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The newest pizza sensation in Old Town Bluffton is a name many on Hilton Head Island will recognize.

Dough Boys Pizza, which is in its 11th year of business on the island, has opened a second location at 1230 May River Road in the historic building that once was home to Scotts Market. More recently, the space was Bluffton Trading Post, though that closed in late 2022.

Now, rows of booths and tables covered with red-and-white-checked tablecloths stretch from the front to the back of the space.

Here are five things to know about the new Bluffton restaurant:

The brand new kitchen at the Bluffton restaurant, with a footprint of about 1,000 square feet, is the size of the entire restaurant on Hilton Head.

“The space when we took it over was just one big shoe box, so to speak,” said co-owner Chris Gregory. “We were able to transform it into what we hope is going to be a successful family pizza place.”

The larger kitchen and a dining area that seats up to 80 people — the whole restaurant is about 3,000 square feet — means a more pleasant experience for customers overall and the ability to serve larger parties.

“If you’re waiting for a pizza on the island and you’re waiting for a to-go pizza, you’re standing right next to somebody that is dining,” Gregory explained.

By contrast, the Bluffton restaurant has a small seating area and counter set up specifically for take-out customers.

“Hilton Head is 80% take out and delivery. We are hoping that will flip-flop here where it’s 80% dine in,” Gregory said.

The restaurant on Hilton Head offers delivery, but that’s not currently an option in Bluffton while the staff works up to creating and serving the full menu and dealing with online orders.

“We have a very good reputation on the island,” Gregory said. “We don’t want to tarnish that here, so we’re working at a pace that the food is the same quality, that the timing is the same.”

Once the staff gets to the point where the needs of the dine-in and take-out customers are being met efficiently, only then will delivery be an option.

“And when we do, we’ll use our own drivers,” Gregory said. “We take great care with the recipes and the menus and preparing the food. And I want someone that works for me delivering it.”

Mike Kelly, a longtime employee and now a partner in Dough Boys, is responsible for the restaurant’s pizza-making process.

He started making pizzas as a 16-year-old in New York, but that doesn’t mean the pies he turns out here are New York-style.

“We don’t try to replicate that. .... We make our own style of pizza,” Gregory said. “We have South Carolina pizza with the history of New York and Boston.”

“I kind of brought what I have to the table with different recipes and styles,” Kelly said.

The hand-tossed crust is soft and foldable, the sauce is made in-house with 12 different ingredients, and the toppings are fresh and generous. Dough Boys uses about 10 ounces of sauce and a pound of cheese on each large pizza.

“Pizza is one of those things that everybody has a different perspective about what pizza is,” Kelly said. “People love pizza so much that it automatically has high expectations. Hopefully, we can meet those expectations.”

Last year, Trip Advisor ranked Dough Boys as the best pizza on Hilton Head.

Gregory attributed that to Dough Boys’ consistency.

“Day one pizza and day 1,000 pizza should be the same,” he said. “If you like it once, you’re going to like it the next time you come in.”

A staff favorite is the Ben’s Banging Basil pizza. The hand-tossed crust is topped with pesto sauce, chicken, red onion, fresh basil, sliced tomato and cheese.

Ollie’s All the Way starts with a red sauce base and is topped with pepperoni, sausage, meatball, mushrooms, sweet onion, green pepper, black olives and cheese.

While pizza makes up the majority of orders, Dough Boys has an extensive menu otherwise.

“Pasta is one of the things that we get constantly asked for on the island,” Gregory said. With the extra kitchen space in Bluffton, Dough Boys eventually will be able to add more pasta options.

For now, the spaghetti and meatballs and the chicken parmesan are popular choices. The menu also includes a lineup of appetizers, calzones and subs, including a traditional Philly cheese steak.

“Everybody loves cheesy bread and garlic knots,” Gregory said.

There’s also a more unique section of the menu that offers unlimited customization: the chopped salads.

“We were visiting a friend of ours in New York City and went to a restaurant called Chopped, and it was sort of a Subway set up where you walked in the door, but it was all salad items, and you just went down the line and told them exactly what you wanted,” Gregory explained. “So we mimicked that here.”

At Dough Boys, there’s a list of salad ingredients on the table, and diners can choose exactly what they’d like their bowl to include.

“The salads are a home run. You can’t get a better salad,” Gregory said. “We joke around that if you don’t like it, it’s your fault because you chose the ingredients.”

Bonus tip for salads or as a dipping sauce: The ranch dressing, made in house, gets rave reviews.

Dough Boys in Bluffton has been open starting at 3 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and will be closed on Monday, March 25.

