Is Philly ready for pizza in a cone?
“The Original” Kono Pizza will debut in the Pennsylvania suburbs on Sept. 12.
To think we've been eating our pizza flat for thousands of years.
The Italian company Kono specializes in pizza baked into a cone shape, primarily for portability. (It's known there as "pizza al passeggio," or walk-around pizza.)
Three men from South Jersey, having bought a franchise in "The Original" Kono Pizza after seeing the idea featured on Good Morning America, are about to share the pizza-in-a-cone experience with the Philadelphia area.
In September, the Kono cart will roll into the Haverford Music Festival on Saturday, Sept. 12. The next day, it will be set up at the Manayunk StrEAT Food Festival. It will also be at the World Meeting of Families on Sept. 26-27.
Their first event was two weeks ago at the Pinelands Music Festival in Millville, N.J., where they sold 240 pizzas (at $4 for a smaller cannoli cone to $6 for the chicken Parm) among the crowd of 1,200 people.
The cones and sauce are flown in from Italy and stored at the partners' facility in Millville. The pizzas are assembled on the cart and baked in three minutes in an electric oven, said Eric Ciancaglini, 23, who owns the franchise with his father, Gino, and uncle Anthony.
He said they were in talks to open a kiosk in Cherry Hill Mall.
Gino Ciancaglini is in the concrete business ("self-made," his son says with pride), but is no stranger to food. He is a partner in the Peter Shields Inn and Pilot House in Cape May.
Do two cone-food specialists make a trend? T-swirl, a Japanese-style crepe shop with portable sweet and savory offerings, opened early this month in Chinatown.