(gentle music) - Senape, it's both French and Italian for mustard seed.

And if you look in the Bible, the mustard seed is the smallest seed and makes the biggest plant.

(upbeat music) My grandfather and his wife decided to build the bar in 1908.

The back bar is that old, the walls, the floor, all from 1908.

So in 1921, they closed 'cause of Prohibition, and my grandfather started the bakery downtown.

The pizza at the bakery was the original Romano Pizza, which looks like this, the one Tommy just made.

In 1974, somebody asked for a square pizza with the Scamutz cheese on.

- We get that every time.

- Best in town.

- I get the square with half Scamutz and half Roman.

- You know Scamutz?

- [Gerard] Scamutz was what they called our cheese.

- It's Roman and mozzarella and a few other things.

- [Gerard] My wife and I, in September of '73, took over the bar.

- It's like a family type business.

One of us does one thing, the other one does the other thing.

So we complement each other.

- Picks up where I leave off, and sometimes I even pick up where she leaves off.

- And I see how hard they work and it makes me wanna work harder and strive more.

I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

I'm his son, if you didn't know.

- He'd sit in a high chair and watch, and then he'd stand here and try to make pizza.

- [Tom] And I enjoy doing it, I like making pizza.

I like hearing people's feedback on the pizza.

- Squares wants to go square, it wants to go.

(upbeat music) - I say pizza, they say pizza.

Well, the Montecalve's version of pizza, they used to call it Pitza, P I T Z A.

And that's where it came from.

(upbeat music) You know, you go out and get something like chicken tenders, and everybody's chicken tenders are close to the same thing.

But if you go to a different pizza place, they all have their specialties.

- There's the Scamutz, the Romana, and then we have Florentines and then whites.

- Because of Super Bowl Sunday, we used to put pizza out for the customers.

And it came to my mind that these customers every week, they ordered the same thing.

They never tried anything different.

So I said, gee, if we're gonna hand out pizza, we should give them a sampling.

Onions and olives, Roman, pepperoni, sausage and steak and peppers.

This gentleman came in with his daughter, his teenage daughter, and she said, "Hey dad, what's that?"

And he said, "It's an appetizer".

And I said, that's what it is, an appetizer.

It's an appetizer.

And so we've been making that for the last 23 years.

Very popular item.

It is popular.

(upbeat music) - [Tom] I just, I see how much people love the food, and it makes me love the place even more.

- I think it's the best square pizza around.

Just something we've always had.

- [Customer] Good food, nice people.

- I don't know, it's just good pizza.

- A lot of our business comes from word of mouth.

And a lot of customers come home.

When they come home, they come here, California.

We've had somebody come from Japan for pizza.

- You've got a real gem here.

It's just such a wonderful place.

I wish we had something like this in Colorado, but we do not, sadly.

- [Gerard] It's amazing that three generations, four generations now with Tommy, has kept the business going.

I guess we're going to still be here as long as it takes.

- We'll be here as long as God keeps us going, right?

(upbeat music)