Our artisanal coal-fired pizzas are true to the traditions of New York style pies. It starts with our dough, prepared fresh each day. Then our pizza artists meticulously craft your pizza with tomato sauce and mozzarella — both freshly made in house — and the toppings of your choice. Then, it’s into our authentic coal-fired oven where a blast of 1000-degree heat puffs the crust, melts the cheese, and adds the perfect amount of flavorful char to the crust and toppings.
The roots of New York style pizza go all the way back to the Greek and Roman empires, where fire-cooked flatbreads were topped with oil, cheese, and herbs. Then, in the 1800s, Italian immigrants brought the style we know and love today to America.
Gennaro Lombardi founded a grocery store in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood in 1897. In 1905, employee Antonio Totonno Pero began making pizzas. The simple pies, topped with tomato sauce and a sprinkling of Romano cheese, sold for five cents each. But many of his customers couldn’t afford a whole pie. So, Lombardi’s began selling smaller portions of pizza corresponding to the price each customer could afford to pay — and thus the New York slice was born.
Pizza quickly became the most popular item at Lombardi’s, and so the grocery store gave way to a dining area for hungry customers to eat their piping-hot pizzas right there in the store. More and more pizzerias popped up in and around New York — Antonio himself left and started his own in Coney Island in 1924. Each pizzeria had their own take on the classic pie. But one thing that most establishments had in common was a coal-fired oven.
These enterprising “pizzolos” needed a way to replicate the high heat of the wood-burning ovens that gave Neapolitan pies their trademark charred, yet springy crust. So, they turned to a plentiful, cheap fuel source — coal. Offering plenty of heat with a steadier and easier-to-control flame, coal became the fuel of choice for dozens of New York pizzerias in the early 1900s.
In the 1930s, the gas-fired pizza oven was invented and it quickly replaced many of the coal-fired ovens across New York. However, pizza aficionados know that nothing beats the high temperatures of a coal-fired brick pizza oven.
So, that’s what we use here at Pizzeria Pezzo — a genuine coal-burning brick oven, designed and built for one purpose: to cook delicious artisanal pizzas in the style of the great New York pizzerias.
But don’t take our word for it – stop in today and try one for yourself!
