When Alessandro Monachello arrived in Madison from Sicily in 2006, his English was somewhere just north of nonexistent, says his friend and business partner Chris Guglielmo. So when Monachello offered Italian dishes and wine to his growing group of friends, he’d say, simply, “It’s good for you.”
Ten years later, the signature phrase became the inspiration for It’s Good for You. Monachello and Guglielmo started with a mobile pizza oven and catering operation in 2016, later opening a brick-and-mortar on North Sherman Avenue in 2023 that has become a neighborhood fixture.
Simplicity is at the restaurant’s heart. The menu includes just six varieties of wood-fired Neapolitan-style pizza, which is known for its soft crust. Diners might expect their proudest creation to be some kind of specialty ’za, something that raises eyebrows and stretches the imagination. Instead, it’s the tried-and-true Margherita.
“The four most important ingredients [for making] a good pizza are the flour, the tomato, the cheese and the oven,” says Monachello, who is also a line cook at Osteria Papavero. “Three of these come from Italy: the oven, the tomato and the flour. In Wisconsin, we [already] have awesome cheese.”
To make the dough, Monachello mixes Caputo Pizzeria Flour imported from Napoli with a small percentage of Caputo Tipo 1 flour to give the dough flavor, texture and additional weight. After 18 to 20 minutes of mixing, he uses a machine to roll the dough into balls, which spend 24 hours in a proofing box before they’re ready to be stretched into a base for the pizza toppings.
The dough is topped with fior di latte mozzarella and sauce made from crushed San Marzano tomatoes and spices; then it’s fired in a 5,000-pound, blue-tiled pizza oven that Monachello imported from Naples, Italy.
It’s Good For You’s menu can be playful, too — but only strays from the basics when it makes sense. After doing a pop-up at a beer festival in New Glarus, Monachello put together an Oktoberfest-themed masterpiece featuring sauerkraut, bratwurst crumbles, cheese curds and brown mustard drizzle. For St. Patrick’s Day, he developed a pie with corned beef and Russian dressing.
Every three weeks, It’s Good For You rotates in a new trio of creative specialty pizzas. Yet no special at the restaurant is ever too heavy-handed.
“A Neapolitan-style pizza really is best suited when you have minimal toppings,” notes Guglielmo, “because it’s a delicate pizza, and otherwise it’s hard to manage.”
The ultimate goal is to offer a pizza that’s fundamentally simple, delicious — and according to Monachello, good for you.
From the Oven
At Nattspil, the sausage pizza with peperoncini is always a late-night crowd-pleaser, but don’t sleep on the garlicky brie and apple ’za either. 211 King St.
Longtime Monroe Street staple Pizza Brutta offers several dozen curated topping combos, plus an option to build your own pizza from three bases: Margherita (crushed tomatoes, basil and mozzarella), formaggi (crushed tomatoes, oregano and mozzarella) and bianca (olive oil, garlic, basil, mozzarella and Parmesan). 1805 Monroe St.
Recently relocated to Middleton, Novanta creates crisp Neapolitan pizzas in 90 seconds, thanks to its sizable 900-degree pizza oven. 8452 Old Sauk Road
Lucille uses its wood-fired ovens to make adventurous Neapolitan pies, including a pizza with habanero basil cream and sweet corn and another with local mushrooms, black garlic cream and kale. 101 King St.
Two of Naples 15’s best wood-fired pies exist at either end of the pizza spectrum: The Good Life (awash in San Marzano tomato sauce and garlic) leaves off the cheese, and the Ischia Paese Mio, which is topped with arugula and Parmesan, skips the sauce. 15 N. Butler St.
Aaron R. Conklin is a contributing writer to Madison Magazine.
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