Hello Pizza Open for Business Just West of Southwest

At long last you can say hello to Hello Pizza. 

Rumored to be in the offing last summer, and with its opening imminent by last month, Ann Kim's new restaurant on Sunnyside Road in Edina, just west of Linden Hills, has finally flung open its doors.

And in have walked hungry reporters and food critics, among them Joy Summers of City Pages ("A sunny little neighborhood spot") and Stephanie March of Mpls.-St. Paul magazine ("There is cheeky flair to this place").

Edina Patch Editor Ryan Gauthier posted a full report on Hello Pizza on Monday. Here it is:

After months of teasing Edina residents with little more than a glimpse at Lionel Richie's face, Hello Pizza finally tore down the paper lining its windows and fired up its pizza ovens for the first time last weekend.

The new Edina restaurant—a sister store to Minneapolis' popular Pizzeria Lola—sees owner and chef Ann Kim trying her pizza skills at New York Style pizza rather than her wood-fired product locals are familar with. Located at 3904 Sunnyside Road, Hello Pizza allows customers to buy a few slices—for anywhere between $3.25 and $4.50 per slice—or an entire pie of their favorite creation.

The result is hard to argue with: Massive, foldable slices of gooey, cheesy goodness topped with the same delicious ingredients customers of Pizzeria Lola have come to adore. 

"You come up, you order, the ticket goes in and then basically we'll have bussers and runners that will go and bring the slices to whoever ordered them," Kim said last month. "Even though it's not full service, there will be someone running it to them—they won't be picking it up physically themselves and taking it to the table."

There's the Hello Trinity—available by-the-slice—which is loaded with tomato sauce, whole milk mozzarella, house made fennel sausage, natural casing pepperoni and crimini mushrooms. The Hello Rita combines tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, basil and Sicilian oregano. Or a slice of the Veggie Supremo sees tomato sauce, whole milk mozzarella, ricotta, French feta, spinach, crimini mushrooms, onions and garlic married on Hello Pizza's omnipresent chewy crust.

If the whole family is hungry, plenty of signature pies are available. There's Smokey the Pig, which marries adobo bbq sauce, smoked mozzarella, house cured bacon, applewood smoked onions, rosemary and maple syrup. The New Yorker blends tomato sauce, sliced NY style sausage, ricotta, whole milk mozzarella, provolone, grana padana, roasted peppers and onions.

And for die-hard fans of Pizzeria Lola, the Meatball Ricotta mixes tomato sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, provolone, Lola meatballs and Sicilian oregano. Those same meatballs are available on sub sandwiches, including the Old Skool Balls or the Korean Cowboy, the latter blending Korean balls, gochujang bbq sauce, garlic aioli, pickled onions, daikon, carrot and cilantro.

Customers can also create their own pizza, utilizing a wide array of toppings ranging from calabrian chile and picholine olives to house made fennel sausage and house cured maple bacon.

Hello Pizza's menu includes a handful of salads and soft serve sundaes—available in both 'naughty' and 'nice' versions—to round out any meal.

The pizzeria was jam-packed earlier this week—based solely on word-of-mouth that it had indeed opened. Expect a lengthy wait if you want to snag a pizza of your own, though it's guaranteed to be worth the time investment once it hits your taste buds.

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