Peerless fits in just right at Sal & Al’s Diner and Danny’s Pizza, where their 2324P cooks up some of the best and most popular pizza and other dishes in Northern Ohio
When Danny George reopened Sal & Al’s Diner in 2011, he brought back all of the favorite dishes his customers had enjoyed for years since it originally opened in 1979. Shortly afterwards, George also decided to bring back his highly-popular Danny’s Pizza. And he decided to bake those pizzas in a Peerless 2324P.
“We were the No. 1 pizza in Cleveland in 1985, and that really catapulted us into that area,” George recalled. “We’ve always been strong in Amherst and Elyria. We’ve had success with it, and it’s still strong. We’ve been around since 1979. We expanded out to Elyria, Lakewood, Rocky River, Bay Village, Grafton, Sandusky and North Olmsted. We were down in the Flats in Cleveland, and we even opened a store in Pennsylvania. We were successful with our pizza, and we just decided to bring them back,” he said.
“Everybody wanted to see it, and that’s why we brought them back. They’re so popular, we’re looking at getting more ovens to keep up with the demand!”
But when George reclaimed his original restaurant, the kitchen had been redmodeled. That left him with limited space for a deck oven, but purchasing the Peerless 2324P solved that problem.
“That’s the only oven that would fit under the hood configuration for the kitchen of a regular restaurant as opposed to a pizzeria, where it’s free-standing and bigger,” he said. “The Peerless was the only oven that could fit in there without a conveyor. I still needed that hearth-bake, stone-bake oven that would fit. I originally bought a Peerless from Bryan Huntley’s dad when I first opened up in 1979. We actually bought some of their equipment from a pizzeria that used to be located right around the corner from their factory in Sandusky. I bought a double-decker, free standing model.”
George also talked to Danell’s Pizza in Wellington.“He runs his pizzeria with a Peerless that’s twice this size, and he said he had no problems with it. It was also a stone hearth, which is what I wanted. Blodgett didn’t have anything close to fitting in there, so it was really a no-brainer at this point to go with this oven. Because I had no problems with the oven back then, I decided to go with Peerless again this time.”
George said his Peerless 2324P has been a work horse in his kitchen.
“The oven has performed well for us,” he said. “I like the fact there are four decks and that you can make adjustments. It’s easy to use, and it holds its heat well. And besides pizzas, you can use it to melt cheese on subs. We use the oven to cook our gyro meats, our roast beef. Anything we would do in a normal oven, we bake off in there. We’re also going to be adding some pasta dishes in the near future that we’ll bake in there. It works well all the way around.”
George didn’t hesitate when asked if he would recommend Peerless to anybody looking for a multideck pizza oven.
“Oh, I would definitely recommend Peerless for anybody looking for a multideck oven that you can put in a tight space,” George said. “That’s a big benefit, and the stone hearth is always a plus to anybody who really knows how to cook pizza. You get a totally different bake with these ovens. It cooks it from the top and the bottom. We’ll take it off the pan and put in on the stone to crisp it up and suck up any of the moisture that’s left in there. That’s one of the biggest pluses these ovens have.”
He added: “You can have a deck oven without the stones, but it’s the stones that hold the heat and gives you a good, firm bottom, kind of like a New York-style pizza. It’s definitely a benefit, along with it being a multi-deck with its configuration and small footprint.”
Sal & Al’s Diner and Danny’s Pizza
Danny George, Owner
2261 Cooper-Foster Park Road
Amherst, Ohio 44001
(440) 989-3663