Five minutes after Vinnie’s reopened its doors, the classic Concord pizzeria had its first customer. Michael Arsenault pulled his car up to a building that has hardly changed in his lifetime, wondering if things would be different on the inside. He asked for two slices.

When Arsenault was growing up right down the street from Vinnie’s, his older brother would send him running to pick up pizzas in between commercial breaks on The Ed Sullivan Show.

“When Vinnie’s closed, I felt terrible,” Arsenault said. “It was a staple.”

The restaurant he walked into Wednesday had the same old photographs on its walls — a signed picture of Sean O’Grady, former lightweight boxing champion of the world, an autographed shot of a minor league pitcher — but a spruced-up look.

Wednesday morning, owners Scott Austin and Greg Tandy reopened the restaurant after a year’s closure. They committed to the project in January, and it took the partners six months to get things running — later than their planned May 1 opening date, but still a quick turnaround.

Austin and Tandy have a little more work to do before they can call the restaurant fully ready: Comcast needs to connect their phone, Pepsi has to deliver its sodas and they should figure out how much a slice is going to cost. But thanks to Chef Mike Ascani, the pizza, at least, is cooking.

“Everyone’s been waiting for it,” Austin said. “That door gets rattled nonstop.”

The slices come out on a thin crust, crisp and doughy and just a tad sweet. A thin layer of sauce — which Austin says the kitchen makes from San Marzano tomatoes — hides under a blend of cheese, mozzarella and a smoked provolone that adds a bite. If you opt for pepperoni, the cup and char pieces curl at the edges and pool with warm grease. Little flecks of oregano peek out between them. The slice, served on a round metal plate, holds just sturdy enough that it doesn’t need to fold but will do so easily. 

In more ways than one, reopening Vinnie’s has been about consistency. Austin wants the business to feel the same as it always has, but with improvements. He and Tandy kept the old photographs, along with the tables and chairs that have sat in the restaurant for years. But they repainted the walls and ceiling and replaced the kitchen tile with laminate wood flooring. They installed two flat-screen televisions to project their menu once they have things properly set up. 

So the restaurant does not look exactly like the Vinnie’s “Pizzaria” that opened on South Main Street 70 years ago with its green misspelled sign, but the important stuff remains. The menu has grown a bit, now offering the “Parma Sutra,” an Italian sub sandwich with chicken parmesan inside, and “Italian egg rolls,” deep-fried pieces of mozzarella and salami encased in a won ton wrapper. But things stay classic with the pizza: Austin and Tandy say they modified the sauce recipe to simplify it with fresher produce so that it effectively imitates Vinnie’s original.

“We had long conversations discussing what each ingredient in sauce does,” Austin said.

The restaurant took longer than expected to open for one main reason: Nailing consistency with recipes takes time. For the Vinnie’s team, deciding what its pizza should look and taste like was not hard; making that happen every time, however, posed challenges.

“Consistency is much harder than most people realize,” Austin said.

He can thank his chef for figuring it out. Ascani has never led a kitchen before, but his culinary experience leaves a trail all over Concord, from Margaritas to Smokeshow Barbeque to Tandy’s. Now, he’s ready to lead an all-hands-on-deck style kitchen, where every employee knows how to check out guests in between stretching dough and putting pizzas in the oven.

Ascani himself takes care of the sauce. It only takes him a few minutes, in the morning before opening or at night after closing, to simmer the secret recipe.

For Austin, keeping Vinnie’s alive should come quite easily. The real-estate agent and business owner operated the pizzeria from 2017 until 2021, when he stepped away.

“We’re just trying to get it back to the way it was,” Austin said. “A really good pizza shop.”

Vinnie’s is now open for service Wednesday and Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Friday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Sophie Levenson can be reache d at slevenson@cmonitor.com.