The hottest ticket in town on Monday, April 6, arrived unannounced—thessoft opening of the newest restaurant in Healdsburg, Acre Pizza.
The last time so much local attention focused on the globally popular quick dinner occurred in August 2022, when JC-district favorite Mambo’s opened in the Vineyard Plaza. It joined a comfortable cadre of local pizzerias, from casual (Round Table) to more bespoke (Pizzando).
Acre, however, is a long-anticipated addition to the growing Mill Street Row collection of businesses spawned by the renovation of the old Mill Street Antiques collective space at 44-B Mill St. Just a few short months ago Quail & Condor opened its expansive new bakery café at 44-J Mill St., and now it will take just a few steps around the corner to get from café to pizza at Acre.
That alone lends the newest pizza place in town certain status—and it’s only the fourth Acre in the county, joining pizzerias in Petaluma, Cotati and Sebastopol’s Barlow. The name might be familiar to coffee lovers, as Acre Coffee at one time had six local coffee houses in the county and one in San Francisco.
“But when Covid came, we added pizza to two locations and closed the others down,” said Steve DeCosse, co-owner of the small chain with his wife, Sandra. “We kept making the pizza, and it became busy because everybody could do takeout.”
They took playful advantage of Covid concerns, too, giving away a free roll of toilet paper with each pizza.
The jump from coffee to pizza may not sound like a natural progression, but both commodities are common and premiere, the sort of products that many consumers enjoy frequently, and rely on quality and service to retain brand loyalty.
Each style of pizza has its adherents, and while DeCosse is a bit reluctant to narrow down his approach to the dish, some common themes emerge. The crust is a sourdough that ferments for 72 hours. Central Milling flour is used. “And sourcing’s very important. We carry Sonoma County meats and local produce, so we have a little bit of elevated nuance to it, but we try to keep it affordable,” he said. It’s closer to a traditional New York pizza than any other style, though.
Acre also uses Pizza Master electric ovens, which keep the temperature constant on top and bottom. And DeCosse is a big advocate of pre-roasting the vegetables before they’re put on the pizza to go in the oven. This, he insists, helps to avoid the dreaded “floppy pizza.”
“We pre-roast all the veggies on the pizza, so you don’t get any of that moisture,” he said. “You bring out the flavor when you roast a bell pepper or a mushroom or broccoli or anything. You get rid of the moisture, which waters the pizza down and slows down the cooking. And then you get that pop of flavor, that umami.”
Acre Pizza focuses its menu on slices, rather than whole pies, and four to six pizzas are usually ready for serving by the slice, each slice being a full quarter of a 16-inch pizza. The slices are courteously cut in half for more reasonable handling.
For its first day, veterans from other locations staffed the Healdsburg Acre kitchen to help work out the kinks of production and service.
Monday’s “soft open” hours were posted as 3-6pm on the sign outside, though after about a week they’ll change to 11:30am to 8pm, and until 9pm on weekends.
On the dot as if by magic, two families entered to grab a slice, a pie or both. Justin Lee, wife Susan and daughter Calia, from Los Altos, knew Acre from its Sebastopol location at the Barlow, where they heard a new branch was opening in Healdsburg.
David and Lena Martinez, of Lincoln (Placer County) and all seven of their children, took a table and ordered a range of slices. They were headed to Hendy Woods, in Mendocino, on a family camping trip, but dropped by when they saw the signs.
Both families were intrigued to learn they were the first to patronize the new Acre Pizza in Healdsburg—but only mildly so. The point, after all, was the pizza.
