Humble Beginnings
About Sera
Take a peek at our story. You've caught us right at the beginning, and we're planning on sticking around Chi-Town for a long, long time.
Tweezers to Street-Food
Fine Dining Was Great. Then We Got Hungry.
Before Sera was Chicago’s favorite Roman pizza habit, co-founders Paolo Savescu and Aly Jamal were doing the high-pressure, tweezers-and-micro-greens thing in Chicago fine dining.
It was classy, but Paolo (a born-and-raised Roman) missed the street food you could grab on a corner in Rome. It was unpretentious, crispy, fresh, and impossible to ruin with a napkin dress code.
When he met Aly, they traded five-star smocks for sauced-up t-shirts and a dream: build the local pizza experience that actually brings the Second City together.
Meet Pizza's Cousin
Say Hello to Pinsa (No, It’s Not a Typo for Pizza)
- At the center of it all is the Roman Pinsa. Think of it as pizza’s light, airy, ridiculously crispy Italian cousin. We cold-ferment our dough for days so it gets those big, bubbly pockets of air. The result? Total crunch, zero heavy-stomach food coma.
- How we pull it off:
- 1. The Dough: Long-fermented flour blend = Maximum crunch, zero bloating.
- 2. The Secret Sauce (Literally): Drizzled with ITALOIL, cold-pressed straight from olives on Paolo’s family farm in Rome. Yeah, we take it personally.
- 3. The Local Flex: Topped with fresh Midwest produce, because balance.
Slinging Dough Daily
From Underground Pop-ups to Farmers Markets
- We started small. We've been slinging dough at pop-ups around Wicker Park, Pilsen, and the West Loop. Turns out, Chicago likes good crust.
- Today, you can catch us popping up at neighborhood venues, partner kitchens, and farmers markets across town every single weekend.
