Pizza Today - May 2016 - 36

By that logic all of his otherwise
circular pizzas should have also been
Sicilian, but I digress. His wife, whom I
knew only as "Mrs. Joe," would make a
different style of pizza on days she ran
the place instead of Joe. She made a thinner pizza, also square, but with slices of
mozzarella and the sauce on top. When I
asked what THAT pizza was, she said it
was "Grandma style." In fairness to Mrs.
Joe, she didn't retort with a wisecrack line

like her husband's "because I'm Sicilian."
I just assumed the family was naming
pizzas after themselves, that they must
have grandchildren, and I left it at that.
As I got older I would go to other
pizza places in the five boroughs with my
dad. This was before Yelp! so we didn't
make our choices based on the Zagat
guide as much as on dad's friend-of-afriend who likes this one place-neara-place-we-had-to-go-anyway-so-we

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might-as-well-grab-a-slice guide.
Prince Umberto's was one of those
childhood places I visited with my
dad that had Grandma-style pizza.
I didn't know as a kid I was eating someplace with historical pizza
significance. Same for when I went
to Di Fara as a kid. These were just
places we'd go to on our regular
outings.
My dad grew up in Manhattan
and left when he joined the Marines.
We lived all over America, mostly in
the East Bay area of San Francisco
until I was eight and then moved to
New Jersey where I lived until high
school. The wonder years of my pizza
childhood took place all over the tristate area. I came to realize two very
real truths about pizza: the bigger
the menu did not mean the better
the place, and any real pizza place
will be obvious by its smell.
The added bonus of any awesome pizzeria in my eyes was if it

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featured a square pie, it was showing
a willingness to be different - to
not be a one trick pony. Even if the
menu was small, any ma and pa pizza
place could still have a Grandma pie.
Why not, right? It's super simple,
a massive differentiator, and evokes
that nostalgia that is its namesake,
"Grandma."
I loved going into a new pizzeria
with my dad and seeing the square
behind the glass, waiting to be
thrown into the oven for a second
time. My dad would get the biggest
size slice they had. And, if it were
under a 20-inch pizza, he'd get two.
I'd get the Grandma if they had it or
the Sicilian, which was a little more
typical. The surprised enthusiasm
I had for finding a pizzeria with a
Grandma style was the same enthusiasm I had for catching an episode
of the Adam West Batman TV
show and being pleasantly surprised
when the opening credits showed it
was with guest star Yvonne Craig as
"Batgirl." You could tell right away

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Pizza Today - May 2016

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