It’s about time we got serious about pizza. And when better to do it — to celebrate it — then upon the passing of Andrew Bellucci. He was only 59. If you’ve had an unusually good pizza recently, there’s a damn good chance Bellucci had a hand in it (not literally).
OK — he wasn’t perfect. One day in 1995, two FBI agents walked into Lombardi’s, where he was working , ordered a pizza and ate it. They left with Bellucci in handcuffs. It stemmed from an earlier job he held as an administrator at a Manhattan law firm.
He was outgoing and popular, and he invited the lawyers and other employees to a party he threw in a restaurant on Christopher Street. There was an open bar and a live band. The wife of one of the partners looked around and said, “He must be stealing from you.” She was right. Bellucci eventually copped to 54 counts of fraud and was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison. In an interview from prison, he dismissed the seriousness of his crime, saying that his victims were just a law firm, an insurance company and a bank. “It’s not exactly like sticking up an old lady,” he said.
Happily, however, that’s not his legacy. His legacy is the pizza.
A review in the NYT in 1995 said: “The glory is the crust: light, thin, crisp yet elastic, blackened and blistered and full of the smoky flavor that comes from the coal oven.” Chef Nancy Silverton was especially impressed by a pie topped with fresh clams, garlic, oregano and olive oil.
When young, Bellucci spent hours at the public library, poring over old phone books, newspapers and advertisements. His reading convinced him that the first pizza in the U.S. was baked in a coal-fired oven on Spring Street by Gennaro Lombardi, an immigrant from Naples. Transfixed, he began nosing around Little Italy until, on Spring Street, he located a vacant bakery with a coal-burning oven. He kept searching until he found Mr. Lombardi’s grandson, also named Gennaro, and persuaded him to put the family name on a pizzeria with the oven he had found. Bellucci would make the pies.
His stories about pizza, pizza ovens, pizza families and pizza legacies, brought attention to styles and methods that other pizza makers would explore over the next few decades. “He helped usher in the revival of classic coal-fired New York pizza, which was really a return to the way pizza was before it became a slice-shop food on every street corner,” said one reviewer. He inspired the pizza universe we have now — a diverse pizza ecosystem in which even street-corner slices are considered worthy of serious attention.
After prison he had trouble getting back into the pizza business and ended up in Malaysia where American style pizza was being introduced. But the hours were long and he had no friends in Kuala Lumpur. One night, he swallowed 50 Vicodin tablets chased by Jack Daniels in a suicide attempt. He lived, although he was two hours late to work the next morning.
In 2017, he followed his pizza dream back to NY. The dream: a cathedral of pizza where clam pies would take up a full page on the menu, the clams shucked to order by a worker at a prominent station built to resemble a pulpit. That dream was never realized but he was hired to open Bellucci’s Pizzaria in Astoria, with a new $35,000 electric oven, and pizza coming in 25 varieties. His primary pizza obsessions were with the dough and with clam pizza, one of his pizza associates said. He saw that the clams were going on the pizza cold, so he figured he should sous vide them, heating them in a hot-water circulator for 45 seconds before baking. Bellucci was preparing clam pizzas as a surprise for some guests when he died of heart failure.
His obit in the Times says:
His return to the ovens as a celebrated old hand brought Mr. Bellucci into contact with a younger generation of bakers who are as obsessed with the minutiae of pizza as he was. He became a mentor to many of them, inviting them to work in his kitchen, sharing recipes and advising them before they went on to open their own pizzerias.
When Bellucci was just starting out, “nobody was trying to bring respect to pizza. It took a convicted felon to do that. That’s kind of crazy when you think about it.”
Mr. Bellucci is survived by his mother; his brother, Joel; and his wife, Geetanjali Peter, from whom he was estranged. His sister, Chantel, died of cancer at 14. He’s up in heaven now, working the coal-fired oven. He had no trouble getting in — St. Pete has a weakness for clams.
Could Trump have gotten some bad news from his crack law team after they met with the Justice Department? Here’s what he posted:
“HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S [sic] WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED”
How indeed? I ask you.
Today’s puzzle was pretty amazing, IMO, but Rex and many in the commentariat managed to be unimpressed. Every answer — 100% across and down — was symmetrically mirrored with an answer that exactly reversed its letters. So AVON had NOVA, SPEED had DEEPS, SPACER had RECAPS, etc. — for the entire grid. Here, take a look:
AMAL Clooney is in there at 5D — George’s wife. Boy does she look like Anne Hathaway, amirite? No one teases those smiles out of you like our Philly. Good catch, Buddy! Amal, which means “hope” in Arabic, and George have 5-year-old twins, Alexander and Ella.
The actress EVA Longoria is in there too, at 41A. I’m afraid to ask Phil if he woke her up for this shot. I don’t know what we’re going to do with him. Hi Eva! You look great in the morning!
Eva and ballplayer Evan Longoria are completely unrelated but have had to deal with the closeness of their names often in the media. When Evan was selected for the All-Star game in 2008, Eva sent him a bottle of champagne and a note thanking him for “doing the Longoria name proud.” In return, Evan sent Eva three signed jerseys. Is that a little obnoxious? Like sending photos of yourself as a gift? But what do I know?
Tired. See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 