Dig Into Nights & Weekends’ Wood-Fired Pizzas

Cole Emde and Jacqueline von Tesmar know plenty about pizza. The couple, who are from Rocky River and Ashtabula, respectively, lived in Brooklyn and San Francisco and visited Naples, Italy, before returning to von Tesmar’s hometown in 2020.

Together with their business partner, Chris Capo, they established their Nights & Weekends pizza shop on Ashtabula’s Bridge Street just a year later. The pizzeria is nestled in a corner building that housed a grocer from 1895 to 1899 and the O’Leary Shoe Store from 1934 to 1970, among other ventures. It follows that preserving tradition sits at the heart of the restaurant’s menu.

“The meatball is my sister’s recipe, the caponata was based off of a recipe from Cole’s mom,” von Tesmar says of two selections from the menu’s antipasti section. “It’s just all of these recipes that have been around and tried and true for different people in our lives.”

In addition to Neapolitan-style pizzas and appetizers, Nights & Weekends serves salads and dessert, as well as coffee, digestifs, cocktails, wine and craft beer. Every pizza is cooked in the restaurant’s wood-fired oven (named Sophia and imported from Modena, Italy), which is fueled with a steady diet of beech, oak and ash woods from nearby Andover.

The staff hand-tosses the dough daily for a lineup of red and white pizzas that include traditional favorites like the Pepperoni or Bianca, as well as inventive offerings like the Funghi or Gabagool.

“We want it to be as authentic and traditional as we can within the limitations of sourcing things,” Emde says. “We use Caputo [flour] from Italy, our tomatoes are San Marzano DOP [meaning they are certified as sourced from that region of Italy]. … We use the best mozzarella we can get out of Wisconsin.”

Emde suggests first-time customers try the Margherita, a simple pizza topped with tomato, fresh mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh basil and pecorino Romano cheese. He adds that the popularity of individual varieties seems to ebb and flow throughout the month. 

“Working the oven every day, it goes in waves,” Emde says. “There will be a week where it’s just a thousand Margheritas, and then the next week, it’s all Quattro Formaggis and Soppressatas.”

The wood-fired oven — surrounded by emerald-green tile and a curved bar of the same color — serves as a focal point of the restaurant’s interior design, and von Tesmar worked with a local carpenter to build booth-style seating in the windows and add custom benches. 

“To showcase that fire and be able to be up next to it and watch the pizzas being made was of really big importance to me,” von Tesmar says. “[It] highlights that artistry, and you can see that fire from the street when you’re driving by.” 

1035 Bridge St., Ashtabula 44004, 440/661-4061, nightsandweekendsohio.com

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