Joe Beddia - Pizza Camp: The Art of Pizza

I was just invited to the James Beard House to wash dishes.

by Andrew Knowlton

In 2003, Daredevil , a movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, was released. It involved a blind martial-arts superhero. It was watched exclusively by people on airplanes. To coincide with the premiere, Howard Stern, one of Joes heroes (its true; I have no idea why exactly), held a contest. Stern asked serious fans to send him ideas for daredevil stunts that they would be willing to perform on his TV show. Next thing Joe knows, hes in a limo on his way to New York City to tape a segment. Lets just say that Joes sketch involved a blindfold, a razor, shaving cream, and no pants. Joe did not win the $10K and a trip to the Playboy Mansion. Some guy who got shot in the ass with a paint gun did.

That story really has nothing to do with the book youre holding in your hands other than to embarrass Joe and point out that it wasnt the craziest thing Joe Beddia has ever done in his life. Not even close. No, that honor goes to his decision to open a pizzeria. Not just any pizzeria, but a 300-square-foot one with no chairs, no phone, no slices, no delivery, two employees, and only forty pies sold a day. You wouldnt let your worst enemy make such a dreadful decision, now would you?

But Joe Beddia is a pizza savant. In the four years since opening his shop, he has made every pizza that has come out of the oven at Pizzeria Beddia. And if Joe is sick or at a wedding or did too many drugs at, say, a Phish show and cant possibly make pizza the next day, then Pizzeria Beddia will be closed (thats only happened once).

Joe seemed to know his destiny even when I first met him back in 2008 when he was pouring beer at the South Philadelphia Tap Room. I was working on a story on Philadelphias growing food scene, and Joe turned out to be the perfect informant. He knew which places cleaned their beer taps and which didnt. He knew what chef was an up-and-coming talent and who was tired. But his real nugget of intel was when he told me that he wanted to open up a pizzeria one day. I remember thinking, Good luck, Joe . I figured that was the last Id see of that guy. I did mention him in my story, though, as the affable bartender Joe Beddia.

Seven years later, in the July 2015 issue of Bon Apptit , I declared that the little pizzeria at 115 East Girard Avenue in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia made The Best Pizza in America. Joe Beddia had kept his word and then some. Not only did that affable bartender end up opening his own pizzeria but it turned out to be one that people would wait four hours to try.

And now, here you are holding a book that that guy wrote. When Joe told me that he was going to do a cookbook that would show people how to make his pizza at home, I thought, once again, Good luck, Joe . But you know what? I should have known better. One day, Pizzeria Beddia will close (sorry to bum everyone out), and when you walk by the window, Joe wont be standing there making dough in his Phillies cap and his flour-covered apron. There lived a pizza master... There lived a Pizza Jesus, people will say.

Thats why I am once again grateful that I was wrong, and that Joe actually wrote this book. Well always have Pizza Camp and with it a pizza masters manifesto.

If you do ever make it to Pizzeria Beddia, which I still think makes the best pizza in all of America, ask Joe about that Howard Stern episode. He wont get mad. Hey, at least hell know you bought his book.

So how did you get into pizza?

I always hate this question. Mainly because its a really long answerthere are a ton of things that led me to pizza. Plus, I always assume that nobody really wants to hear my shit story anyway, but here it is. Its too loaded to distill it down to one or two reasonsI arrived where I am from a thousand places and ideas.

Everything starts when youre a kid. You taste your first things. Those tastes affect you, and you remember them for the rest of your life. I also think that as a cook, the early years are where you first draw from for inspiration. My moms best friends mother, who lived in downtown Lancaster after emigrating from Calabria and didnt speak much English, baked really crusty Italian bread once a week, and wed eat that bread all week. Sometimes I would mow her tiny backyard with a push mower, and her husband would pay me a nickel. After I finished mowing, she would fry up peppers in olive oil and make me a simple sandwich. That was it: fried peppers and homemade bread. But I couldnt forget the flavor if I triedits still one of my favorite flavors. It seems like its in my DNA.

For family Sunday dinners at my grandparents house in nearby York, I can remember following my cousin Nunzio into the kitchen and ripping hunks of fresh bread and sneaking dips of the sauce that had been simmering for hours. It was loaded with meatballs and cuts of beef and porkbasically whatever was on sale that week.

I think that happy early childhood memories return throughout your life and become themes. Another big food memory: waiting for my dad to get home from work with a large cheese pizza from Argentos, my uncle Johns pizzeria. It was perfect. Really nice dough with full flavor, fresh tomato sauce with a little oregano, and whole-milk mozzarella. Even as a kid I knew the difference between his pizza and the Pizza Huts and Dominos Pizzas of the world. Granted I still ate all the homogenized bullshit and pasteurized food of America. I liked Kraft macaroni and cheese as much as the next kid. But I was fortunate to have a family just off the boat from Sicily, so I knew what real food was. Like most immigrants, my family didnt have a lot of money, but we had tradition, and part of that tradition was making food from scratch. There werent processed foods to be had. If it was your birthday, they would bake the cake.

Then my mother passed away and everything went black.

I went through elementary school, slowly going downhill. By the time I entered middle school, I had discovered self-medication. I failed seventh grade. By the time high school arrived, I was stoned or tripping through a lot of it. Wah. Dont cry for me, Joe Beddia.