(The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, May 28, 2011)
BY MICHAEL FINCH II
On a residential strip of North Rampart Street, somewhere between Piety and Desire streets, people stream in and out of a yellow brick building. The only tip-off to what’s inside is a porcelain plaque of a pizza on the wall outside.
Behind a folding table inside, six people work in assembly-line execution, stretching dough, pouring sauce and sprinkling cheese.
Chances are you wouldn’t find this place, Pizza Delicious, a pop-up pizzeria in Bywater, even if you were looking for quality pizza in New Orleans. It’s open only two days a week, from 5 to 11 p.m., provided it doesn’t run out of dough.
“Someone in the neighborhood told me about it,” said Gretchen Dysart, who works at Academy of Holy Angels around the corner. “I came first in the winter and there was a lot of intrigue and mystique. And good pizza.”
Every Sunday and Thursday since November, the pizza kitchen, run by Michael Friedman and Greg Augarten, has been serving New York-style slices for $2.50 each, and 18-inch pies for $18, to locals in the area.
They offer two pizza specials in addition to plain cheese and pepperoni. On a recent Sunday, the specials were a pickled red pepper and arugula pizza, and a sautéed garlic mushroom with pancetta.
Friedman and Augarten, who met when they were roommates at Tulane University, said they started the kitchen because in their hometown, New York City, bad pizza is sacrilege. In New Orleans, it is just not that big a deal.
“We were pretty disappointed in our pizza options down here,” Friedman said. “It’s kind of an underserved institution in New Orleans.”
Unlike most people their age who move to a new city and find it’s not the same as their home, they decided to do something about it. A friend told them about the space, which has always been a bakery of sorts, and they arranged to rent it and open the pizza kitchen.
“We didn’t know how it was going to go at all,” Friedman said. “We started out doing 30 pizzas, then 40, and then a couple more and a couple more.”
For the two New Yorkers, demand became overwhelming. Soon they started pre-selling 60 pizzas a night and regularly ran out of dough.
“We literally started paying our rent in pizza,” Friedman said. “People would call and I just made up times — we just weren’t ready for it.”
One day there was a rush at the pizzeria but the kitchen was understaffed and needed someone to stretch dough. Christine Nieber, 25, whom Friedman knew from a local bakery, came in.
“I came in here to get a pizza one day and they were like, ‘Would you help us out?’” Nieber said. “And I was like, yes, I would.”
Since that day, Nieber has been working at Pizza Delicious, helping them to fine-tune their baking methods.
“We knew what we wanted,” Friedman said. “But we just didn’t know how to get it.”
The glitch was in the technique they were using to shape the dough.
“The recipe was solid,” Nieber said. “The problem I see is adapting to growth.”
Friedman said that they are looking for a space to open a traditional pizzeria. Right now, they are having trouble keeping up with demand because their clientele is expanding beyond the confines of the Bywater and Marigny area.
The day-to-day operation of the pizzeria is organized by a group of friends who all hold full-time jobs, but come together two days a week to work in the kitchen.
One person stretches the dough, another pours the sauce, and then the pizza is baked. Meanwhile, the other staff members work in tandem, answering the phone, greeting customers and boxing the pizzas.
Friedman said that they try to use locally grown produce as much as possible, sometimes bartering with farmers. The prosciutto came from Stein’s Deli on Magazine Street.
The arugula for Sunday’s special came from a farm in Oakdale, La.
“They dropped off some arugula and we gave them some pizzas,” Friedman said.
Pop-up restaurants like Pizza Delicious became popular in the 1990s in several big cities around the country within hidden kitchens often disguised behind grungy or off-putting exteriors.
Alison Fensterstock, 34, who lives in the Bywater area, said that she appreciates the group’s effort, especially because New Orleans was a “pizza wasteland” before.
“It’s nice to support a business that is so grassroots,” Fensterstock said. “I never ate pizza in New Orleans, or Chinese food.”
Meredith Fort, who takes the phone orders in the pizzeria, said that the kitchen has become so popular not only because it’s New York-style, but because at times the pizza becomes scarce.
“People want dinner at a certain time,” Fort said. “You might get a pizza, you might not.”
Michael Finch II 