PicoBlog

Pinyon Ojai held a soft opening intended for friends, family and local chefs in the area Nov. 19, but like most news in Ojai, word traveled fast as locals flooded the restaurant with what the crew has warmly dubbed the Ojai hug of death. Ever since, they’ve been serving wood-fired pizzas featuring local farm-to-table ingredients. 

Named after a native North American Pine tree, Pinyon is the passion project of three new Ojai residents that combines thoughtful choices with seasonal ingredients. 

There’s Tony Montagnaro, aka Tony Mont, who was born into a New Jersey Pizzeria and honed his skills as a baker and restauranteur, accumulating 15 years in the industry while opening his first co-op restaurant at the age of 25. 

Jeremy Alben is co-owner and chef whose experience spans from Los Angeles to Sweden, specializing in pizza and fine-dining cuisine. 

Sally Slade is a culturally motivated wine and fermentation expert who serves as co-owner and beverage director. 

“We’re incorporating elements of everything we all love,” said Mont. “Food is such a bigger part of what we all do and how we all interact with the world. Knowing about food translates to knowing about culture, which translates to knowing about the ecosystem and sustainability, farming and the environment.”

All three of their educational backgrounds range from science to politics to gender studies, but unite over restaurant experience that has shaped their approach to running their own business. 

“We’d all like to say we’ve worked in great restaurants and had great bosses and that’s how we figured out how we wanted to run,” said Mont. “But it’s mostly the opposite. You realize where mistakes are being made and eventually you want to do it for yourself.” 

“The whole idea came from this being a restaurant model that we all believed in,” said Slade.

Their pizzas include a traditional Margherita as well as seasonally rotating specials such as the eponymous Pinyon that features a kefir base with confit onions, broccolini, sausage, and the namesake pine nuts. 

There are also several fish- and vegetable-based dishes such as spicy cucumbers with chili crisps, fried shallots, and herbs and sunchokes with leek dip, goat cheddar and horseradish.

“All of our produce comes from the valley, no exceptions,” said Mont. “Even all of our fish is being pulled out of the water here. To us, it feels mandatory being a restaurant in a place like Ojai.”

The bread is made using old-school fermenting techniques that occur in-house over a five-day cycle. 

Also, the wine selection, curated by Slade, utilizes all-natural and minimally intervened techniques that allow for traditional flavor profiles without any artificial distractions. 

“Some of our wine is Californian, but we work with importers to get Italian and French natural wines, too,” said Slade, who noted the restaurant doubles as a wine shop that offers bottles to go. 

“All of these wines have a story, whether they’re growing small yields, or how the land was taken back from industrial to biodynamic. There’s a lot of character in the wine,” she said.

The group’s familial dynamic not only enhances the food, but also the environment in which they work. They’re subverting traditional restaurant standards by paying all employees $20 an hour, regardless of their position, implementing a profit-share model, and not having an in-house phone. Instead, the restaurant requests guests reserve their tables and pizzas online, or stop in to enjoy the new outside patio or neatly designed tile work, laid by the crew themselves. 

“It’s just the three of us,” said Mont. “We scraped together what we could between friends and family and everything we could afford, we did ourselves.” 

Mont was the first to make the move to Ojai in September 2020, leaving a bakery in Redlands in the hopes of raising his growing family here. By April this year, they had signed the lease on the space. 

“We’re trying to start families here and it’s a super family-friendly zone,” said Mont. “Everybody has their own attitudes about transplants, but when push comes to shove, we were all strangers here once.”

Spanning from Meiners Oaks to the East End, the entire Pinyon Crew lives and shops locally.

“We do a lot of going to the market and feeling it out, then designing the menu based on what’s available and what’s looking really good right now,” said Mont.

Their entrance to Ojai began by supporting other local businesses, hosting pop-ups like the one in September with Rory’s Place, which also plans to open in Ojai early next year. 

“The Pinyon pine trees have a common tree frog you can always find in them,” said Mont of the name. “Where you find the pine trees, you find the tree frogs.”

A similar symbiotic relationship is the moral basis of the restaurant. It unites members of the community with locally grown flavors, pairs preindustrial pizza techniques with natural wines, and merges business with family, an environment similar to Mont’s upbringing, which he has now recreated with a daughter of his own. 

“We’re trying to start small and grow into it,” said Mont. “People have been overwhelmingly positive and happy. And we’re super happy to be here and proud of what we’ve done. It’s going to be a fun, wild ride.” 

Those hoping to try the unique-to-Ojai flavors can make a reservation online by visiting: https://bit.ly/3xH1apq or can order online at: https://bit.ly/31eZ6ta.

Guests can also stop in between 5 and 10 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekends (with happy hours between 3 and 4 p.m. and 9 and 10 p.m.) to meet Tony, Jeremy, Sally, and the rest of the Pinyon family. 

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