STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Want a free pizza?  You’ll have to stand taller than to 6-foot-11 Kade Heitzman.

If you can exceed the silhouette of his brother--6-foot-9 Korbin Heitzman—that’s on the wall, you’ll get a free drink.

The Chamber and City of Hailey cut the ribbon Wednesday on the new Two Talls Pizza next to KB’s in Hailey. And it wasn’t but minutes before Kade’s old high school friends began streaming in to try pizzas with such names as Tropical Pig and Sunny Italian.

“I love pizza. I love the way it brings the community together,” said Kade. “Pizza has always been a passion of my family. Dad would make pizzas, throwing the dough in the air, as far back as I can remember. And we have a wood-fired pizza oven in the backyard so we’ll have pizza night and invite everyone over to help us eat it.”

Kade, 21, went to the University of Maine at Augusta on a basketball scholarship with the idea of becoming an orthodontist, having interned for two years with Dr. Kevin McMinn. But, after two years of school, he couldn’t imagine spending 10 additional years in school to become an orthodontist.

“I knew I wanted to return to the Wood River Valley—I love this area,” he said. “But I was at a crossroads—I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I realized I enjoyed the fast-paced environment of restaurant work—meeting the customers and all--when I worked six years for Wise Guy Pizza.  So, I decided to take the plunge with the help of my dad who has worked in the restaurant business.”

Planning the menu was a family effort. Kade’s younger sister came up with a dough made of soft pretzel flour mixed with regular flour, trying to follow her father’s admonition that a crunchy chewy crust is the Holy Grail in pizza.

Kade’s father Trent helped him construct a line of pizzas, including Kade’s favorite--the Buckeroo, which contains a spicy house sausage culled from local meat, mushrooms, onions and a drizzle of Mike’s Hot Honey, which adds a touch of sweetness to the spiciness.

“We use the best ingredients,” said Kade. “I come in at 6 every morning to make the dough fresh. The sausage is house made, and we’re sourcing organic tomatoes and herbs. There’s no sugar added in anything except the dough so everything is very healthy.”

Kade’s mother Kristy constructed the salads, which include The Grinder Salad, a bowl of lettuce tossed with Italian salami, fresh mozzarella cheese, pepperoncini peppers, artichoke hearts and chickpeas. The pizzeria also offers Buffalo Cauliflower Bites, a house made Italian Sausage Stuffed Portabella Mushroom topped with Mozzarella Cheese and a Caprese Stuffed Portabella Mushroom stuffed with mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes and drizzled with balsamic glaze and baked in garlic butter.

Kade’s brother Korbin will work at the restaurant this summer when he returns from Alma College in Michigan where he has a basketball scholarship.

The shiny new pizza ovens and dough stretchers are pretty nifty, too, Kade pointed out.

The dough stretcher, which resembles running pizza dough through a washing machine wringer, saves plenty of work. But Kade says he’ll finish the dough off with a toss in the air to add to the atmosphere.

The new 36-inch wide pizza oven that he got from Montreal, Canada, threads a pizza through the 72-inch long oven in five minutes. He can do it in two, if he’s in a big hurry, thanks to the oven’s black granite stones that can get up to 700 degrees.

“We had to have it cut in two to get it in the door without knocking out the window. And it took us a full day to assemble it. But we know it inside and out,” he said.

“And I know when I put a pizza in it that it’s going to come out perfect,” said Riley Crowson, Kade’s sidekick.

Hailey City council member Kaz Thea said that the city and council are excited about the new business: “The renovation they did is fabulous, bright and open and clean!”

“It’s too bad they didn’t get 2T license plates to go on wall, instead of the 1F and 5B plates, given their name,” added Cheryl Armstrong Fulton, office manager for The Chamber.

Trent Heitzman, who moved the family from Boulder, Colo., to Savannah, Ga., to Houston, Texas, before settling in the Wood River Valley, said he can’t wait to see the community gather around the family effort.

“Pizza brings out community as people sit around, all reaching for the same thing,” he said. “It’s a hands- on experience, an experience that’s meant to be eaten.”

IF YOU GO….

Two Talls Pizzeria is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays at 121 N. Main St, next to KB’s. Kade Heitzman hopes to extend hours to seven days a week as he hires more staff. The phone: 208-913-0523.