Carl Valerius and Claudia Atallah at the shopfront earlier this week. Photo: Tahlia Crane.

After closing their doors in November 2020, Harden-Murrumburrah’s favourite pizza shop is set to reopen on May 26.

Claudia Atallah and the team at Twin Town Pizza have been hard at work putting the finishing touches to the store before it reopens next Wednesday.

Claudia said “It is very exciting to be opening again. I am really looking forward to it.”

There has been huge support from the community since announcing the shop will re-open.

“The community has been behind us one hundred percent, even when we were closed.” Claudia said.

It’s not just the local community looking forward to the re-opening, before it’s closure, Twin Town Pizza had people from as far as an hour and a half away coming to buy their food.

The store has a few upgrades with a new digital touch screen register which will speed up the ordering process at the front of the store.

There will also be another register located in the back to make ordering over the phone much easier.

Along with the upgrades, joining Claudia at the shop will be new staff members including Claudia’s son Eissa Atallah.

Eissa and his family will be moving to Harden from Port Macquarie to help Claudia run the business.

Twin Town Pizza will now have full time staff to also help with the workload after Claudia fell very ill last year.

“I ran myself into the ground which made me very sick. I really needed that time to get myself back to good health.”

Claudia said Once the store re-opens Claudia is looking forward to catching up with the customers.

“Being able to greet the customers as they walk in and being able to talk to them is something I am looking forward to.”

There will be a few new items on the menu including the falafel sandwich and Oscar’s Special, which will include chips, cheese, bacon, meat, chicken, gravy and sauce of your choice.

Twin Town Pizza will be teaming up with Carl Valerius to promote the famous ‘Bill the Bastard’ statue.

Claudia with the Bill the Bastard statue. Photo: Tahlia Crane.

“It is a great privilege to work with these lovely people. It’s great to see them back.”

Carl said photos and memorabilia of Bill the Bastard will be on display for customers of Twin Town Pizza to view.

Twin Town Pizza will be stocking Bill the Bastard memorabilia such as stubby holders and mugs.

There will also be Bill the Bastard inspired food items on the menu with a kebab, pizza, chips and burger on the Claudia believes that having the Bill the Bastard memorabilia will bring more people into the shop.

“We had a lot of people come in prior to the Bill the Bastard memorabilia but before we closed we had a lot of people buying the memorabilia as we are in a convenient location.”

Visitors have been flocking to Murrumburrah to see the Bill the Bastard statue with tourists coming from places as far as Perth, Darwin and the Sunshine Coast.

A lot of the visitors have been coming to town since Bill appeared on the ABC program Landline.

Twin Town Pizza will be opened from 10:30am til close, which will be no earlier than 8pm, Wednesday to Sunday.

Tahlia Crane