SAN ANTONIO – A local chef who works three jobs to help pay for his own business, Rebel Pizza, was robbed of his pizza oven Friday morning.
"I don't really do this for the money. It was to serve the community," Halston Conella, 30, said.
Conella has put in seven-day work weeks for more than half a year to buy his pizza cart. He spends six days at Brigid, an upscale new American restaurant in King William. After hours, he runs the Rebel Pizza cart at Bottom Bracket Bar on the west side off of North Colorado Street.
"Specialty pizzas, such as the caveman, which has blue cheese, burgundy truffles and sirloin steak," he said.
On Friday, a friend called to say his pizza cart had been stolen. Surveillance video at Bottom Bracket Bar shows thieves roll up in an SUV, hook up the cart and roll away with the $5,000 oven.
"I got a call Friday at about 1 in the morning saying, 'Somebody took it,'" Conella said. "I couldn't believe it. It's really a one-of-a-kind thing. What are they going to do with that?"
Right now, Rebel Pizza is mostly shut down thanks to the thieves, but Conella said he'll overcome culinary adversity one plate at a time.
"I'd like to get it back," he said.