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In 1905, Gennaro Lombardi applied to the New York City government for the first license to make and sell pizza in this country, at his grocery store on Spring Street in what was then a thriving Italian-American neighborhood. In 1912, Joe's Tomato Pies opened in Trenton, New Jersey. Twelve years later, Anthony (Totonno) Pero left Lombardi's to open Totonno's in Coney Island. A year later, in 1925, Frank Pepe opened his eponymous pizzeria in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1929, John Sasso left Lombardi's to open John's Pizza in Greenwich Village. The thirties saw pizza spread to Boston (Santarpio's in 1933) and San Francisco with the opening of Tommaso's (1934), followed shortly thereafter with additional openings in New Jersey (Sciortino's in Perth Amboy in 1934 and the Reservoir Tavern in Boonton in 1936). In 1943, Chicago pizza was born when Ike Sewell opened Uno's. What did New York, New Haven, Boston, and Trenton have in common? Factory work available to poorly educated southern Italian immigrants. Pizza at this point was very much an ethnic, poor person's food eaten by Italians in the urban enclaves in which they had settled.

The pizza at most of the early American pizzerias was thin-crusted and casalinga in style. This kind of pizza is still being made all along the Jersey Shore at places such as Pete and Elda's/Carmen's in Neptune and Vic's in Bradley Beach, on Long Island at Eddie's in New Hyde Park, and in Chicago at the aforementioned Vito & Nick's. I've eaten at many of these pizza taverns in researching A Slice of Heaven. The pizza tends to be very good, it's always made by hand, and it tastes great as long as you don't overanalyze it. It's true that none of this pizza is as good as the classic coal-fired pies that were coming out of the ovens in New Haven and New York and even Trenton before they changed over to gas. But that doesn't matter. This pizza was honest, handmade food that brought people together. Pizza is, after all, the ultimate populist, minimalist food.

But the chains haven't won the war. I found there are still hundreds of independents selling good, honest, handmade pizza all over the country, and it's these pizza makers that I've tried to identify and celebrate in A Slice of Heaven. I'm sure I haven't hit them all, and for that I apologize. Please let me know about the ones I've missed. No matter where you live, you can find them. And you don't have to be a food critic to be able to taste the difference. The best pizza has the taste of great handmade food; it's the taste of love and family and community, and it's the taste we all should seek out no matter what we want to eat. The chains are not going to go away, but that doesn't mean we have to eat at them if we have a choice. And in most places we do have a choice. We might have to pay a little more for a pie, but what we get in return is a better-tasting pizza made by hand, with love and perhaps with a local ingredient or two.

The pizza-eating habit spread quickly to workers on their lunch hour, families looking for a cheap and satisfying meal out, and bar habitués looking for a food chaser for their alcohol. It is no coincidence that so many pizzeria/bars opened up after the end of Prohibition in 1933. And unlike other classic American foods such as hot dogs, meat loaf, ham sandwiches, and hamburgers, pizza was a perfect communal food. In fact, it was meant to be shared. There were no slices in most places, so you needed a group to order and eat a pizza. The group could be coworkers, teammates on a ball team, or a family.
Our knowledge of Roman cookery derives mainly from the excavations at Pompeii and from the great cookery book of Marcus Gavius Apicius called “De Re Coquinaria.”  Apicius was a culinary expert and from his writings, he provided us with information on ancient Roman cuisine.  It is recorded that so great was Apicius’ love of food that he poisoned himself for fear of dying of hunger when his finances fell into disarray.  Apicius’ book also contains recipes which involve putting a variety of ingredients on a base of bread (a hollowed-out loaf).  The recipe uses chicken meat, pine kernels, cheese, garlic, mint, pepper, and oil (all ingredients of the contemporary pizza).  The recipe concludes the instruction “insuper nive, et inferes” which means “cool in snow and serve!”

In 1905, the owner of the bakery/grocery store offered to sell the store to young Gennaro, who jumped at the chance.  Within a few years, he realized that while bread and groceries were business, the future was made of pizza.  Lombardi wanted to have a real American pizza business, and so acquired that first pizza-selling license for his location at 53 1/2 Spring Street.  A downturn in the economy forced it to close its doors in 1984.
The mainstreaming of pizza into American life began after World War II, when American GIs stationed in Italy returned home with a hankering for the pizza they had discovered overseas. In 1945, one of these returning soldiers, Ira Nevin, combined his eating experiences during the war with the know-how he had gained repairing ovens for his father's business to build the first gas-fired Bakers Pride pizza oven. These pizza ovens allowed retailers to bake pizzas quickly, cleanly, efficiently, and cheaply. Armed with a little knowledge, a Bakers Pride oven, and a by-then ubiquitous Hobart Mixer, aspiring pie men were ready to go into business.

In the book, Fine di un Regno, by Raffaele De Cesare and published in 1895, cites that the Pizzeria di “Pietro” had already been operating for more than a century.  This evidence is further strengthened in the book La Neapolitan pizza by Gabriele Benincasa claims that the pizzeria is older based on the fact that the first owner was probably not the famous Pietro il Pizzaiolo (in that century Pietro Calicchio) but his father Giovanni who had been in business already in 1760.  This restaurant still exists today and is still being run by the family.

