MANCHESTER, N.H. – Michael Zielie started a restaurant in Milford and now he’s looking to potentially start a chain of restaurants in Manchester.
The recently opened Zizza Pizza on Bicentennial Drive marks the restaurant’s second location, with the first store opening in 2020. An accomplished chef, Michael and Sandy Zielie were already operating the Hilltop Café in Wilton when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and they began making wood-fired pizza. They were quickly swamped with orders for the pizza and decided to add a separate restaurant serving just pizza in a former gas station near the terminus of Route 101A.
As they opened that first Zizza Pizza location, Michael had thoughts of opening another location eventually, feeling that it would be best to place it in a more metropolitan area. Both Michael and Sandy are from Nashua and they expected that second location would be placed in the Gate City, but the mix of factors on Bicentennial Drive such as the multiple parking spaces, neighborhood setting and the high density of potential customers nearby made this spot in the building formerly holding a New Hampshire Liquor Outlet as the perfect location.
Part of the first restaurant’s success came from a belief in quality food, something that came with the Zielie’s from the Hilltop Café.
“I often make a joke that in the pizza world there seems to be a race to the bottom where everyone’s trying to make the cheapest large cheese pizza and sell it for as cheap as they can to bring customers into the door,” said Michael. “We took the exact opposite approach.”
“(Our pizza) is not greasy, you don’t feel bad after you eat it,” he added.
The new Manchester location will also feature Michael’s daughter Gabrielle, who recently received her high school diploma from the High Mowing School in Wilton and helped her family in the kitchen throughout her childhood.
Michael believes there may be more locations opened in the future, and Gabrielle may be running one of those locations one day.
“It’s been fun to work with my parents. I always said that my dad was too busy working in the restaurants that we never really hung out so now I was like, I will just work in the restaurant with him and get to hang out with my dad all day,” she said.
“I don’t know what I’ll be doing in my near future, whether I’ll go to college to get a degree,” she added. “But when you’re 18 and have already worked in a restaurant for nine years already, it’s kind of like you already have a culinary degree.”
The new location was honored in a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais as well as representatives from the Manchester Economic Development Office and the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
“I know the quality of the food (at the Hilltop Café) and how special it is and that you’re bringing that here is something very amazing,” said Manchester Economic Development Office Director Jodie Nazaka. “It’s something very unique in the city of Manchester, to see things like squash and goat cheese pizza. It’s really cool, thank you for choosing Manchester.”
More information on Zizza Pizza is available at zizzapizza.com