We might as well get this out of the way right up front, before everybody walks face-first into it: No, the “Redneck Pasta” at Grizzly Pizza isn’t really pasta.
“… but it is really redneck,” said Nick Karvelas, delivering the punchline with gusto.
We’ll come back to that dish in a minute, and we’ll talk about a pizza that uses a sauce made with Dr. Pepper. But first let’s consider the story of two brothers who are redefining the term “a house divided.” In Alabama, it usually refers to a household with mixed football allegiances. In parts of Alabama, it now also can mean the side-by-side concept operated by brothers Nick and Al Karvelas: Grizzly Pizza & Wings on one side, Fat Al’s Burger Joint on the other.
They opened in Atmore at the end of August in 2023. Members of their family operate half a dozen pizza restaurants in Georgia, and that’s where they learned the business. Atmore, a town of about 8,300 located on the other side of Alabama, might not seem like an obvious choice of place to venture out on their own.
They were drawn in part by the fact that they had relatives there. They also opened in time to become part of a revival that has turned downtown Atmore into a very picturesque place to be, with a restored century-old theater, public spaces brightened by murals, a restaurant that has become a regional draw for foodies and a selection of boutique shops.
Fat Al’s and Grizzly’s fit right in, with their crowd-pleasing menus and a free-spirited atmosphere. Not to mention some pretty entertaining murals of their own. Want to see Tony Montana in full “say hello to my little friend” mode, except he’s holding a giant pizza slice and firing pepperoni slices and an army of robots? Go to Atmore.
No, I can’t explain it. But I can say it gives you something more fun to look at than your phone, in the brief time it takes for your food to hit the table.
On the Fat Al’s side, the menu hews to the smashburger tradition of keeping things simple. You can get your burger as a single, double, or triple. You can get the Classic (house burger sauce, cheese, lettuce, pickles), Iconic (ketchup, mustard, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion) or Cowboy (BBQ sauce, cheese, bacon, onion straws, jalapenos). Combo prices range from $11 to $16. Whichever you order, it’ll hit the table in a plain white paper bag.
I opted for the Patty Melt Smash. Topped with burger sauce, cheese and grilled onions, it’s a tasty variation. They say it’s “ultra-smashed to perfection” and they’re not kidding: You could stack three of them and not strain your jaws to take a bite. There are a couple of fried chicken sandwich options. They don’t smash those, which probably is for the best.
Next door at Grizzly, the menu is bigger, though not exactly complicated: Wings and tenders with an array of house-made sauces, pizzas that come in just two sizes (12” and 15”) and one style of crust (thin but not super-thin). Ready-made options cover the basics you’d expect – chicken bacon ranch, meat lover’s, buffalo, supreme. Prices start at $14.99 for some of the small pizzas and range up to $26.99 for a large supreme.
These are some solid pizzas: The crust has character; the toppings are plentiful and of high quality. While they may not rewrite the pizza playbook, they’re executed with care and the occasional twist, such as the use of both green and black olives on the supreme. You come away feeling like you’ve gotten a scratch-made, handcrafted pizza at nearly fast-food speed. It’s a win.
Grizzly Pizza recently opened in Daphne, with an adjacent Fat Al’s to follow in the very near future. The fact that the Karvelas brothers are already expanding, after barely two years in operation, illustrates that in Atmore, they hit upon some things that worked.
“Our wings would really put us on the map,” said Nick Karvelas. “A lot of it is that we get a really high quality, expensive wing. It’s all fresh, never frozen. And then we have 10 custom house-made wing sauces, with ranch and bleu cheese to go with it. I mean, the ranch alone, people will come in and buy ranch because it’s so good.”
“Just to put it into perspective, just in Atmore alone, it’s around 1,000 pounds of chicken that we sell in a week,” said Al Karvelas. “I mean, it’s a lot of chicken we go through.”
“We kind of call ourselves fried chicken experts,” said Nick Karvelas. “We feel like we’ve perfected the recipe to amazing wings and fries and ranch and then we’ve transferred that over to the pizza. Our top selling pizzas have our chicken tenders on them.”
“Our number one seller’s fried chicken and our number one selling pizza has got fried chicken on it,” confirmed Al Karvelas.
