Used to Be There: Cavalieri's Wood Street Bakery
"Put your wiener where your mouth is!"
This business is permanently closed.
366 Wood Street, Bristol
(401) 254-xxxx
woodstpizza@cox.net
There aren't too many bakeries around that also sell hot wieners. We can only think of one—this one. And far from being an afterthought or weird sidelight, wieners at Wood Street Bakery share top billing along with pizzeria-style pizzas, pizza strips, calzones, pasta dishes, and deli-style sandwiches. What you won't find at this bakery are cakes, pies, or pastries (but they do have cookies, brownies, and cannoli).
But let's start with the wieners. Of course you can get them the traditional way—bun, mustard, meat sauce, etc. But have you ever had a hot wiener pizza? Woods Street Bakery will make one for you. It's a bakery-style pizza crust covered with all the hot wiener fixin's, and with the wieners themselves sliced up like thick little pepperonis.
Not content to merely gift the world with this perverse hybrid of pizza and wiener, the bakery has held a hot wiener eating contest each Labor Day weekend since 2007.
Here are the contest deets, as of 2013: $10 entry fee, refunded if contestant finishes ten wieners within the time allotted. The winner, as determined by a panel of three judges, is s/he who eats the most wieners within twenty minutes. Winner receives $100, a t-shirt, and GLORY. Second place, $20 and a t-shirt. Third place, a t-shirt. The rules: all wieners are fully-loaded with the works, contestants are allowed one drink, no dunking, no bathroom breaks, no vomiting, and no touching other contestants.
The record is eighteen wieners in twenty minutes, set by a guy in a Spider-Man costume in 2011.
A few other items worth noting on Cavalieri's generous menu: Stuffed quahogs; a pizza called The Godfather (sliced meatballs, sweet Italian sausage, eggplant, marinara, mozzarella cheese, and sprinkled with basil and Parmesan), and another called The White Quahog (white pizza with fresh native chopped quahogs, bacon, roasted onions, and Italian spices). Calzones include variants like Italian Grinder, Chourico, Chourico and Peppers, and Sausage and Peppers.
So, when hungry in Bristol, visit Cavalieri's Wood Street Bakery, in business on Wood Street since 1989.
Update, October 29, 2021: Wood Street bakery quietly closed up shop sometime after October 29, 2020. That's when they posted the last post on their newly created Facebook page. With no announcement either in social media or traditional media, we can only speculate that the business was another victim of the Covid-19 pandemic era.
Update, October 7, 2021: EastBayRI.com reports that CP's Catering and Sandwich Shop, an offshoot of the nearby Common Pub, has opened in Wood Street Bakery's place.