AJ’s Pizza Joint is Winter Garden’s newest spot for a pie

What do you get when you throw an NHL executive, a Brooklyn native, two brothers raised in Winter Garden and a quick trip to Vancouver, Canada, into a blender? Well, after a few pizza pies and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lease the perfect storefront, the lucky residents of West Orange have a new artisan pizza restaurant in the heart of Plant Street: AJ’s Pizza Joint.

“My brother and I own The Whole Enchilada here in downtown,” co-owner Drew Cardaci said. “We actually grew up here in Winter Garden, so we really know how special this place is and how great this location is. We’ve really enjoyed being part of this community and giving back by opening some cool businesses here and hiring some people from the community. So, when this place became available, we knew it would be the perfect location for us. We spoke to the landlord and fought like crazy to get the space. It’s downtown Winter Garden, obviously there were a million people who wanted to rent this space, too, but we were able to get it. And when we looked around, given a few of the local pizza places shut down, we saw there was a vacuum, so we just decided we were ready to do good pizza.”

Drew and David Cardaci, who, despite owning a variety of other restaurant concepts in South Florida, as well as their West Orange portfolio, don’t have a pizza joint in their portfolio. Neither of the Cardaci brothers go by the name AJ, so how did we get here?

That’s where professional hockey, Brooklyn and the trip to Canada come into play.

“It was clear to us that there was this void in the market for a great pizza place; the issue was that none of their other concepts were pizza joints,” Drew Cardaci said. “That’s where our AJ comes in. One of our partners out of South Florida — not AJ — used to be an executive with the NHL team, the Vancouver Canucks, before he took a job working with the Florida Panthers. When we started doing some work for him, somehow we started talking pizza, and this guy’s like, ‘You have to go to AJ’s in Vancouver; it’s amazing.’ Eventually, we went; David and I flew out there and met a gentleman from Brooklyn named AJ, who had a very successful pizza shop. Long story short, we tried it, and it was phenomenal pizza.”

That’s when the Cardaci brothers knew that they had the playbook to building the type of pizza place their hometown deserved — more accurately, they had Anthony “AJ” Caridi’s playbook, and together, AJ’s Pizza Joint in Winter Garden was born.

“We loved what he was doing up there and so we struck like a licensing deal, which essentially means we just kind of borrowed his playbook,” Drew Cardaci said. “We know where we can excel and that’s with service, look and feel. So we just wanted an established good concept that we could borrow the playbook from, and AJ provided that. He’s a Brooklyn native who grew up around pizza pretty much his whole life. He lives pizza, and that’s what we want: To make good pizza.”

What’s good at this joint?

Despite Caridi’s Brooklyn background, the concept behind the original pizza joint didn’t stick to the classic New York style; AJ’s is a joint that has a slice of pie for everyone.

“We have a little bit of everything for everyone,” Drew Cardaci said. “We obviously have our New York style, thin-crust pie. We also do a Sicilian-style pie and a thick Detroit style that’s a little heavier. We just wanted to cover all of our bases because people like different types of pizza, and we want to have those different options.”

Since opening earlier this year, Drew Cardaci said the pizza he’s seen the people of West Orange gravitate to is a modern take on a classic.

“I’ve probably sold more of the supreme New Yorker than anything,” he said. “It’s almost like a meat-style pizza with ricotta on it; which is really good. The other ones that have been very popular, though, are the different pies with honey on them. One of my favorite pies is a hot honey pie — which is cut pepperoni, cheese and then hot honey. It’s phenomenal.”

Looking beyond the pizza, for the Cardaci brothers, the part of this experience that has been amazing is the response from the customers.

“I really appreciate the support from the community, the feedback and reviews in person, online, everything has been 99% just extremely good,” Drew Cardaci said. “I’ve been a part of a lot of openings and this is not normal.”