Carrying on the family business: Gosi’s Artisan Woodfire keeps it small and traditional

MOSES LAKE — If you head on over to 1571 Yonezawa Blvd., right behind Wendy’s and the Tacos El Rey Taqueria, you won’t find a building there.

But you won’t quite find a vacant lot, either.

Instead, you’ll see a trailer with a wood-fired brick oven emitting some of the most delightful and delectable smells you will encounter in the Columbia Basin right about now.

It’s pizza. In fact, it’s Gosi’s Artisan Woodfire, the latest venture of Nic Galfano, the former owner of Guido’s Brick Oven Pizza on West Broadway.

“We do brick oven pizza, that’s what we do,” Galfano said in the tiny confines of the trailer it took him months to build. “We do sandwiches and salads too. That’s what we do.”

It’s a way for Galfano to carry on a long family tradition of making pizza without the hassle of having a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The idea, Galfano said, was to be mobile, to do catering, to take pizza to people without being held down by a building.

And it gives Galfano and his niece Nakia Reynolds — his only employee — the advantage of pulling up stakes and serving pizza to crowds, while at the same time having something akin to a set restaurant without all of the responsibilities.

“Getting rid of Guido’s was hard, but it’s what had to happen,” Galfano said. “We wanted to do a couple of other things without being tied down. So it was good for us, we’re happy.”

Gosi has been on this lot since September 2020. There’s no place to sit, though a couple of barrels with tabletops on a concrete pad suggest when the weather gets better, there will be an outside place to sit, eat pizza and socialize. But right now, Galfano said nearly all of his business is take-out.

“It doesn’t pay right now to have a sit-in space right now, and I don’t know when that’s going to change,” he said.

Yet, Galfano said when he took the trailer on the road, to sporting events and parking lots, he was always asked the same question — “Where can we find you?”

Because that’s the secret to running a successful food truck — making sure it’s regularly in the same place to develop a reliable clientele. So, the compromise is the field along Yonezawa.

“We were bouncing around,” he said. “It can be very confusing unless you’re in a big city and you go to the same spot where you’re going to capitalize off these big plants or offices, that kind of stuff. Here, it creates confusion. We’re doing pretty well here, it’s a nice spot.”

“It’s paying off,” Reynolds added. “We’ve got lots of regulars.”

Central to the food at Gosi is family. Even the name is an acronym created from the first names of his children Gage, Olivia, Sophie and Isaac. The recipes are family recipes, handed down from his grandfather Frank — a lifelong restauranteur — through his parents Mario and Deanna and successfully used at Guido’s.

Galfano just unveiled a new menu featuring a selection of 10-inch pizzas, everything from the “Loaded Gosi,” with the works, to a barbecue steak pizza, a pulled pork pizza and a bacon and ranch pizza with feta cheese.

All made fresh. Because there’s no place to store much of anything in the tiny trailer that is their kitchen.

“If you need something for a salad or a sandwich, you have to reach across each other,” Reynolds said.

There are fewer choices with sandwiches and salads, but Galfano said he always has changes running through his head.

“These recipes are old and we haven’t changed them one bit,” he said. “My dad made it clear that if I’m doing anything, I’m taking his dough and his red sauce.”

It’s very important, Galfano said, to continue this family work, and he often feels like he’s not doing it simply for himself, but for his parents and his grandparents. That he’s cooking, and serving, with several generations standing both behind him and with him.

“It may be me, but it’s not just me,” he said.

This first trailer is only a start, Galfano said, possibly scattered across town, and possibly here in this lot, each serving something a little different.

“I want four of these,” he said. “If you come here, this will serve pizza, the next one will be sandwiches, you can have a variety of all this stuff.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.