Meet John Araujo and Matt Nobile of Bella Gusto Urban Pizzeria in East Valley

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Araujo and Matt Nobile.

John and Matt, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Matt and I first met back in 2010 while working at Dallas Cowboys Stadium. Matt moved to Dallas after working in Vegas for 7 years at Bobby Flay’s, Mesa Grill and Mario Batali’s, Carnevino where he was the sous chef for both and helped run and operate multimillion dollar operations. After arriving at Cowboys Stadium, he implemented the first large scale charcuterie program at the stadium and also helped plan suite menu food and distribution. Not to mention creating and executing special coursed dinners for several high profile celebrities. After a year and a half working together at the Stadium, I decided to take an opportunity as a corporate Research and Development Sous chef for Romano’s Mac Grill, which was headquartered in Dallas, TX. There, I was involved in the overall strategy, menu development and recipe implementation for the brand. After the company sold and moved to Houston, I decided to stay in Dallas and work with a now top 50 pizzeria in the country, Cane Rosso. There I helped open five new locations with them and ultimately hone my skills in authentic pizza napoletana.

All this brings us to where we are today. In the Fall of 2014, Matt came to me with a rough draft of a business plan that he had been putting together the past couple of years. He figured with the two of our knowledge, experience, work ethic and friendship, that we could take this idea and make it a reality. After countless hours of brainstorming and taste testing, we read that the PHX area was going to be #1 for restaurant growth for the next ten years. Having quite a bit of family and friends out here, we decided to listen to them and came out here in March of 2015 to do some market research and see what we could find out about the Valley. We discovered that there was serious potential out here and as soon as we got back to Texas, we started working with local PHX realtors to help us find the right location that worked for us. When the time arrived we packed everything we owned, along with our dream and made the move halfway across the country to open what is now Bella Gusto Urban Pizzeria. Having built this place practically from the ground up, without any big investors or outside influence, we are proud to be in Chandler and proud to be serving authentic Italian cuisine and Neapolitan pizza to all of our awesome guests!

Has it been a smooth road?
Being from another state and not necessarily knowing how things work in the Valley(seasonality for one), it was a bit of a learning curve for us the first year. Finding the right location that was the “best bang for our buck” was also a challenge seeing as we did not seek, nor want any large investors in that regard. With that being said, we struggled for about a year before we started to build a loyal clientele base but we are happy where we landed and happy with the way things are headed. It has been quite a ride to say the least.

Please tell us more about your business.
Bella Gusto is an independent, authentic Neapolitan pizzeria that specializes in rustic, hand made Italian food such as our fresh pasta dishes and VPN style pizza napoletana. We are proud to offer our guests a different and unique experience when it comes to Italian food. We pride ourselves in making everything we possibly can in house, by hand, including all of our pasta, fresh mozzarella and burrata. We offer a curated selection of mostly imported Italian wines along with our rotating craft beer handles and industry first, cello flight. Of course, we had to bring a little bit of Texas with us so you will find little nuances of that around the restaurant such as Shiner Bock on tap and Lone Star beer.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
The sense of community among everyone although most of the residents out here seem to have originally been from other parts of the country is pretty amazing. It’s fun to meet and experience other people that are either native of AZ or moved here years ago and listen to them talk about how things are expanding so quickly out here. Other than that, the only thing to dislike is that the summers out here are pretty miserable. It’s hot and humid in Texas too but we rarely, if ever see temperatures over 100 degrees for so many consecutive days. Needless to say, we are slowly adjusting.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1964 N Alma School Rd, ste 1
• Website: www.bellagustoaz.com
• Phone: 4806964455
• Email: info@bellagustoaz.com
• Instagram: bellagustoaz
• Facebook: Bella Gusto Urban Pizzeria
• Other: Bella Gusto Urban Pizzeria

Image Credit:
Christopher Matsuno, Patherine Charoenmins

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