Revisiting the local pizza scene
Sports who rates pies at One Bite Pizza Reviews, cannot be denied.
The last time the Globe did an extensive survey of Boston-area pizza, it was 2009. Fifteen years later, it is time to reassess. We visited more than two dozen businesses to see what’s new, what’s great, and what the local pizza scene looks like in 2024.
So much has changed — but plenty has also stayed the same. Pizza, after all, is nostalgia food. The version we grew up with will always be our basic template for what tastes right and good. It is heartening to see longtime favorites like Galleria Umberto, Regina Pizzeria, and Santarpio’s still going strong, making the pizza people have loved for decades, alongside the many pizza joints that have recently joined the conversation.
Here’s what we learned:
Pizza isn’t the bargain it once was. Food costs keep rising, and menu prices along with them. On a recent six-stop Neapolitan pizza crawl through the Boston area, the average price of a margherita pie was $18.50. “The biggest thing I’ve seen change in the pizza industry is the size of the pizzas. The other thing is the price,” says Steve Welch of Oggi in Harvard Square, a close observer of the local pizza scene since the ‘90s, when he and his brothers ran Black Crow Caffe in Jamaica Plain. “I think pizza is something that’s very popular and will always be popular. I don’t want to price myself out of the market, but pizza has gotten expensive. Making a good pizza for a good price is our goal.”
Everyone still loves pepperoni, a lot. But now it’s almost always pepperoni with more gumption: Instead of the classic flat circles, it’s smaller “cupped” pepperoni, edges curling up around a blissful center of hot, spicy grease. For a prime example, see the version made by chef Brian Kevorkian and crew at Source in Harvard Square — a dense landscape of pepperoni cups surrounded by a perimeter of charred, bubbling crust. In Chestnut Hill, Tim and Nancy Cushman of O Ya named their pizza spot Mr Roni Cups. Despite the goofy name, they signal their serious intent by using pepperoni from Ezzo Sausage Company, a Columbus, Ohio, outfit with pizza-world cred.
Hot honey is everywhere, a spicy-sweet BFF to cured meat on pizzas. And pizza chefs — after obsessing over what goes into their dough, its hydration level, how long it’s fermented, what temperature it’s cooked at, and more — do not want to see those crusts go to waste. Thus the introduction of dips (ranch, garlic oil, spicy aioli) ordered for a few bucks on the side, to perk up your crust-eating experience.
Craft pizza trailblazers such as Area Four, Picco, and Stoked continue to serve up excellence.
Aesthetics matter more than ever, as many potential customers see a pizza on social media long before they get within tasting range. “The vast majority of people look for that well-done, crisp crust on a pizza,” says Steve D’Amato, cohost of “Wicked Bites” on NESN and creator of Boston Pizza Wars. “That New York and New Haven style really is at the top when it comes to the online community. I attribute that to aesthetics. When you’re looking at stuff online, it just looks better. That’s a big factor.”
For many years, wood-fired was The Way, and places like Brewer’s Fork and Prairie Fire continue to make the most of it. But chefs are also embracing practical alternatives. “We have a Marra Forni gas Neapolitan oven,” says Si Cara chef-owner Michael Lombardi, who specializes in canotto-style pizza, similar to Neapolitan but not bound by that style’s strict rules. “We went with the gas because we are in the city and wood-fired is not always loved by neighbors.” Nor is there enough room at the Central Square restaurant to store all that wood. At Tonino in Jamaica Plain, chef-owner Luke Fetbroth makes the unique, focaccia-adjacent pan pizza in an electric PizzaMaster oven. “It really is a very fancy toaster oven,” he says.
Online ordering runs the show. In my pizza explorations, just once did I need to make an actual, real-life call — to Volo, a takeout-only shop that has consciously uncoupled from delivery. “We really believe in people coming down and getting the pizza fresh, eating it walking by the beach in the summer or taking it home,” says Dario Paone, who runs the business with his parents, Tony and Josephine, plus the help of twin brother Claudio.
This isn’t the Paone family’s first rodeo. For three decades, they owned Romano’s, a Marblehead pizzeria that sold New York-style pies (the brothers were once pictured on the front of the Globe Food section). After they sold it, Dario was living in New York, working as a software engineer. One day he walked into a shop called Emmy Squared and tasted something new, to him at least: Detroit-style pizza, with its thick crust, edges lined in melted, browned cheese, and sauce applied in stripes on top. They needed to bring this to Massachusetts, he thought. They went to Detroit to train with the late Shawn Randazzo, an awardwinning pizza maker who helped popularize the city’s signature style. They were back in business, and they were on to something. Detroit is the top trending pizza style in the US this year, according to the 2024 Pizza Industry Trends Report, put out by trade publication Pizza Today. It has certainly taken off in Massachusetts, at places such as Avenue Kitchen + Bar, Diggy’s Pizza, Nightshift Brewing, Square MFG Co., and True North Kitchen + Bar.
Funny that nearby New Haven apizza should arrive more slowly, but the presence of two coal-fired greats — Frank Pepe and Sally’s — has brought home the debate over which is better. (This might play out differently in New Haven, but between the Frank Pepe in Chestnut Hill and the Sally’s in Woburn, Frank Pepe gets my vote — particularly its original tomato pie sans mozzarella.)
“It’s gotten so competitive and crazy the last few years,”
Dario Paone says of the region’s pizza scene. “We’ve been doing pizza the last 30 years. Over the last three to five years, it started exponentially getting more crazy. People are very passionate about pizza.”