said, 'Sure. Why not?' and we just did."

So began the fire, fueled by a passion for exceptional food.

"What we're bringing is a vey high-end product. We care insanely about every ingredient," says Young, "We take it so seriously, but in the same breath: it's pizza. Pizza is flour, water, salt, a tiny bit of starter or yeast (we use starter), sauce, mozzarella and toppings."

"We're not topping pizzas with anything so high-end that it's inaccessible to people in the neighborhood. It's pizza for the people," she says, noting that Citizen Pie's iconic logo evokes solidarity. To that end, Young has filled the interior with images of people she considers to be revolutionary. Try: Gandhi, Hitchcock, Jesus, the Beatles, Picasso and Steve Jobs.

"A lot of thought and consideration has gone into the whole vibe and the whole feeling," says Young—and a whole lot of mutual respect.

"Vytauras is like a food savant," she says. "I would never have done anything like this unless I thought we could do it at highest level imaginable and that's what we got when we partnered with Vytauras.

"He has no ego. It's not about any of that," says Young. "He's just all about the food."