A slice of life 🍕
On returning to Pizzeria Beddia 10 years later
It’s December 2019 in Tokyo, and two families are crammed into a tiny pizzeria. They start talking as they wait for their marinara pies and quickly realize that they have a lot in common. They’re both from New York, with daughters around the same age. Someone asks, “How’d you find out about this place?” And two of the girls—Lizzy from the Weingold family and Allie from the Tallering family—say the same thing: “My friend Nina told me about it.”
Spoiler alert: I’m the friend Nina.
These days, pizza in Japan is a known entity, but back then, it was a little more under the radar. I only knew to tell the Weingolds and the Tallerings about the pizzeria Savoy because of Joe Beddia, a pizza chef in Philadelphia who once said to me, “Probably the best pizza I’ve ever had was in Tokyo.”
(When I went to Tokyo in 2017, I went to Savoy, as seen below, as well as Joe’s two other pizza recs: Seirinkan and Strada.)
In 2015, Joe became the darling of the food world when Bon Appétit dubbed his pies “the best pizza in America.” I was a student at the University of Pennsylvania at the time—an English major who had no clue what she wanted to do with her life.
First semester of my senior year, I took a narrative nonfiction class with Buzz Bissinger—the author best known for Friday Night Lights. Our final assignment was to pour what we’d learned into 2,500 words about anything. I decided to write about Pizzeria Beddia, and Joe was kind enough to let a random 21-year-old come watch him make pizza.
The original Pizzeria Beddia had a little rectangular high-top where maybe four people could stand and eat, but otherwise, it was a small storefront with a counter, a pizza oven, and a sink. Some days, you’d wait in line and leave empty-handed because Joe only made 40 pizzas a night.
As I got to know Joe’s pizza style, I was also getting to know my own writing style. I look back at the final draft of that paper for Buzz’s class and cringe at my lack of contractions and use of words like “hubbub,” but some of the writing holds up pretty well. Here’s the lede, which I actually kind of like (mostly):
“In a compact storefront with clean wooden floors and rusty brick walls, Joe Beddia kneads forty pounds of day-old dough. He weighs out blobs of the stuff and rolls them on a flour-dusted counter. Midday sun cascades through a single window. Five hours until doors open for the night. Patting with fingertips and using the palms of his hands to knead, Beddia works calmly and methodically, as though he is in a trance.”
Though now, I’d edit that paragraph to something more like this:
“In a small storefront with clean wooden floors and rusty brick walls, Joe Beddia kneads forty pounds of day-old dough. He’s calm and methodical, rolling out blobs on the flour-dusted counter. Doors open in five hours, but the line will start to form in three.”
Reading back through that final paper, I can see the places where I was beginning to find my voice. The messy spots are glaring to me—sections that could’ve been condensed, sentences where I didn’t trust my instincts. And I can trace certain experimental bits back to Buzz’s influence, whose elegant, narrative style I tried to emulate in reporting-heavy paragraphs like this one:
“A flight attendant from Chicago who subscribes to Bon Appétit knew she had to visit Fishtown on her next overnight stay in Philly. A journalist who works in Philadelphia brought a friend who studied abroad in Italy to help her taste-test Beddia’s pies. A photographer who lives in Brooklyn made the trek to Philadelphia one Saturday after reading about Beddia. She happened to be the unlucky person who would have gotten the forty-first pizza, if only there were so many.”
The last paragraph of my final paper talked about how Joe had two years left on his lease plus an option to extend for five more. He didn’t tell me that he wanted to expand to a sit-down restaurant, but the kicker toyed with that idea:
“Just like the bartender who dreamt of owning a pizza place, maybe, a few years down the line, the guy making pizzas will open a bigger spot with the most sought-after reservation in town.”
In 2019, Joe did exactly that—four minutes away from the original.
This past weekend, I went to Philly for my grandpa’s 70th (!) Penn reunion, and I finally made it to what I’ve been calling “the new Beddia.” The pizza was as perfect as I knew it would be (and low-key the beans were absolutely fire).
I’ve heard Joe laugh off nicknames like “Pizza Jesus,” saying, “It’s just fucking pizza.” But for me, Pizzeria Beddia has always been a lot more than just pizza. That pizza—and that paper—marked a pivotal moment in my life: the moment I started realizing that I wanted to be a writer.
Oh. My. God. This is amazing Nina and this pizza looks beyond divine. 💕
Love this and love you! We had the best time in Philly having pizza with you 🍕🍕🍕