100 Years of 100 Things: Pizza

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Kousha Navidar: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Kousha Navidar, filling in for Brian today. Now we'll wrap up today's show with a continuation of our WNYC centennial series called 100 Years of 100 Things. Number nine on the list is pizza, one of New York's most famous foods, or is it Italian? Well, I think we can agree it's delicious, and who better to answer these questions than our next guest, Ian McAllen, Italian-American food expert and author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American.

He joins us now, sitting right across the desk from me to dig into the history of this cheesy, saucy, crusty delicacy loved by all. Ian, welcome to WNYC.

Ian MacAllen: Good morning. How are you doing?

Kousha Navidar: Great. I'm a little hungry. I'm happy this is our last segment. Get us started off with pizza's origin story. Where does it come from? Is it Italian-American? Why do we have such a hard time pinpointing its roots?

Ian MacAllen: Well, the distant cousin of pizza goes back thousands of years across the Mediterranean Basin. This includes Jewish-style matzah, Greek pita, which might actually be where the term pizza comes from, but what we think of pizza today, round crust with cheese and tomato sauce, really develops in the 19th century in Naples. Of course, across the Italian Peninsula, there are all sorts of flatbreads.

Some of those manifest themselves in a modern sense of the square slices, the Sicilian, that we see in New York, but the round pizza is really a Neapolitan thing that comes out of the 19th century in the working-class neighborhoods. The poorest laborers were eating this as a regular sort of fast food so to speak. Literally, we had delivery in the 19th century. They would pack it up into little carts and people would come door to door to sell it.

There was also fried pizza, which you can still get now in Italy, which is delicious, but that fell out of favor because it was actually cheaper to make wood-fired pizza, the little round ones. Those pizzas were highly controlled because a wood-fired oven is really dangerous. It can start a fire. Each one of those pizzaiolos had to be on-site and licensed by the city.

Kousha Navidar: They're called pizzaiolos?

Ian MacAllen: I'm mispronouncing the phrase pizzaiolos, the pizza maker.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, okay.

Ian MacAllen: They had to be licensed and they had to be on-premise. A lot of these were family-style bakeries, people living above it, so they could always technically be on-site when they were selling pizza.

Kousha Navidar: The original pizza, well, after the cousin, the pizza, as we know it today, from Naples originally, it didn't have the triangular slices or it did?

Ian MacAllen: Well, no, you would get the whole round pizza. It was about half the size of a New York-style pie. There was a big reason for that, is one, a Neapolitan-style oven, which you can see today at a lot of new Neapolitan restaurants, was much smaller than the bread ovens that were in New York when the immigrants came here. They adapted this recipe that was a small, round pizza in to fill the full space of the bread ovens that they had available in New York.

Kousha Navidar: Wow.

Ian MacAllen: Yes. The oven actually really defined the evolution of New York-style pizza and the regional, the Pizza Belt, if you will, from roughly Philadelphia to Connecticut, where you have the style of pizza that we think of in New York as a round triangular slice.

Kousha Navidar: It all had to do with filling in the oven space?

Ian MacAllen: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Interesting.

Ian MacAllen: Yes. You could build an 18-inch pie because the ovens were larger for baking bread. They were also coal-fired originally. The coal-fired ovens baked hotter than the wood-fired oven, which is how you get the classic New York slice, which is thin, a little bit crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, and with a nice structure that can fold over.

Kousha Navidar: You had mentioned pizzaiolo being the person making the pizza. Can you talk a bit about the first pizza shops in New York? Who was running them? What did they look like? Can you visit any of them today?

Ian MacAllen: Yes. Theoretically, there's a little bit of dispute, but the original pizza shop was actually a grocery store known as Lombardi's. The original location of that shop was on Spring Street. Lombardi came over from Naples. There's some thought that he was actually trying to become a pizza maker in Naples with a license, and he hired Totonno Pero, who was an actual pizza maker himself.

They started selling the pizzas out of the Lombardi grocery store. That shop, that location eventually turned into a restaurant because they realized it was more profitable to be selling food than to sell groceries. That was really like the first known pizzeria in New York City. Concurrently, down in Trenton, New Jersey, you also had Joe Papa's and Joe's Tomato Pie, which were competing Joe's down the street from each other right around 1910.

They made a Trenton-style pizza, which is more or less like New York, but it was very common to inverse. The cheese goes first and then the tomato sauce on top, whereas in New York, typically, the tomato sauce is underneath the cheese.

