More Naked food

Jacob Kepler

PJ Schaeffer and Christopher Palmeri are kitchen professionals, so when they couldn’t find somewhere to get their drunk munch on, they built one themselves.

By Sarah Feldberg

Thursday, April 29, 2010 | 5:46 p.m.

Chock it up to the homemade roasted meats, the neighborhood vibe or the fact that, next door to Dino’s, they serve just the kind of hearty-not-heavy food you crave after a couple of rounds of beer and karaoke, but Chris Palmeri and PJ Schaeffer’s Naked City Sandwich Shop quickly has become a staple of the Downtown dining scene.

Now they’re getting ready to grow. Palmeri and Schaeffer are prepping to open another Naked City eatery, this one focused on pizza and housed inside Moondoggies Bar at Desert Inn Road and Arville Street. Naked City Pizza Shop will be modeled after a Buffalo, New York-style pizzeria and will serve wings, subs, pastas, salads and desserts along with the pies. Despite the broader menu, Palmeri assured us the emphasis on freshness would be the same in the new space. “It will stick to the same principle of everything possible being produced from scratch, in-house,” he said via email. And that Buffalo flavor? As authentic as it comes. Palmeri himself is heading home to network with suppliers for the “key ingredients” on the new menu.

With the restaurant slated to launch in early June, the west side is poised to get more Naked-ly delicious.