3 Wooden Pizza & Pub opens new cafe in southwest Boise

Biting into a incredibly hot slice of Neapolitan pizza pulled from his brother’s yard brick oven, Carlos Duncan experienced a realization.

“I imagined, ‘This pizza is improved than something I could get in any cafe in Boise,’ ” he remembers. “It’s like, ‘Man, if I could have that every working day … .’ ”

That’s in which the notion for 3 Wood Pizza & Pub, 10497 W. Lake Hazel Road, commenced.

But not in which it finished.

Before Carlos, 49, and Richard, 51, opened their community hangout in late December, the duo traveled to Staten Island previous summer season. They spent a 7 days performing in New York’s to start with brick-oven pizzeria, Carlos Duncan states. They uncovered Aged Environment-fashion pizza-earning at — effectively, he prefers not to say.

Much too quite a few precious strategies, he points out by telephone. Their training arrived by the exact channel in which they acquired 3 Wood’s “amazing, unique brick oven from Italy,” Duncan suggests.

“You discover to make the dough, you discover to make the sauces,” he suggests. “Many of the recipes. And some of the administration areas of it.”

Sold in 12-inch — and, eventually, 16-inch — sizes, 3 Wooden pies are all about the crust. And sauce. “The crust is a large offer,” Duncan claims. Dough is proofed for a few days, as the restaurant touts on its Facebook website page. The sauce is hand-milled from vine-ripened plum tomatoes.

It is not New York-fashion pizza that begs you to fold it. “It’s not like a Manhattan-type thin crust where you go and you acquire your slice on the street,” Duncan claims. “It’s extra like a classic Brooklyn design. It has a great, chewy bite with a crunch on the complete.

“It’s definitely gentle. Which is the place we’re having compliments — that and the sauce. But it is setting up with just an unbelievable bread foundation and building from there.”

Duncan endorses the Pepperoni Lovers ($11.99), “so people today can get a style of that cup and char.” The parts of sizzling, curling pepperoni develop “nice bacon crisps about the edges in the oven.”

Okay, that or the Typical Margherita ($9.99), “which exhibits off everything.”

“The margherita is fantastic,” he suggests. “It demonstrates off our model. We never load it up with shredded cheese. We basically do a sliced cheese and permit it marry with the sauce on the pizza in the oven. Fewer is far more. Simplicity. It’s just straightforward perfection.”

3 Wood also sells sandwiches and salads. A meatball and marinara sandwich, or a vintage Italian Godfather, each and every cost all around $8.99 for a 6-incher. Add a cup of soup for $2.50. The sandwiches are a “generous, hefty” lunch, Duncan provides. “There’s loads of protein on there to leave you happy.”

Oh, and in case you had been asking yourself? Yes, there is gluten-free pizza on the menu, which comes in a 10-inch dimensions. And, yes, there are 14 beers on tap — before long to be 18. “By the end of COVID, we hope to have all 24 jogging,” Duncan claims. And, indeed, takeout pizza is readily available.

But at 3,000 sq. feet, 3 Wooden has an occupancy load of 148 folks. Of class, that is when the coronavirus pandemic is about. The cafe also has a patio — launching, most possible, in April, when the Duncans hope to hold an formal grand opening celebration.

The Idaho brothers grew up in Twin Falls before winding up in Boise. The day after he turned 19, Carlos started off tending bar at Cafe Ole in Twin Falls, he says, before embarking on a lifestyle in the restaurant field. Richard wound up with a occupation at Micron.

Now the brothers are alongside one another each and every working day at 3 Wood, named soon after the point they both use a 3-wooden off the tee in golf.

“Chefs? Head janitors? You identify it. We are it. We’re doing all of it,” Carlos Duncan states. That features transforming the southwest Boise place, formerly a Garbanzo’s Pizza.

The brothers picked up their hammers in November 2019. And they recruited relations.

“I imply, Mother was in there, my nieces have been in in this article portray and executing work. It was a labor of adore from the loved ones,” Duncan claims.

“And it is stunning.”