79 A.D. – In the ashes after Mount Versuvius erupted and smothered Pompeii on August 24, 79 A.D., evidence was found of a flat flour cake that was baked and widely eaten at that time in Pompeii and nearby Neopolis, the Greek colony that became Naples.  Evidence was also found in Pompeii of shops, complete with marble slabs and other tools of the trade, which resemble the conventional pizzeria.  The Museo Nazionale at Naples exhibits a statue from Pompeii which because of its stance is called I pizzaiolo.
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1950s – It was not until the 1950s that Americans really started noticing pizza.  Celebrities of Italian origin, such as Jerry Colonna, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, and baseball star Joe DiMaggio all devoured pizzas.  It is also said that the line from the song by famous singer, Dean Martin; “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that amore” set America singing and eating pizzas.

In 1895 Gennaro Lombardi, at the age of 14 and already a bread maker by trade, emigrated from Naples, Italy, and came to New York where he made pizza in a bakery/grocery store on Mulberry Street, using the same dough recipe his father and grandfather had used in Naples.

What changed the pizza-scape in this country forever was the proliferation of chains. Pizza Hut started in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958; Little Caesar's emerged in 1959 and Domino's in 1960 (both in Michigan); and Papa John's opened in 1989 in Indiana. None was started with the idea of making the great home-style pizza the founders grew up with. If you go to each of the websites, you find that they all started as, first and foremost, a business proposition.

Pizza is a baked pie of Italian origin consisting of a shallow bread-like crust covered with seasoned tomato sauce, cheese, and often other toppings such as sausage or olive.  The word pizza is believed to be from an Old Italian word meaning “a point,” which in turn became the Italian word “pizzicare,” which means “to pinch” or “pluck.”

1943 – A pizza with a flaky crust that rises an inch or more above the plate and surrounds deep piles of toppings.  It is said that this pizza was created by Ike Sewell at his bar and grill called Pizzeria Uno.

Wow! I think your 21st century fact about the European Union protecting Naples’ Neapolitan pizzas is very interesting. I loved reading through the history of pizza and how it grew in the United States during the 20th century. I had no clue that frozen pizzas were a thing back in 1957.

Once upon a time, around the turn of the last century, pizza in America was an inexpensive peasant food, made casalinga (home-style) by southern Italian immigrant women in their kitchens. Adverse economic conditions had forced four million southern Italians to come to America by 1900. Descendents of all the seminal American pizza makers indicated their ancestors learned to make pizza by watching relatives make it at home.

The last time I went to Pizzeria Bianco, a young man with a short haircut and a baseball cap on backwards was leaving the restaurant as I was talking to owner/ pizzaiolo Chris Bianco. "Are you the owner?" the young man asked Chris. "I am," Chris answered. "Well, I just want to tell you that your pizza rocks. It's way better than Pizza Hut." After he left, Chris smiled and said, "I guess that's progress."

For many people, especially among the Italian-American population, the first American pizzas were known as Tomato Pie.  Even in the present 21st century, present-day tomato pie is most commonly found in the Northeastern United States, especially in Italian bakeries in central New York.  Tomato pies are built the opposite of pizza pies – first the cheese, then the toppings, and then the sauce.

Between 1945 and 1960, pizzerias began sprouting up all over the country. Most were owned by independent operators—some Italian, some Greek—but all of them American. People were either making their own mozzarella or buying fresh mozzarella from a local purveyor. They were originally making their own sauce from fresh tomatoes, but at the very least they were making it from canned tomatoes. Dough was made in-house. Toppings were made in-house or locally.

1905 – Gennaro Lombardi is credited to having opened the first United States Pizzeria in New York City at 53 1/2 Spring Street (now know as Little Italy). Lombardo is now known as America’s “Patriaca della Pizza.”  It wasn’t until the early 1930s that he added tables and chairs and sold spaghetti as well.

1912 – Joe Papa opened Papa’s Tomato Pies on South Clinton Avenue in 1912, at age 17.  He had emigrated from Naples during the prior decade and settled in Trenton in the burgeoning Italian neighborhood of Chambersburg.  Before launching his own restaurant, he worked at Joe’s Tomato Pies day

At the height of the Persian Empire, it is said that the soldiers of Darius the Great (521-486 B.C.), accustomed to lengthy marches, baked a kind of bread flat upon their shields and then covered it with cheese and dates.

The pizza actually could have been invented by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, Romans, or anyone who learned the secret of mixing flour with water and heating it on a hot stone.

1957 – Frozen pizzas were introduced and found in local grocery stores.  The first was marketed by the Celentano Brothers.  Pizza soon became the most popular of all frozen food.

Raffaele Esposito dedicated this pizza to the Queen and called it “Pizza Margherita.”  This pizza set the standard by which today’s pizza evolved as well as firmly established Naples as the pizza capitol of the world.

In 1994, ten years after Lombardi’s had closed, John Brescio and Jerry Lombardi decided to revive Lombardi’s.  They were soon joined by Andrew Bellucci, a chef-turned-pizza fanatic who had worked and trained at making pizzas in two other restaurants.

King of Naples, Ferdinando IV (1751-1821), in his summer palace of Capodimote, allowed his cook to bake a few pizzas in the ovens which his father, Charles II, had his famous porcelains fired.  Pizza had become a favorite dish of the Ferdindo’s wife, Queen Maria Carolina d’Asburgo Lorena (1752-1814).

1910 – Joe’s Tomato Pies was opened in 1910 and is regarded as the second pizzeria established in America after Lombardi’s (see above).

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