Beginning March 26, though, Gregory expects the restaurant to be open seven days a week, from 3 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 3 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Happy hour will be from 3 to 5 p.m. daily at the bar only for $1 off beer, $2 off wine or a slice of cheese pizza for 99 cents. Early dining from 3 to 4:45 p.m. includes a “2 for $20” menu.

“Parking during the day is an issue here, so that’s why we’re only doing nights currently,” Gregory said. “We hope to really start doing the business lunches and catering during the day. ... We’ll bring it to them during lunch.”

He said one of the differences between the Bluffton and Hilton Head locations is the amount of foot traffic, people jogging or walking dogs or pushing strollers, in Bluffton.

“I didn’t realize how many people drove their golf carts in Bluffton,” Gregory said, explaining that there is dedicated golf cart parking behind Dough Boys.

So far, the response to the Bluffton location has been positive.

“The third night we were here, we did more (business) than what we did on Hilton Head, and that was without advertising, without a website,” Gregory said. “We’re trying to just pick up what we did on Hilton Head and drop it out here over the bridge in a bigger location, and it’s been successful so far.”

One-year-old Joelle DeLeo sat in a stroller rattling a small plastic toy on a recent Thursday morning as activity buzzed around her. She was sitting in the middle of a soon-to-open restaurant that will bear her name in Bluffton.

Joelle, the restaurant, is located at 132 Bluffton Road, Suite 100, in a newly constructed building that also is home to a salon, an architecture firm and other businesses. It’s the result of years of planning and work by two generations of the family, and, if all goes well with a liquor license and town permits, they will be serving patrons from a “modern Italian” menu later this spring.

Robert and Breana DeLeo, the toddler’s parents and the restaurant’s owner, met while working in the hospitality industry in Charleston, later moved to New York, and now live in Bluffton. Robert’s family owns Island Restaurant Equipment on Hilton Head. His father also is one of the partners in the development of the center where the restaurant is located, making it a true family business.

The DeLeos’ vision for the restaurant is light and airy but still cozy. Breana described it as “modern, but not too modern.”

“We’re trying to go very Italian coastal, very neutral tones,” she said.

That Italian coastal theme echoes in the food served there.

Chef Brandon Torre has worked at The Ritz-Carlton, The Omni Hotel, The Westin Hotel and, most recently, Colleton River Club in Bluffton. He is planning a menu that offers wood-fired pizza and Italian fare including fresh, house-made pasta.

The food will be “from-scratch fresh,” Torre said. “You can usually make it better yourself.”

The goal is not to duplicate traditional Italian-American fare but offer more modern, refreshing and lighter takes.

“We want very unique, very chef-forward dishes with the Italian cuisine as the focal point,” Robert DeLeo said.

To the right of the entrance, Joelle’s bar area will seat 18 between at the bar and at three tables there.

The inside dining area will seat around 44 people at tables and booths, while the outside dining area will seat around 50 people. Between them are large sliding doors that can be left open on nicer days.

The restaurant will be open six days a week for lunch and dinner. It will be closed on Tuesdays.

Why Tuesdays? Many restaurants in Bluffton reduce their hours or close altogether on Sundays and Mondays.

“Coming from New York and coming from an Italian family, we always used to go out for Italian dinner on Sundays,” Robert DeLeo explained. “That’s kind of the day to go out for that cuisine. ... Why not try and compete on those two days when not many places are open?”

This story was originally published March 11, 2024, 11:14 AM.

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Al’s Aloha Kitchen is coming to Bluffton.

The restaurant, which marked its fifth anniversary of serving up poke bowls and smoothies on Hilton Head’s south end last summer, will be opening a second location along Buckwalter Parkway in the Washington Square development.

“We’re excited to be in a place that’s brand new,” said Alex Vitto, the restaurant’s owner.

The Bluffton restaurant will be larger than the Hilton Head location, but much of the extra space will be in the kitchen gearing it up for heavier year-round business instead of one with seasonal ebbs and flows on the island.

“We plan to be the fastest restaurant in Bluffton,” Vitto said.

He said he doesn’t plan to change the menu that customers regularly drive across the bridge for. It now features an assortment of poke bowls, superfruit bowls, coffee and smoothies.

“We’ve done so well with Aloha, I’m really not trying to mess with it too much,” he said. “Hopefully there will be more locations down the road.”

Vitto grew up on Hilton Head and has worked more than two decades in restaurants. Living and working with his wife Tori’s family at Sunset Suratt Surf Academy in Hawaii gave the couple inspiration first for Al’s Aloha Kitchen and then for a ramen restaurant called Nood, which they opened in Coligny Plaza in 2021.

Last year, they rebranded Nood from a walk-in restaurant into a hibachi catering business. They sold the physical location, which is now home to Bad Biscuit.