Kousha Navidar: So the first pizza shop that we know of in New York was originally a grocery store-

Ian MacAllen: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: -then turned into a restaurant. Listeners, it's time to shout out your favorite pizza places. Who, in your opinion, offers the best pizza in New York City or wherever you live? Do you have any questions about the history of the pizza or how it's prepared, its various forms and styles, anything related to this classic dish? Everyone in New York City knows about pizza, I would imagine. Give us a call. Send us a text. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692 if you want to shout out some of your favorite places.

If you've been to that original Lombardi on Spring Street, give us a call. We've got a caller here, Reid in Brooklyn. It sounds like you want to shout out your favorite spot, Reid.

Reid: Yes, Kousha. Long time, long time. I also want to say before that I'm moving to an apartment with a patio, and before I got any new furniture for the place, I found a pizza oven on Facebook Marketplace. I'm very excited about it.

Kousha Navidar: [laughs] Awesome.

Reid: My priority's in line.

Kousha Navidar: [unintelligible 00:07:10].

Reid: I want to say Lucali, I think, is the best in the business. It's worth the wait. I'm not somebody who likes getting in line for things, but go there at 3:30, four o'clock in the day if you just want to go down there, wait in line, get a spot, get a table for that night, go get a drink somewhere, come back. Absolutely worth a celebratory experience, birthday, anniversary, there. Do it, it's worth it.

Kousha Navidar: Reid, thank you so much. After this show ends at 12:00, you have plenty of time to get to Lucali at 3:30 to 4:00 to get in line. I'm Kousha Navidar. I'm a host here at WNYC. I'm filling in for Brian today. We're in our centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. We're covering number nine today, that's pizza, with Ian McAllen, the Italian-American food expert and author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. We talked about the origins of pizza. When do places like Domino's, Pizza Hut, other takeout pizza chains, when do they hit the scene?

Ian MacAllen: One of the big things that happens is, after World War II, the gas-fired pizza oven is invented. Before that, it was mostly coal-fired and occasionally wood-fired. Ira Nevin, a West Chester-born aeronautics engineer, was actually the son of bricklayers, he combines these two things, engineering and chimney making, with building a gas-fired pizza oven. That really sets the stage for the American love of pizza.

Post-war World War II, we're starting to get pizza slice shops in New York, but in the Midwest, you get places like Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Little Caesars launching as sort of initially like a bar-type pizza. It was served alongside drinks and things like that. Then they grew rapidly by becoming chains, selling pizza that they could bake in ovens that were fired by gas. That was really the changing point for pizza in America.

Also, at that time, you started getting frozen food, so frozen pizza was becoming available. We think of refrigeration today as something that comes standard in every household. It has a freezer and a refrigerator. In post-World War II America, not everyone had frozen food. It was a new thing to have a freezer aisle in your grocery store. What happened is all sorts of these foods became available as frozen deli. Even things like lasagna and pizza were becoming available.

The interesting thing, though, is post-World War II, Americans didn't really know what pizza was. You had to train people to learn what it was, pronunciation of pizza, how to have a pizza party. These are things that come up in women's magazines of the 1940s and early 1950s is, "Throw your daughter a pizza party. Here's how you pronounce the term pizza."

Kousha Navidar: How did they pronounce it? Do you know?

Ian MacAllen: Well, people just didn't know what P-I-Z-Z-A would be phonetically, so they actually had a pronunciation guide in the magazines like, "This is how you say pizza." It was a convenience food too. It was during the period of time where people were learning to do takeout for the first time. It was a really easy thing. You put it in a box and you take it home and you have dinner for your family.

Kousha Navidar: Let's go to Tara in New Jersey. Hi, Tara. Welcome to the show.

Tara: Hi. Thanks for having me on the show. I want to let you know that my favorite pizzeria is Razza in Jersey City on Grove Street. That's R-A-Z-Z-A. They have the most amazing--Kousha Navidar: Razza?

Tara: Yes. The most amazing, thin-crust pizza with some sourdough flavor in the dough.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, thank you.

Tara: You do have to like your pizza crispy with a little char on the bottom.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Tara, thank you so much for that call. We've also got, it looks like Ines from Riverdale. Ines, hi. Welcome to the show. Am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Ines: Yes, you are.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful.

Ines: Hi.

Kousha Navidar: Hi.

Ines: I was just wondering, when did they start adding tomato to the pizza? Because tomatoes are native to the Americas.

Kousha Navidar: Great question. Any [crosstalk]?

