For SIU alum Serina Cinnamon, owner of Quatro’s, pizza is everything. She bought the business in 2023 from Steve Payne after living in North Carolina for a decade. People would give her recommendations on pizza places; however, she would still make frequent trips to Carbondale just for the pizza. 

“There are towns that have pizza, and then there are pizza towns,” Cinnamon said. “I think Carbondale qualifies as a pizza town. You can get just about any kind of pizza that you want.” 

Pizza is one of the biggest industries in Carbondale, which consists of around six local and seven chain restaurants. Most of the local spots are within a half of a mile from downtown.

Most of the business owners agreed that they do not feel like the other local pizza restaurants are their competition. Lucas Rose, co-owner of Rip’s Brickoven Pizzeria and a 2018 SIU alum, said “everybody kind of has their own lane that they stick to.” 

“Not only is there a good variety… but everybody has their own style,” Rose said. 

Rip’s opened a little over a year and a half ago and is one of the only pizza places in Carbondale that serves brick oven pizza. They also serve rotisserie chicken and meatballs and have been working on home-brewed beer as well, which Rose is hoping to start serving within 60 days. 

“I think there’s room for all of us because they are all so standout,” Leslie Light, owner of Italian Village, said. “I support anyone who wants to go to any of them because it’s what you have taste for that day.” 

Light is a SIU alum and said that part of being an SIU student is trying all the different pizza places. 

“That’s part of the fun of being in a college town,” she said. 

Light said she is not in competition with chains, either.

“I’m not out to compete with like the Dominoes and the Pizza Huts of the world, because we’re not, you know, cranking out commercial pizzas like that,” Light said. “We are handcrafting, making inhouse dough, much like, I’m sure, Quatro’s and Pag’s does.”

Light is new to the pizza industry as she and her husband bought Italian Village at the end of November 2024. She is not new to business, though. She has a background in the concrete industry. 

Simply Slices is the newest edition that serves a drive-thru style pizza that can be purchased by the slice along with shaved ice and slushies. They opened on Sept. 9, and the Carbondale location is the third the owner has opened. 

The business may be new to Carbondale, but it’s not new to the pizza industry. 

“I had two of them up in Chicago, and I came down here to kind of retire and I saw this building, so I was like, I’m going to open a thousand Simply Slices,” Simply Slices owner Dino Pavoni said. “I got three down and 997 to go.”

Pavoni started working for a pizza company in 1972, and bought Mango’s Pizza with the help of an investment from a professor after he graduated from college. It inspired Pavoni to push for a dream of a drive-thru pizza establishment and in 1998, with help from a childhood friend, the first Simply Slices was built. 

The business has Illinois locations in Crestwood and Mokena as well. Pavoni has also been featured in an episode of “World’s Strictest Parents” and was almost featured on “Shark Tank.” 

Pavoni sees Carbondale’s other local pizza places as indirect competitors while the fast food places nearby are his competition. 

“I don’t have a phone here. I don’t do mobile. I don’t do delivery,” Pavoni said. He said he offers quick pizza that is easy to eat in your car. 

Lots of the pizza businesses in town have started growing as well. Quatro’s, which just celebrated its 50 year anniversary, expanded the restaurant and is planning to make some kitchen upgrades in the near future. 

“We did our first expansion in March of 2024, just in time for the eclipse,” Quatro’s owner Cinnamon said. “That’s when we put a hole in the wall and moved and expanded into the former Jerry’s Flower Shop.”

They even added a ramp connecting the upper and lower dining room, making the restaurant fully accessible. 

Rip’s Brick Oven Pizzeria recently expanded its menu, adding items like different types of salads and a skillet cookie. They still remain committed to their $5 rotisserie chicken, as well, co-owner Rose said. 

Rose is interested in expanding more but said he is doing so slowly to focus on continuing to serve high-quality items. 

“It started off very simple and then we just sort of grew as things made sense,” he said. 

Pizza is part of the tradition and culture of Carbondale. Every pizza place in town is one slice of a whole pie.

“That tradition and those stories that we hear from our customers and the signatures on the walls, are just, there’s something,” Italian Village owner Light said. 
”It’s something that you just can’t experience unless you really go there or you hear the stories.”

At Quatro’s, Cinnamon, who has traveled a lot, said Carbondale’s pizza scene rivals any other town’s offerings. 

“I’ll put our pizza town up against other pizza towns,” she said. 

It can be overwhelming to enter such a large market. When Rip’s first looked into options for offering more than pizza, they decided to research and look around for equipment rather than taking out a loan to buy brand new equipment. 

“We thought it was pretty cool, and then we realized, like, how expensive it would have been to purchase, because it’s a custom-made rotisserie,” Rose said. “It’s open, it’s not like a lot of traditional ones you might see where… you don’t really get to see what’s going on. So ours are like directly open fire, and you can see them kind of spinning.”

Light talked about how going from one market to another is challenging. 

“We had to learn everything from the brand up,” Light said. “Was it challenging? One hundred percent, but it was so exciting to do, and I don’t regret a minute of it.” 

Digital Editor Peyton Cook can be reached at [email protected], or on Instagram at @cookmeavisual.

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