Alex Vitto wasn’t ready to commit to a specific opening date for the new Al’s Aloha Kitchen in Bluffton because the property is still being developed.

“Coming very soon,” he said.

Signs at the Washington Square location say Palmetto Running Company and Birdie James clothing and accessories store are also coming soon.

In the meantime, you can find Al’s Aloha Kitchen at 70 Pope Ave. on Hilton Head. The restaurant is open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Check out the menu or order online at alsalohakitchen.com.

With Mardi Gras season officially under way in Louisiana, Kenny B’s French Quarter Cafe is gearing up for the holiday in its new Bluffton location.

The restaurant that serves Cajun and Creole specialties for breakfast, lunch and dinner first opened on Hilton Head’s south end in 1999 and, last year, made the decision to move to a larger space just across the bridges.

Its new home is in Bridge Center, along U.S. 278 across from Moss Creek, and it quietly opened its doors to customers starting Dec. 27.

“I’ll be honest,” said chef and owner Ken Ballard, “it rejuvenated me doing this again. I had good memories from when we first started because that was a dream come true, you know, to finally get your own place.”

The building, once home to Thai Smile Cuisine, was extensively renovated over nearly a year to create a large waiting area for take-out orders and a spacious dining area with a combination of tables and booths and plenty of natural light.

There are reminders of the original location, with framed mementos and posters lining the walls. Ballard even had large canvases printed with photos of the iconic French Quarter mural that went from floor to ceiling at the Hilton Head restaurant.

The larger space also allowed for the creation of a vivid red “Dawghouse” room for fans of the University of Georgia bulldogs. Ballard’s own bulldog Beignet Bouchet (“BAYN-yay BOO-shay”), named for the Louisiana-style pastry fried and dusted with powdered sugar, is well represented among the photos.

All of Ballard’s employees moved to the new location, and he has also added additional staff.

While the space is new, customers can be reassured that the menu hasn’t changed.

Previously, all ordering was done on paper and customers were rung up on an old cash register. The new space now has a modern point-of-sale accounting system that allows pick-up orders to be placed online.

“I’ve had a good mix of my old customers from Hilton Head, a lot of them tourists that were here for the new year holidays came in. That that was the best sign of anything, that I know I will still get my summer people, as I call them,” Ballard said, “and then I’ve gotten a lot more people that live out here that would have never went down to Hilton Head.”

The lunch shift in particular has been busy with locals on their midday breaks from work.

Mardi Gras on Tuesday, Feb. 13, will be a customer appreciation day. Ballard hopes to have his license to serve beer and wine by then, but regardless, he plans lunch specials on po-boys, jambalaya, gumbo and muffalettas. Of course, there will be king cake; at Kenny B’s, those who find a plastic baby in their cake will get a prize.

On a recent day, two separate customers stopped to talk to compliment Ballard on the food and the space over the course of about 15 minutes.

“This is the best food ever,” said one woman who identified herself as from Ohio. “We have nothing like this.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2024, 9:12 AM.

Only three chefs were selected throughout the entire state

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BLUFFTON, S.C. —

A Bluffton chef is being recognized in a big way.

In this week's Lowcountry Living, we're sharing how she hopes to use her new title to bring positive change to the entire state of South Carolina.

Leslie Rohland is head chef and owner of The Cottage, The Juice Hive, May River Coffee Roasters, and the Bluffton Pasta Shoppe.

And she says her successful restaurant endeavors are thanks, in part, to her childhood.

“Really do the stuff that I remember as a child loving to see. My grandmothers, my grandfathers, my mother and my father do because everyone seemed to be a great cook back then. And just really taking the stuff I love to cook and then being able to serve it and put it on the table," said Rohland.

Rohland’s passion for cooking was just recognized by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster as she was named just one of three 2024 South Carolina Chef Ambassadors.

She’ll serve in this role for a year, and during that time, one of her main goals is to support local farmers.

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“It’s really nice to know where our food is coming from. It’s nice to be able to see the footprint of where the lettuce is from or the shrimp," Rohland said.

And she hopes her impact will last well beyond her time serving as Chef Ambassador.

“This is some information that really needs to be passed onto our kids. Kind of like the old days, you know, when you were creating recipes basically with what was in your backyard, said Rohland.

Roland says supporting local does more than just stimulate the economy; it also has health benefits for patrons.

“There’s nothing better, I think, than knowing what you’re eating, and knowing where it comes from. You know, we’ve all seen the labels on certain foods that are like, I can’t even pronounce that item. And this is just kind of like, ok, this came from up the road, and it’s strictly just eggplant," Roland said.

Rohland adds it was extra special to be selected as a South Carolina Chef Ambassador now as the program is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.