Ian MacAllen: Yes. Interestingly enough, the term pizza Napoletana, before the 19th century, actually referred to an almond tart. In the 19th century, this is when Italians were starting to grow tomatoes, particularly poor, working-class Italians. It was a food that they could dry out in Sicily and in Naples. The hot climate really lent itself to multiple tomato harvests, collecting those tomatoes, drying them on the roofs of their buildings, and making tomato paste. This is when you start seeing it being introduced into things like spaghetti and macaroni and pizza.

The original 19th-century Neapolitan pizzas, you could put anything on them, and this is actually what made them popular among the poor, is you had a lot of variety. If you were eating a pizza every day, you could have a different topping and it would be a different experience. The original pizzas were a bianca, which is a white olive oil, a à la mozzarella, which was probably with a squashed tomato and mozzarella cheese, and a marinara, which is actually probably tomato sauce and anchovies.

Again, there are many other varieties, but these were the three pizzas that a pizza maker brought to King Umberto when he and his wife were visiting Naples and wanted to experience the working-class pizza that they had been hearing about. Pizza and tomatoes have really been fundamentally put together since the 19th century when you first started developing the idea of what pizza is.

Kousha Navidar: What a wonderful backstory. Ines, thank you so much for asking that. I got a crash course there. That's so wonderful. Got a couple texts here. Arturo's on [unintelligible 00:13:27]. "55 years in my family is Lee's Tavern, Dongan Hills in Staten Island, established 1940." I also got Frantoni in Hillsides Ave in Albertson, New York. Let's go to Alexi in Coney Island. Hi, Alexi. Welcome to the show.

Alexi: Hey, guys. How are you?

Kousha Navidar: Good, thanks. Who do you want to shout out?

Alexi: Two things. One is the whole pie, and there has to be Totonno's [unintelligible 00:13:53] in Coney Island, the best of the best. When it comes to slices, the 14th Street Joe's.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Got the pie there and the slices. You want to say something?

Ian MacAllen: Well, yes. Totonno, the original Totonno's, he was the one who worked in Lombardi's and helped make the original pizza. He set out on his own in I think it was 1934 in Coney Island. Right around the time, you got these original New York City pizzerias, which would include John's of Bleecker, Patsy's, but Totonno's is, I think, one of the best original pizzas in the city.

I think it's only a whole pie. You got to go now. I've heard that the pandemic hasn't been great for the business. Here's the other thing. All of these pizza makers are probably now in their second or third generation, and those people are getting ready to retire. If you have a favorite pizzeria, you got to make sure that the children can make it a viable business to continue.

Kousha Navidar: So keep going there.

Ian MacAllen: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: We're going to go to Tony in Trenton, New Jersey. Tony, you got about 30 seconds. Go ahead. What's your call?

Tony: I can appreciate the previous caller. He talked about Joe's Tomato Pie in Trenton, Papa's Tomato Pie in Trenton. Very good pies. We all hung there as kids back in the '70s. That was my hangout place. The kids that went to Cathedral, they went to Joe's, and the kids that went to Trenton High and St. Nancy's High School went to Papa's. There's one more he left out; De Lorenzo's. They used to be on Hudson Street in Trenton. They now moved out to Robbinsville, New Jersey. The pie, the taste of dough, it's just unbelievably good. They're still in business.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to the guy who talked about Trenton. That's where I'm from, so [crosstalk].

Kousha Navidar: Tony, thank you so much. Shout out to De Lorenzo's. Ian, we got 10 seconds for you to say what's your favorite topping on a pizza. Go for it.

Ian MacAllen: Oh, I just like a regular slice.

Kousha Navidar: Regular slice? What does regular slice mean to you? Because as we said, that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

Ian MacAllen: We're in New York, so a regular slice is just cheese and tomato sauce.

Kousha Navidar: [chuckles] Nice. Cheese and tomato sauce. We'll have to leave it there for today. My guest was Ian McAllen, Italian-American food expert and author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. Ian, thanks so much. You got us all sufficiently hungry. [laughs]

Thanks to the team of The Brian Lehrer Show. That's Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum, with help today from Elizabeth Shwe. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen handles our Daily Politics Podcast. Our interns are Sasha Linden Cohen and Lucinda Empson-Speiden. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz are at the audio controls. I'm Kousha Navidar. This is The Brian Lehrer Show.

Thanks so much for hanging out today, for all of your calls, all of your texts. We'll be here tomorrow. In the meantime, stay tuned for All Of It, and then maybe after that, go get yourself a slice. Have a great day.

 

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