Our story

Hi, we're Chuck and Sebby, the founders and co-owners of Mortadella Head.

We grew up together, eating in pizza and sub shops: big slices, meatballs, chicken parm, steak and cheese. Back then, “Mortadella Head” was a harmless way of calling somebody a dummy, or somebody whose head was shaped like a mortadella. It always cracked us up. So when we opened our own place, that was the name.

We'd already co-founded Boston Burger Company, but opening a place of our own was something we'd wanted to do for a long time. Before we opened, we took a few trips to Italy for inspiration. We learned to make Roman pizza in Rome from Gabriele Bonci, the “Michelangelo of Pizza.” We visited Vito Bernabei, the guy who makes the best porchetta in Italy, and ate way too many arancini in Sicily. Then, in 2018, we opened Mortadella Head in Davis Square, Somerville: a pizza and sub shop where we make everything from scratch. Today we own and operate three Mortadella Head restaurants, in Somerville and Wellesley, Massachusetts, and in Newport, Rhode Island.

Over the years, we kept hearing the same thing. People love real Italian-American food, the kind you'd have at an old-school Sunday dinner, but they don't have time to cook like their grandmother did.

We also wanted to make this food available to anyone in the US, so we figured out how to deliver restaurant-quality food directly to your door. We started making our favorite dishes for you: lasagna, manicotti, meatballs, eggplant parm and chicken parm. We make them by hand in our own kitchen in Woburn, Massachusetts, the same way we'd make them at home. Sauce from scratch, every lasagna layered by hand, every meatball rolled by hand. Then we freeze them, pack them cold in insulated boxes and ship them to your door.

Now our food goes all over the country. A New Jersey guy in Arizona gets a box of his favorites every month. A daughter keeps her mom's freezer stocked with our trays. Getting to reconnect people with the food they love is one of the best parts of this business.

We want families all over the country around the table at least once a week, eating real, old-school Italian-American food. We do the shopping, the chopping and the cooking. You just bake it and sit down.

That's what Mortadella Head is all about. We hope you love it.