Jackleg Pizza Serves Up Deep Dish Delight in Vint Hill

April 12, 2024July 1, 2024 K. Pearson Brown

Jackleg Pizza arrived in Vint Hill in February 2024, much to the delight of Vint Hill and neighboring Brookside community residents who have often lamented that the area had no nearby pizza eatery.

The take-out and delivery restaurant owners formerly operated a sandwich shop in downtown Culpeper and a mobile pizza truck. This will be their second venture of a brick-and-mortar shop, located two doors down from the Old Busthead Brewery, at 7128 Farm Station Road in Vint Hill. The shop serves Chicago tavern-style and Detroit-style pizza. Chicago style pizza has a thinner crust than hand-tossed pizza and is cut into squares rather than traditional triangle slices. Detroit-style pizza has a thicker and crispier crust.

The restaurant is co-owned by Gina Catalano and business partner Nathan Rivas. Catalano had a background in hospitality having worked at The Inn at Little Washington. Rivas has been cooking professionally for several years, from operating a food truck to making pizzas at Far Gohn Brewery.

the pair opened Jacklet in the heart of Culpeper in September 2020. Two years later, though, in August 2022, they closed up shop, as they said they didn’t find a sustainable customer base in Culpeper. They then went on the road via a food truck to serve neo-Neapolitan pizza to area winery and brewery patrons

In Vint Hill, they believe they will have a broader audience and to provide a menu that resonates with pizza foodies.

Patrons can order by phone, online, or in person, or they can use a mobile app to order from a table at the OBH brewery.

So far the shop has mixed reviews. Some patrons have commented that the menu was not what they expected from a pizza shop, as the pizzas are not traditional round pizza pies but thick square-cut pizzas with gourmet toppings like giardiniera (a hot pickled vegetable blend), hot honey, truffle oil and whipped herb ricotta. And just like any new restaurant, the staff is working to get the kinks out of the system, so sometimes partons have waited 20-25 minutes or longer for their pizza, or orders were pushed out too quickly and not fully cooked. Then there’s the wonky loyalty program app that doesn’t always give patrons credit for their orders, so that they can earn points that equal $5 towards a future order, and some of the staff are not even aware they have a loyalty program and are not able to answer any questions about it. Many patrons delight in the inventive pizza menu and they relish the convenience of having pizza delivered to their tables at OBH. One thing all patrons seem to agree on is that its about time Vint Hill had someplace to get pizza in the hood!

Order online at https://order.toasttab.com/online/jackleg-7128-farm-station-road

AN UPDATE FROM JACKLEG:

On June 25, Gina Rivas posted on the eatery’s blog and sent out an email to all of Jackleg subscribers with an update on their business:

tl;dr – we can’t keep up with the volume (yay?), we know the wait times and sell outs are frustrating, changes are coming (new ovens, more staff, dining room, delivery, more Detroits, some bevies), please hang in there while we make them. If you’re interested in who we are, how we came to be here and why the F#%$ we’re out of Detroits all the time – feel free to keep reading.

For those of you that are newer to Jackleg, let us introduce ourselves – We are Nathan and Gina – we have a family of 5, we love feeding people, we love having a place where friends can gather, we really love pizza and we currently find ourselves in a very unexpected position. We opened our first brick and mortar restaurant in 2020 and due to a variety of factors (covid, our inexperience, and a tough building to name just a few) we closed in 2022 just after our 2 year anniversary. We then licked our wounds (and worked on paying our debts) as a mobile pizza kitchen until January of this year.

When we were approached with the possibility of opening this Brick and Mortar location we were knee deep in plans to open a static brewery kitchen and had to do a quick pivot. We opened here with essentially the same model we had built for that project assuming (incorrectly) that most of our business would come from Old Busthead next door. We ran projections based on that assumption and felt that the equipment we had picked out, and the space we were being offered would be perfectly adequate to keep up with volume. We opened the doors 3 weeks later, essentially a pop-up kitchen, and it became rapidly apparent just how incorrect we were in all of our assumptions.

For instance, last week we had to close early one day because, after a 3 hour rush, the ovens had cooled to a point that we could no longer cook pizza. On one hand it’s an amazing problem to have! We’re stoked that you’re here, that you love our food and that we have more orders than we know what to do with – we are so grateful for the warm reception we have received here – but we also know that it has led to some long wait times, early sell outs, and a lot of stress on us and our staff, which we know ultimately leads to a lot of frustration as a customer – so it’s time to make some upgrades. Thank you all so much for patronizing us to the level that we are able to make some much needed improvements to our business – you all are helping us grow this from the ground up and you have no idea how much that means to us.

Over the next few weeks we will be ordering new equipment and bringing on more staff; in the coming months we will be moving the kitchen operation into the back and turning the front into a dining room and bar. We are also making moves to add in house delivery, a *slightly* expanded menu, wine + beer, and cocktails. All of these things will take time and we are committed to rolling things out as slowly as is necessary for them to be consistent. While we want to implement all of the things at once, our primary focus is going to be on increasing our capacity and speed, everything else will come after.

We are a small band of merry men and know that it will inevitably take longer than we hope, so we’re not going to give a concrete timeline until permits and such are fully settled – but please know that during this transition there will be times that you will have a significant wait and days where we have early sell outs – we hate it, but we’d rather be up front about it – this is usually contained to Fridays & Saturdays. We will do our best to communicate these wait times and we are always happy to refund your order if you are unable to wait.