South Shore Bar Pizza: The Story Behind the Style

stick

pizza

is a specific

style

of

pizza

stylistically, you know, thin crust 10 inches in diameter 10 inches 10 inches custom pizza sauce and cheese go right to the edge hand-pressed dough pressed to the edges of the pan certain pizzas bob's has like a buttery, cookie-like crust and there are others out there that have more of a crunchy cookie-like crust, crunchy but doughy at the same time. I really don't know how, it's thinner but not too thin for you to eat. with one hand on a stick a bear in the other hand and eat your turquoise pizza it's an even layer of dough an even layer of sauce even a layer of cheese you have to have that perfect middle and the toppings are unique it's so crispy it really you can also load it up with a bunch of funky toppings as you bake that pizza, the sauce and cheese caramelize and create a border around the pie on the crust, essentially called interlocking edges.

There is another characteristic of a pizza with brasso sauce. when the sauce flows over the edge of the pizza and then caramelizes when it cooks it just has a little char some flavor it's like you sear a steak in your grandma's cast iron skillet to give it that flavor it's crispy it's buttery it's It's not really like any other pizza product, it's not a typical pizza that you think of, maybe like a Greek or Italian

style

, you know, it's kind of small, there's something about that buttery crust on social bar pizza that just makes it stand on its own.

You know what I mean, there really is nothing like it. I like the fact that there seems to be a community of hostile

south

coast enthusiasts, you know, and I enjoy it and I think it's great that people are so passionate about what they think. Their favorite place is that it was during the pandemic that they had started a seltzer bar style social page and everyone was posting pictures of their pizza from different places and that made me think about how many places there are so I just said no it's me. I'm going to try to go to every pizza place in the

south

ern suburbs I can find so far.

I think I've been to 76 of them and I have about 110 that have located that it's a dive bar, I mean basically it's a neighborhood dive bar. Walk in and there are regulars at the bar that you know and that ideally is where you'll find the best bar style pizzas in South Troy, local places that really care and are passionate about making their pizzas. People who don't know Cape cod. The cafe is supposed to be on Cape Cod in the day before they built the highway, if you wanted to get to the cape you would have to stop by the Cape Cod Cafe the owners of Jamus are my cousins, technically our second cousins.

So you know, I've been coming here since I was 9, 10, 11 years old. It's crazy to see how it transformed from a smaller pizzeria in the 40's and 50's to what it is now with the frozen foods and multiples. locations I have really taken advantage of just the bar pizza in general, jimmy who is the son of the original owner credits Brockton as a whole for the city being able to create the bar pizza in the past it was the cod brockton cafe george's cafe tip top cafe unfortunately none of those places exist anymore, we are the last ones standing, but being around him for the last 20 years of my life has not only been a humbling experience and seeing him come full circle is something I am very proud that he has started in this area and is also expanding, but I think it will always have a special importance for this particular area, especially because you know how it started here, the best you can see is you.

Meet the regulars who have been coming here for 50 or 60 years, their kids now come and bring their kids and their kids bring their kids. It's amazing to see the core of people who have built this place, regulars in the '40s and '60s and people from the '70s you know, I've been coming here since I was 15 and you know people will come back, you know, from vacation or we'll go back and see other family members and it's always great to bump into them. customers like that and I think that's what sets us apart and I think that's what kept us in the game and at the top of the game for the last 80 years, we were at the linwood cafe in randolph, it's kind of little.

Family owned pizzeria on the south coast serving only bar pizza, nothing more, we have been in business since 1949, so going on four generations of pizza makers, my great grandfather was a Lithuanian immigrant, they moved here from New York, were looking to buy a bar, he owned a bar, so they bought this place, it was supposed to be a bar, there are other cooks that came from other bars and started making pizza here and then as the years went by, the pizza just It took off and now we're mostly pizza and a little bit of bar, all the stories I hear from a lot of people that come in today are about oh I come and pick up pizza here because when I was a kid the most important thing was my dad. he would take me for a walk it was my only time to go out dad would come down and have a beer at the bar and I would play shuffleboard and it was a big deal to go out with your dad to the bar and get some pizzas at the lindeloo, even when I started to be manager, if anything or anything needed to be replaced or changed, he would try to do it as close to what the original was as possible, like the booths were falling apart from the 1930s originals, so we had someone remake them exactly as they were.

They saw the old ones, if you haven't been back in 30 years, you're going to walk in, it's going to look exactly like it did, you get that nostalgic feeling, but the most important thing is that we haven't changed anything with the pizza, so it's going to taste exactly like it did 30 years ago. . You know, when you were here eating pizza with your dad, like he had people coming to pick up pizzas in the back. door that they tell me about their kids and I worked with their dad and now they're here bringing their kids in the back door to, you know, pick up pizzas from the takeout area or people sitting in the front that are four generations, so you already know.

Everyone who comes here is something I want them to be able to come with their kids today and have a pizza here. It is not a passing fad. When they come with their kids in 20 years, they will eat the same pizza we tried. keep it very concise and the quality as high as possible and consistency to the point where you know what you're going to get every time you come. My mantra is keep it simple, stupid, the old kiss method, you'll get the top five qualities. ingredients you can possibly get your hands on, you put it together, it will be delicious.

