“Our rule here is that we don’t serve anything my mother wouldn’t serve me,” Steve Shinn, owner of Bartolotti’s Pizza Bistro, said. For those campus dwellers, teachers and students alike, a new restaurant has made its way onto our turf: Bartolotti’s Pizza.
The restaurant has expanded from Eugene to Springfield and even the Cottage Grove area throughout the years, and now it will make its new mark here at the EMU and bring some classic Italian dishes to the study halls of our curriculum. The restaurant is located in the EMU beneath the Chipotle and Panda Express, where Falling Sky pizzeria used to be. The restaurant welcomes those on campus — not just with slices, pies, garlic knots and pasta.
It tells a story through the food they serve and the ingredients behind them. Shinn started his career not as a cook, but as a history teacher: an interesting fork in the road that led him to where he is today. He started school in his mid 20s with a goal of becoming a school teacher. Nevertheless, he was always steered towards food and grew accustomed to the restaurant world.
“I had been working in the restaurant business since I was 16,” Shinn said. Still, his goals remained in teaching. So, while getting a degree at California State University in Chico, he made ends meet by working at restaurants. Although he loved the idea of teaching, deep down he always knew he would end up in the restaurant business.
He had jobs at French bistros, country clubs and Italian restaurants, all which taught him how to cook with fresh ingredients. Beside these working gigs, he also took classes in food management and hospitality in college — pursuing a subconscious passion he wasn’t aware of until years later.
He got his first teaching job in Ft. Myers, Florida and, as a side-hustle, bought a food truck to serve West Coast styled food including fish tacos and BBQ, as well as unconventional pizzas like taco pizza, Rueben pizza and Philly cheese steak pizza. These toppings served well and encouraged Shinn to continue in the food industry.
He finally moved back to Oregon in 2015 with his wife and kids, bringing with him a cobweb of passionately created dishes and, of course, the food truck. Shinn’s idea was to try to sell the business and make a profit from it. However, in the years that followed, he instead gained traction and opened another location in Springfield (on the Main Street strip), a restaurant and moved away from the food truck operation. From there, he opened two other locations, one in Cottage Grove on East Main Street, the other inside the Lane Community college building.
Shinn buys a variety of specialty foods that go into the menu, starting with sauces and cheeses. He gets some of these items from Italian American farmers and business owners in California and Wisconsin. Products like his tomato sauce come from Stanislaus Food Products which provide different tomato and pizza sauces from their farms in Modesto, California. Then you have his cheese vendor Grande which has a heritage in cheese making that goes back to Montelepre, Italy. He gets imported prosciutto from Europe, Ezzo pepperoni from Buffalo, New York and other meats from Olympia Provisions, a salumeria in Portland, Oregon that specializes in cured meats.
In this new location at the EMU, the menu will still have many of those Italian dishes from his other bistro’s. There will be daily specials that include a slice of pizza, side salad and drink for $9. He’ll also have a line of draft beers and wine readily available Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and extended hours on the weekends.
The menu at this location will include classics like cannelloni, eggplant parmesan and even desserts like cannoli. Shinn is also hoping to add some new items for the school that aren’t on the other restaurants’ menu: some seasonal soups for the winter, new sandwich ideas — including a Philly cheesesteak that is in the works — and some surprises waiting in store. So bring a date, a friend or just yourself to this new restaurant and enjoy food the way it is supposed to be enjoyed. Salud!
Walking into Bartoltti’s Pizza Bistro, guests are greeted by a glowing display case filled with pizza slice options. Located on the first floor of the EMU on the University of Oregon campus, Bartolotti’s Pizza Bistro is serving up fresh slices and other Italian classics to hungry students. (Serei Hendrie/Emerald)
