NEAR WEST SIDE — A Garfield Ridge pizza restaurant is expanding to Little Italy, with its second location opening on Taylor Street later this year.
Frank Battaglia first opened Stunod’s Pizzeria, 6535 W. 63rd St., in 2019 with his brother, Austin, after spending years pushing an Italian ice cart together on the Southwest Side. Now, the Battaglia brothers are taking on the challenge of growing the business.
“My brother and I always wanted to have our own shop,” Frank Battaglia told Block Club. “It’s a lifelong dream of ours to expand upon our concepts and open more locations. So we thought, what better place to go for a second one than Little Italy?”
Frank Battaglia has spent the summer refurbishing the space that formerly held Patio Restaurant, 1503 W. Taylor St., to prepare for Stunod’s fall opening. Battaglia said that he’s been working directly with the Caputo family, who owned and operated Patio since the 1940s.
Austin and Frank Battaglia (left to right) at their Italian Ice cart in the Loop. Credit: Frank Battaglia
The location on Taylor Street is especially meaningful for the Battaglias as Italian Americans who grew up visiting the corridor often with their father, a prominent food distributor in the area.
Battaglia said that watching businesses close and foot traffic slow down in Little Italy is a large motivator for opening their second location.
“Taylor Street, to me, growing up was like what Randolph Street is now,” he said. “With the West Loop getting popular, evidently Taylor Street took a huge toll. Watching that happen feels like one of your childhood favorite memories fading. My brother and I were like, ‘Well, why don’t we try our best to help save it?’”
But owning a business and opening a second location hasn’t been the smoothest ride for the brothers, who have been working with tight profit margins and dealing with several challenges since 2019.
“When you start two months before COVID, you’re basically on hard mode,” Frank Battaglia said. “I spent basically all my 20s inside these walls of that restaurant. I couldn’t even watch ‘The Bear’ because it just felt like my life.”
Stunod’s was burglarized during that time, with the business’s large front windows shattered. That experience was demoralizing for Battaglia’s staff, he said.
But Stunod’s has become a popular Southwest Side pizza staple in the years since the pandemic, with its Instagram account seeing viral success. The Battaglia brothers have charmed thousands of viewers with their thick Chicago accents and antics. Stunod’s, after all, translates roughly to “goofball” in Italian.
“I think the reason why our social media has done pretty well is because it’s just like a few goofballs on the South Side,” Frank Battaglia said. “I suck at this. Like the fact that I’m talking to a news reporter right now is just baffling. You know, I thought when you’re 20, opening a pizza joint, you just make pizzas and go home. I’ve found it’s a lot more than that.”
Stunod’s offerings include their signature hand-tossed thin-crust pizza, sandwiches, burgers, salads, wings and the same Italian ice the brothers began their culinary journey with. After debuting their menu at the recent Little Italy Festa on Taylor Street, Battaglia feels confident with the neighborhood response.
“As Chicago gets overwhelmed with its corporate B.S. and whatnot, we need all the help we can get to make small businesses work,” he said. “The amount of support and people that have reached out and said nice things to us … that’s like a dream come true. It’s overwhelming.”