My grandfather started this place in August 1964. My dad owns it now. Hopefully, one day, if all goes well, it will be mine. There's an interesting point where the obligation and joy is like he's obligated to do this, but I'm also proud and happy about it. The joy comes from knowing I'm doing something people love, and the obligation comes from never allowing myself to think about doing anything else. or try to do anything else, my family just said you're going to do this and okay, I guess I'm going to do this luckily for me, I'm really good at it and I like doing it, but there are some people that have been coming here constantly for at least that long, in some cases longer, and they feel as at least sentimentally owners of this place as I do and uh, I show up to work every day to make sure. that they are happy and that their children are happy and that their children are happy for most of my developmental years.

I didn't really realize there were other types of pizza other than this. I thought everyone made pizza like this. and it wasn't until I started hanging out with people outside of my family and we were eating pizza from other places at friend's sleepovers or whatever, what is this mess they're putting in front of me, I guess someone? He said oh, this is a good idea and then they took it to their town and then to the next town and then to the next town and then they all felt like this provincial attachment to the place where they grew up and wherever the key place was in their town.

And you know, it creates camaraderie and competition simultaneously. You know I want all places like me to be successful, but I also want to be better than them, so yeah, I think provincial pride is the reason it's successful, so I first worked at La Venus when I was a teenager with the pizza bar there and I used to go there and I used to come here all the time and play the Pac-Man machine that my mom brought me when I was four five six years old. coming to play the Pac-Man machine I started working here in 2005, my mother also works here and she asked me to come after that experience and help out for a couple of weeks because someone was on vacation and that was 2022 and I'm.

Still here, the owner was named Dawn, who passed away. His son, Bob Tacova, his wife's nickname, was around in the '40s, '50s, '60s, that was a popular name like honey or darling, so he called her Poopsie and we, she still comes around to this day and we say . Hello, Poopsie, because that's her nickname, she's named after the original owner's wife. It's a little strange to think of little Tony running around here, going crazy, and then not showing up like one of those kids. Now I am the same. It's a little surreal, but I love it here.

I wouldn't say I like growing up, I would just say it will be a part of me for the rest of my life. my life, but now that I'm here, the owner takes good care of me and not many people want to do this job anymore, so I'm proud that not many people can do what we do here. We're a team, we're like a family here, so not many people do this anymore, so our little tight-knit cooking family means a lot. It has always been my dream to have a bar. I was in the pizza business a long time ago. the day I also built a business servicing mobile food trucks, I built that business when I was about 23 24 years old, up to about 800 pizzas a week.

I have always been passionate about the pizza business. I grew up in Randolph Mass where um hoey's pizza and linwood were the best, that's where I come from and where I strive to live up to your credentials here at Red Rose, there are family secrets that go back 70 80 years. I remember when I had the mobile pizza business. food trucks was there with a magnifying glass looking at their sauce to try to figure out what spices they put in there and that's a true

story

. It took me years to get to where I am now. Years I just practiced and failed and failed. and I failed 10 times a day until I finally got it right.

Putting in the time allowed me to make some really good pizza here. People who are passionate about a place will stay in that place. I think they are a little afraid. trying new places because they're so passionate about it, but here I'm not trying to make a Linwood pizza, I'm not trying to make a Hoey's pizza, it's my version of bar pizza and I feel like if you come once. and try me, it could be some training after the salon, best seller, short bar pizza on Cape Cod, the previous owners, they were, you know, they would own the place for, I mean, 30 years, so they're ready to retire.

They didn't want to sell it to anyone with Dave and Dan Delancey behind it, you know, with the lobster trap name. They knew it would be something of quality. Dave and Dan had the idea of ​​preserving it as you know. a dive bar on the edge of the cell, buy him pizza and you know we haven't looked back since I've been working at the trap, which is about three years, and the executive chef there had been working at a doe. I knew it was coming, hey, try this, try this, try this, every single one of them was great, you know, and no, no, no, no, literally, he was working on it for three and a half years, he finally got it and It's been really fantastic for a long time. of people have been trying this and we see the same faces every week, you know, it's a really cool thing, you know, we have a really good product here, I think, like I said, with that cup afterwards, we have It's been becoming a lot like it's the real deal, you know, it's not the half, it's a real social bar pizza, you know, so the people who are really into this are giving us a lot of love.

Barnos was born from the pandemic. Then Cass Island Brewery couldn't reopen their brewery without having food service and our event facility at Lombardo's in Randolph Mass was closed because they weren't allowed to have events, so they asked us if we would open a kitchen inside their brewery. If we could make a South Coast style bar pizza, we were excited to try it now that we are thriving having a good time, the process of creating a bar pizza started by eating as many bar pizzas as we could for months, our family and Our chefs went to all the legendary places on the South Coast and ordered pizza after pizza.

They brought the pizzas back to the store and started eating them, comparing them and deciding what we liked about them at the same time as our chef was trying to create. a recipe we really wanted to incorporate castle island into our pizza, so we came up with a recipe that included house island in our dough recipe, but it started with just eating as much pizza as possible, learning about interlocking edges , learning about molds, just doing the same thing. With a lot of research we were able to figure out how to make the best cake possible. We have been in Randolph with Lombardos since1983.

Our family business started in 1927 in a small meat market in East Boston, so it worked to bring the South Coast style of pizza from here to the city and we wanted to make a pie that would stand up to some legendary places and if people would come to us because we're in town and we tried Cell Shorebar's pizza and we really love it. Hopefully it will entice them to travel south and try all the other people. There are some amazing pizzas and I think we can all raise South Shore Bar's game together, I mean, and just do wonders for everyone.

It's not about who is better, who is worse, who is the best. It's about elevating family establishments that make local cuisine that we're trying to make everyone aware of and trying to elevate it so that everyone can enjoy it. and I think about diversifying and growing, there are only positive things