Additional Images

After starting such Burlington hotspots as Club Metronome, Red Square, and Half Lounge, Jack O’Brien has turned his attention to a new field: pizza.

“I think that pizza has been a food that has been, until recently, left dormant,” he said.

O’Brien opened Bite Me Organic Pizza, which uses local organic ingredients, in Burlington last September.

The St. Paul Street eatery features pies heaped with a wide range of ingredients – everything from crawfish to grapes – and bearing quirky names, like Sober Irish Person and Absolute & Compliant BBQ Chicken. The locale also offers calzones and focaccia – identified on the menu as “God’s choice.”

For those who want to control their toppings, the menu has a sign that reads: “Think about it. We’ll make you whatever you want. (Seriously).”

O’Brien said almost all the ingredients – like the meats, cheeses, flour, even the barbeque sauce – come from Vermont. “It’s all about local, keeping it within the community and using the resources that we have here to create food that could be from anywhere on the planet, but it’s from here.”

O’Brien said he’s been rolling the idea of an organic pizza place around in his head for about six or seven years.

“I’ve always had an interest in pizza, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” he said. “When I woke up to the whole food fraud, I was sure I wanted to do it.”

O’Brien said a lot of the big companies that people grew up thinking were part of the fabric of American society use artificial ingredients and genetically modified products, which he called food fraud.

“I think that people want an alternative to that, and people are waking up exponentially,” he said.

“Bite me” was the favorite saying of a waitress who worked for O’Brien years ago, and it stuck in his head, he said. Despite the objections of a few people who took offense to the name, O’Brien said the reaction to Bite Me Organic Pizza has been “amazing, good, positive.”

“It tastes better, it’s better for you, and the money stays here,” he said. “To me there’s no other choice.”

Check out a full menu at bitemeorganicpizzavt.blogspot.com, or call 540-0707.