The grand Finelli Bangor pizza lovers’ wishes granted as Ellsworth eatery opens branch on Ohio Street

Finelli’s has arrived in Bangor.

For pizza lovers, this is a big deal.

For those favoring other types of food, Finelli Pizza and Subs in Ellsworth was the runaway winner of a 2005 write-in contest conducted by the Bangor Daily News to find the best pizza in eastern, central and northern Maine.

For the past four years, Finelli lovers in Bangor have had to make the nearly 30-mile one-way trip to the restaurant’s Route 1 location.

But no longer.

The Ellsworth location remains open, but since June 22, Finelli Pizza Pronto has been open at 213 Ohio St. in Bangor.

The man behind both locations is owner and chef Paul Schneider, who has been a pie man for more than 35 years, starting on Cape Cod.

Schneider sells thin-crust pizza baked in brick ovens. He credits the dough, which he makes the previous day and lets season, as the secret to his success.

“The crust is everything,” Schneider said. “You have to walk the dough through its own little process. It depends on how you handle it, rather than what’s in it. You’ve got to throw it by hand to keep the air bubbles in it.”

Another part of the Finelli success is fresh ingredients used in clever combinations. Schneider’s signature pie is the Pizza Bianca, with fresh ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, baby spinach, garlic, black pepper and extra virgin olive oil.

Other house specialties include the Satyricon (mozzarella cheese, Italian sausage, ricotta cheese, fresh tomato and fresh basil), the Sun Pie (sun-dried tomatoes, black pepper, feta and mozzarella cheeses and extra virgin olive oil) and the Garden Pizza (fresh tomato, scallions, red onions, summer squash and extra virgin olive oil).

Finelli is a rearrangement of letters of Fellini, a pizzeria Schneider ran in Providence for 11 years.

Schneider’s partner in the Bangor location, Rich Lavecchia, is a convert to Finelli’s. Born in Brooklyn, he spent 25 years in real estate in Europe before he and his German wife, Christiane, retired to Deer Isle.

Lavecchia feared that he wouldn’t be able to find good Italian food on the Maine coast: “I told my wife that she would have to cook it or we’d have to go to Boston or New York.”

But Christiane had read about Finelli’s in Down East magazine. Lavecchia remained skeptical. Still they went to try it, and “I felt like I was eating in Brooklyn,” he said.

He and Schneider became friends. It turned out that both their families came from the Cosenza di Calabria region of southern Italy.

The two Finelli restaurant locations are different animals. The Bangor store offers takeout and delivery, while Ellsworth has tables for dining as well.

Schneider hopes to make the Bangor location “the model for decent pizza to go.”

Most of the menu came west to Bangor, except for desserts, wine and beer. In addition to whole pizzas and slices, there are calzones, pasta entrees, garlic bread, cheese sticks, buffalo wings, salads and hot and cold subs. Prices are a little lower from Ellsworth, because “there’s more competition up here,” Schneider said.

Schneider had wanted to open a Bangor store for a couple of years, but it took until February to find the Ohio Street location, reputed to have been one of the first service stations in Bangor.

He and Lavecchia stripped the 1920s-era building, owned by Webber Energy Fuels, to its studs and started from scratch. This meant new wiring, plumbing, siding, roof and walls. One interesting feature is a sliding overhead glass door at the storefront. Schneider also added his Italian-style plaster treatment to the walls as he did in Ellsworth. The lava brick ovens were imported from California.

The last step in the preparations was training his Bangor crew in Ellsworth. Schneider is stationed in Bangor, “to get it up and running,” before returning to Ellsworth and leaving Bangor in the capable hands of Manager Brad Erickson.

Schneider admits that he has mixed feelings as old customers discover the Bangor store.

“I’ve got people every day who say, ‘Great. We don’t have to go to Ellsworth anymore.’ We’ve also got people coming from farther up the line from Bangor. So I’m in a bit of a quandary.”

This may be the first of many Finelli Pizza Prontos.

“It’s generating good numbers out of a small space,” Schneider said. “So this may not be the last Pronto we put up.”

Finelli Pizza Pronto, located at 213 Ohio St., can be reached at 947-0900. It’s open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.