Pizza Party!

The Catering Gourmet’s signature wood-grilled “Take & Bake” pizzas can be ordered online. Photograph courtesy of the Catering Gourmet.

FEEL LIKE A MASTER PIZZAIOLO IN YOUR OWN HOME. The Catering Gourmet’s signature “Take & Bake” pizzas make it seem like you crafted a pie from scratch but with none of the work. Choose the pizzas you’d like in advance on the website, order ahead, and they can be picked up or delivered to your residence.

Owner Dave Goulart started the original business, The Pizza Gourmet, after working a stint at the legendary Bob & Timmy’s on Federal Hill. That’s where he learned to craft wood-grilled pizza skins before moving on to work for John Elkhay at the Atomic Grill, which catered events with its wood-grilled pies.

“I saw that there was nothing like this on the market,” Goulart says. “That’s what really intrigued me.”

He later split from Atomic Grill and turned the idea into his own business, The Pizza Gourmet, a 900-square-foot business on Hope Street, with his late wife, Misty Goulart. “That’s when the light went on and I decided I was going to start a little pizzeria. It was good, but what I learned really quickly was that catering was where the money was,” he says. “All my catering customers came out of the woodwork and started chasing me and asking me if I could make some wood-grilled pizzas, either at their house or delivered to their office.”

The business has now evolved into The Catering Gourmet, which provides a variety of prepared foods, including pizzas, soups, pastas and more, for large and small events. Chefs still create take-and-bake pizzas for supermarkets and storefronts, or you can order them at the storefront hot, or for take-and-bake for pickup or home delivery. Goulart will soon open a new catering hall and storefront in the former Lancellotta’s in North Providence, which will host large and small events, and operate an extensive prepared foods counter. The Catering Gourmet, 840 Park Ave., Cranston, 773-7925, thecateringgourmet.net