Wally’s — a slice of the pie

Pizza joint set to melt into Middletown life

By LEE NOBLE

lee.noble@heraldbulletin.com

MIDDLETOWN — Patty Lockhart stretches pizza dough on a 14-inch pan. The last of Wednesday’s lunch orders is being made. With a large metal spoon, she slathers pizza sauce over the dough’s sticky surface.

Patty spreads pepperoni carefully across the sauce, drops in sausage chunks, then sprinkles diced peppers, onions and sliced mushrooms.

A snowfall of grated cheese blankets all the ingredients. Patty slides the pizza onto her oven’s conveyor belt. Heat is blasting out of the machine, whirring like a miniature jet engine.

“It’s hard to believe that thing’s going to cook by the time it gets through there,” Patty says, peeking into the two-foot tunnel through which the pie is slothfully sidling. In five or six minutes, it will come out the other side steaming, with golden-browned cheese and crispy crust.

“Tell them, if they like it when mom cooks it, come back when the girls are working,” says Kevin Lockhart, watching over Patty’s shoulder.

The Lockharts, who are both approaching 50, own Wally’s Pizza and Hot Subs, a year-old business venture they’re running in downtown Middletown. Their “girls,” daughters Brittany, 25, and Aren, 20, both help out cooking, bringing pizza-making expertise from previous jobs.

The restaurant’s mascot and namesake is a dear member of the Lockhart’s household — their dog, a dachshund. Because of county health codes and his lack of experience, Wally has no official duties in food preparation and rarely, if ever, comes to the building, but he is integral to a recent marketing campaign.

His cartoon likeness graces the menu cover. Whether or not he knows it is a different story.

“We don’t tell Wally about it,” Kevin says. “Otherwise, he’d ask for a cut of the profits.”

Calling the business the Lockharts’ “pet project” is a bit cliché (and a shameless pun) but considering the circumstances, it’s quite appropriate.