| CHOW BELLA | t Café Making Moves From Saint Pasta to Gemini Pizza, here’s what’s next for chef and owner Racan Alhoch. BY NATASHA YEE I nside the art deco Luhrs Building at the posh Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlor in downtown Phoenix, a pizza joint arrived in April. While patrons mulled over a vast cocktail menu and selections were mixed, shaken, and stirred, Racan Alhoch’s second culinary endeavor Gemini Pizza cranked out 12-inch pies on two-day proofed dough. But the pop-up, which Alhoch created in March, a month before it took form at Bitter & Twisted, ended its residency in September. Now, it’s onto its next iteration, this time, inside a cloud kitchen in the Melrose District of midtown Phoenix. Alhoch is known for his noodles via Saint Pasta, his cult-favorite food truck that operated at the Pemberton PHX until it went on a recent break. But at Gemini, it’s all about the pies. Gemini Pizza will reopen soon inside the Highland Food Hub, a takeout and delivery-only kitchen collective at Seventh and Highland Avenues, with New York- style pizzas. Expect a classic pizzeria lineup with some Middle Eastern flair, Alhoch says. There will be slices, large white pies with mozzarella and ricotta topped with black caraway seeds, mozza- rella sticks, and salads including fattoush, a Lebanese dish with torn fried pita bread, greens, grape tomatoes, Persian cucum- bers, and fresh mint. The pies are a reminder of Alhoch’s East Allison Young Coast roots, where as a kid, he skateboarded to one of the three pizzerias in Prospect Park, a small suburb of Paterson City in New Jersey, to grab a slice and meet his friends. “We didn’t have cell phones back then. So if I wanted to find my friends, I had to skateboard from one pizzeria to the next,” Alhoch says. The business owner, who is known equally for his brash style on social media as his rigatoni pasta with vodka sauce, is ready for the next chapter in the Gemini Pizza story. “The pop-up at Bitter & Twisted was a good incubator, I just wanted to take it in a different direction and I needed my own space to do that,” Alhoch says. Before he moved to Phoenix from New Jersey or opened the now-infamous Saint Pasta, Alhoch had plans for a Jersey City pizzeria. But when those plans fell through at the last minute during a trip to Arizona to see his then-girlfriend and now-wife, he decided to move to the desert instead. Alhoch had known that a restaurant could be in his future for a long time, he says. His grandfather owned multiple popular eateries in Syria. Growing up, while his siblings played outside, he would step on a stool to help his mother in the kitchen. Alhoch performed small tasks like smashing garlic for toum, a Middle Eastern garlic sauce with some serious kick, and picking parsley for tabbouleh. In high school, he wrote business plans for different restaurants, daydreaming of his future in the culinary realm. “I thought about opening a restaurant Racan Alhoch’s take on this Middle Eastern salad with fresh mint and fried pita bread is totally vegan. for years. But everyone told me that it was impractical, that it would be so hard to succeed at it,” Alhoch says. “In Middle Eastern culture, you have to become either a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. So I ended up going into restaurant marketing.” Alhoch learned the business side of restaurants while working as a partner manager for DoorDash. It only reinforced the desire to open his own spot. Sans the traditional culinary school path, he opened Saint Pasta in early 2019 out of a food truck parked in Tempe. “My two best friends in New Jersey were both chefs so I’d cook >> p 32 Closed On Tuesdays 2003 BILLS OF $35 OR MORE Dine-In or Take Out $5 OFF Not Including Combinations Dinner Only Expires 12/31/22 2050 N. Alma School Rd., #36 • 480.857.4188 31 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES OCT 20TH–OCT 26TH, 2022 FULL BAR!
