Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

SEA BRIGHT PIZZA GUY NARROWS HIS FOCUS

Cono Trezza in his new pizzeria on Ocean Avenue, next door to the old one, at right below. (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

There’s too much stuff on the menu, Cono Trezza is saying.

As a customer of Trezza’s Sea Bright Pizza, you might not think so. There’s pizza, some pasta, calzone, salads. Not too much of anything, and everything is arranged in tidy columns, in large fonts, on a single side of a sheet of paper.

But for Trezza, who recently moved his restaurant one door south of its old address into a 14-foot-wide building, everything these days is about narrowing the focus.

“Small works, big doesn’t,” he says.

Trezza, originally from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, now lives in Lincroft. For four years, he owned and operated Portobello, a 200-seat restaurant on Hope Road in Tinton Falls. “I used to pack them in on weekends. Weekdays were slow, though,” he said.

It wasn’t a situation he was enamored of, even after he eliminated a six-day-a-week commute from Brooklyn.

“The staff, the overloads, the personnel – for one person, it’s too much.”

Trezza, 47, a former “hairdresser-barber,” opened Sea Bright Pizza six years ago. He “liked the ocean,” he said, but also had “a vision” that would simplify his life.

From Portobello’s five-page menu, “I went to three, to two, and then to one. Now, my goal is this,” he said, folding the menu in half.

“I’m not kidding.”

Not that he’s not proud of what’s on it. Trezza says he shops a couple of times a week at Sickles Market in Little Silver and personally picks out every single vegetable used in his dishes – no buying in bulk –  and uses cheeses, canned tomatoes, and olive oil imported from Italy.

“Whatever’s on here, I eat,” he said. “If I don’t eat it, I don’t like it, I don’t sell it. That’s the way I travel. If it’s good for me, it’s good for everybody else.”

Still, “I want to bring it to where it’s only pizza. Maybe not here, maybe next place, but that’s my goal,” he said.

Why not now?

“You can’t just… I’m well known for my chicken parm and my eggplant parm, so it’s kind of hard to get rid of those two,” he said. “I do a lot of volume in the summer, I do a lot of sandwiches to the beach clubs.” Pizza’s the biggest seller, but he’s not ready to cut off other substantial sources of his revenue quite yet, he suggests.

Besides, at the moment, he’s savoring completion of a big project.

Almost two years ago, he bought the space next door to his trattoria, a 14-foot wide storefront that had been vacant for several years after haberdasher Brian George moved his Northshore Menswear down the street. Trezza gradually transformed the building into a cozy, barnlike eating space with bare brick walls, a pressed-tin ceiling and touches of copper. Trezza calls it “a little bit Tuscany, a little bit SoHo loft.”

And he did it his way.

“No borrowing money, no nothing,” he said. “I just worked and then did it, worked and then did it. But I did it the way I wanted to do it.”

 

 

 

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
Partyline
RED TRUCKS AT RED ROCK
A small dishwasher fire at Red Rock Tap and Grill was put out quickly by firefighters overnight, causing minimal damage. Red Bank Fire Depar ...
CREATIVE COVER UP
The windows of Pearl Street Consignment on Monmouth Street were smashed when a driver crashed their car through them injuring an employee la ...
THEY’RE BACK!
Ospreys returned to the skies over Red Bank this week for the first time since they migrated to warmer climes in late fall. With temperature ...
SPRING IS SPRUNG
RED BANK: Spring 2024 arrives on the Greater Red Bank Green with the vernal equinox at 11:06 p.m. Tuesday.
RED BANK’S FINEST – AND NEWEST
Red Bank Police Officer Eliot Ramos was sworn in as the force’s newest patrolman Thursday, and if you’re doing a double take thinkin ...
EASTER EGG MAYHEM AT THE PARK
An errant whistle spurred an unexpectedly early start to the Spring Egg Hunt on Sunday, which had been scheduled to begin at eggsactly 11am ...
PRESEASON DOCKWORK
RED BANK: With winter winding down, marina gets ready for boating season with some dockwork on our beautiful Navesink River.
CORNED BEEF AND DISCO FRIES?
It’s Friday, and smart Lent-observing Leprechauns know the pot of gold at the end of Red Bank’s rainbow is actually the deliciou ...
SURFBOARD DITCHED
It’s a violation of etiquette in surfing to ditch your board.  (it could hit another surfer and hurt them). But someone appears to ha ...
ELSIE, TAKE ME WITH YOU!
Soaked by pouring rain with the temperature hovering in the low 40’s, this sign in the window of Elsie’s Subs on Monmouth Street ...
WALK THIS WAY
PARTYLINE: Before-and-afters of a sidewalk cleanup on West Street.
SOGGY NOTION
RED BANK: Breezeway sculpture captured the mood downtown as heavy rains fell Saturday morning.
HOME DELIVERY
RED BANK: After a subdivision, an instant house rises on a new Catherine Street lot.
COMMUNITY PROFILES
For Black History Month, Red Bank's Community Engagement and Equity Advisory Committee has been running a series of local profiles on Facebo ...
HEARTY FAREWELL FOR HARDY
RED BANK: Council to honor DPU supervisor Rich Hardy, who retired recently after almost 39 years of keeping things running.
HOMEBOUND? READ ON…
RED BANK: Can't get to the public library? It's now offering free delivery and pickups for homebound borough residents.
TAMING A BEAST OF A WEEK
RED BANK: After the second snowfall of the week, a borough family finds the perfect use for it – a Godzilla snow sculpture.
RED BANK: LIBRARY CLOSED, BUT THE HILL’S OPEN
RED BANK: Though the library was closed by a snowstorm, kids got to enjoy the riverfront property's steep slope Tuesday.
LIGHT(HOUSE) MAKEOVER
This year, getting ready for spring means a midwinter makeover for Strollo's Lighthouse in Red Bank.
TODAY: LOCAL PUPPY COMPETES ON ANIMAL PLANET’S “PUPPY BOWL”
Red Bank’s very own rescue puppy, Biscuit, is set to compete in Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl this Sunday, February 11, at 2 PM. Th ...