Finding some things that work and then leveraging them to maximum advantage is a sound strategy. That’s how Redneck Pasta recently added to the menu.
“We were just thinking of maybe doing some new stuff,” said Al Karvelas. “And pasta is something everyone loves, but we don’t have pasta in the restaurant. Nick was like, ‘Well, what if we use French fries and call it Redneck Pasta?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, but that sounds like an awesome idea.’”
It’s not pasta. But it’s hard to argue with loaded fries, whatever you call them. These come in chicken bacon ranch, Buffalo ranch and chicken parm, all of which are $10.49 for a portion that’s an ample meal for one or a shareable snack for several.
The make-the-most-of-what-you’ve got theme also brought us the Bama Blitz, which arguably is Grizzly’s flagship pie. It’s absolutely loaded with chopped-up chicken tenders and bacon, but what really sets it apart is one of the sauces developed for Grizzly’s wings.
“We came up with a homemade Dr. Pepper barbecue sauce,” said Nick Karvelas. “It’s a bunch of ingredients, but the base of it is your standard barbecue sauce [with] ketchup, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar. And then we mix some various spices in there and then pour a two-liter of Dr. Pepper in it and then cook it on the stove for an hour.”
The aroma of the Bama Blitz is unlike anything else: Pizza toppings, barbecue sauce and … something different. As you would expect, the Dr. Pepper sweetens things up quite a bit: it tastes more like a glaze than a sauce, in the sense that under the sweetness its foundation is still on the savory side of the spectrum. It’s a tangy sweetness, and pickle slices help push the balance away from being overly sweet.
Is everyone going to like it? No. But it’s one of those sneaky things that, for many, will seem weird-but-not-bad at first and then gradually leave you wanting more.
It’s available now in Atmore and at the brand-new location in Olde Towne Daphne. Daphne is maybe not the most logical spot for a second location, in that it’s an hour’s drive from Atmore, but it’s kind of a homecoming for the Karvelas brothers. They spent part of their childhood there. Nick, who’s now 32, was in middle and high school at the time; Al, now 26, was in elementary school.
“I think part of it is just the fact that we already knew about it,” said Al Karvelas. “Daphne, especially old town Daphne, we were just really intrigued by it. It was a really cool area. A really big, popular, busy area. And also with our two-restaurant concept, it worked out great. This building is two restaurants with two separate kitchens. It just kind of fit our model perfect.” (The location, at 1709 Main St., was long the home of dual-concept restaurants Guido’s and Cousin Vinny’s.)
“It made sense for us business wise, it made sense for our concept,” said Nick Karvelas. “But then you also add the backstory and the history of us living here and walking through this area, when I was a kid, and eating here. When I was a kid, our mom worked at some of the restaurants here in Olde Towne as a waitress. A full circle moment is the term we keep using.”
It’s a family effort: The brothers say Nick’s wife, Alexis, and Al’s wife, Abbie, are an integral part of the business.
But the brotherly bond is at the heart of it. “I think for me, I really rely on Nick’s leadership,” said Al Karvelas. “Obviously we fought [as kids], but especially in our adult lives and now our careers, I think us doing it together has made it way more fun for me. Way more exciting. And I look at it as being fortunate. You know, I have someone there to back me up and help me out. Hopefully I can do the same for him.”
“We’re brothers, but we’ve also done really well with give and take and working together,” said Nick Karvelas. “It’s been the number one key to our success.”
“We definitely don’t deal with anything ego-related or jealousy-related,” said Al Karvelas. “We just want each other to be successful, so we try not to let anything get in the way.”
A house divided? Not really. Maybe they should call it a menu divided. But even there, the brothers are on the same page.
“The restaurants we do, the food we make, is where we would like to go,” said Nick Karvelas. “So that’s kind of how the restaurant is set up. The food that you eat from us is the food that we eat.”
Fat Al’s burger Joint and Grizzly’s Pizza & Wings are located at 102 W. Church St. in Atmore and 1709 Main St in Daphne. They’re open for lunch and dinner, seven days a week. For menus, online ordering and more information, visit www.thegrizzlypizza.com.
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