Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza was afresh called one of the 101 best pizza places in the country by The Daily Meal. To celebrate, we’re reposting the absolute affection that came from spending a day and night at the iconic shop, which originally appear a year ago this week.
The age-old brick oven looms like an incinerator, application best of the claustrophobic kitchen.
Pizza worshippers accept told tales of this caked bank of adobe and steel. For added than 60 years, it’s broiled abounding of the best deliciously characteristic Sicilian, pan and amazon pies able in New Jersey — and if your pizza is the best here, it’s the best anywhere, abounding stop.
The oven is “a allowance from the gods,” says Al Santillo, babysitter of the allegorical anhydrate and buyer of vaunted Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza on Broad Street in Elizabeth — a mecca of mozzarella, semolina and San Marzanos ambuscade aloof a half-mile off Exit 13 on the Turnpike.
Santillo’s has slung pies and aliment in the burghal for added than 100 years, and the little boutique has afflicted abandoned hardly over the aftermost half-century.
There are no tables or chairs here. Al doesn’t serve slices and he doesn’t deliver. Santillo’s is banknote abandoned and serves aloof four canicule a week: Thursday through Sunday.
Take your adjustment and go, or stick about and babble with Santillo himself, the appropriate pizza adept who, afterwards added than 30 years at the helm, has no botheration amusement in his food’s superiority.
“This pizza, it’s in a alliance of its own compared to every added abode that you go,” Al says. “It’s aloof that abundant better.”
Over the years, Santillo’s has been called the best pizza in New Jersey by a deluge of outlets, alignment from The Daily Meal and Central Jersey annual to NJ.com’s own pizza adeptness rankings aback in 2015. And I’d heard belief of Santillo and the spartan assignment agenda he maintains to accumulate this august pizza alcazar afloat.
But I had never met him, never approved any of his pies afore one day in backward July, aback I absitively to absorb a full, 14-hour about-face with the pizza man to end all pizza men. I alike abstruse to accomplish some of the allegorical pies myself.
Let’s alpha at the beginning.
9:07 a.m.
Yellow semolina abrade is everywhere, broadcast above the continued stainless animate countertop in the baby aback allowance as Al sorts the chef — aboveboard cuts for Sicilian pies, annular for round, one abundance afterwards another. He is dressed like a architecture artisan headed to a taekwondo chic in his atramentous t-shirt, burden shorts, assignment boots and a atramentous bolt headband.
Al asks me to abetment in the banality that is abstraction the chef into achromatic assurance and loading them into their agnate board boxes. I attack to bind but annul him immediately.
“You ain’t alike close,” Al tells me afterwards a few attempts. “What you’re doing’s not good.”
Al would carbon himself if he could; his disbelief of advice a connected refrain, alike in advanced of his three coworkers.
“I accept cadre that appear in, but they’re actual unreliable,” Santillo bemoans. “Even aback aback I was a kid, I consistently bethink my parents aggravating to appoint people, and the catechism is, ‘Are you reliable?’ … You don’t accept to be no rocket scientist but at atomic you’ve got to be reliable. So I’ve got to amount out agency area I can do as abundant as I can myself. I’m not attractive to accession the amount of the pizza 10 dollars so that I can accept a agglomeration of prima donnas walking about here.”
Al runs Santillo’s added or beneath on his own. He’s advancing and affable pizzas and breads, answering buzz calls and ambidextrous with barter in perpetuity.
And you bigger accept he’s the abandoned one who operates his allegorical oven.
“My ancestor told me to do it yourself aback I started all those years ago,” Al says.
9:34 a.m.
Al uses his feel to draw a map of the adjacency in the aureate flour, depicting the area of the aboriginal Santillo’s — accessible in 1918 by his grandfather, Lou Santillo — about a mile abroad in a heavily Italian-American area of Elizabeth accepted as Peterstown. It was an operation agnate to the one Al runs at the accepted shop, admitting Lou didn’t alpha authoritative pizza until the 1940s – aliment was the focus aback then.
Today, Al serves abounding barter whose grandparents acclimated to accompany bootleg chef to Lou’s bakery because they didn’t accept ovens of their own. Al’s ancestor opened the accepted Santillo’s area — bottomward an alleyway, absorbed to the abode in which Al was aloft — in 1957 and little Al started alive there aback he was abandoned 5 years old, affairs aliment door-to-door in the adjacency out of a little red American Flyer wagon, aggravating to bastard a blink into bounded bars. To this day he considers himself a baker, not a pizza man.
He took over the boutique in the 1980s and was aloft in the abutting abode in advanced of the store.
Al tells me the old abundance was actual abutting to Di Cosmo’s Italian Ice, accession constant burghal academy he still frequents — he sometimes mixes his afternoon coffee with the ice.
“That gives me my little lift for the evening,” Santillo says. “This abode is brutal. You see the way I’ve got to work.”
10:46 a.m.
Al formally introduces the abandoned Santillo’s agent added important than himself — the absurd oven. He talks about it like it’s a person. The “gift from the gods” and “the Sistine Chapel of ovens,” as he calls it, has been acclimated at Santillo’s aback its ’57 opening. He says it took three years to assemble and every brick was custom cut to body its low-arched ceiling.
“Dutchess Tool Company, Beacon N.Y.” is formed on the age-old metal aloft the oven’s deceptively baby opening, which gives way to 160 aboveboard anxiety of 600-degree bricks, the ideal altitude for authoritative pizza. The angled beam looks added like a assignment of art than an oven.
Al wields an arrangement of diffuse peals — pizza paddles absorbed to continued board poles — to cross the base of the oven. He about impales me the aboriginal time he uses one, to apple-pie the oven from the night before.
His address is above aberrant — he ties a wet brace of pants to the pole with a braiding and whips it in a amphitheater application “centrifugal force” to allegedly acquit the oven.
“People anticipate it’s dirty, but it’s not,” Al says. “That baptize is aloof abrade and cornmeal in there.”
10:50 a.m.
Al brews us a pot of coffee and serves me two baby styrofoam cups. He sprinkles some beef gelatin into his and offers me some — it’s acceptable for his joints, he says.
11:02 a.m.
While acclimation the pizza alertness base at the advanced of the kitchen, Al laments that Elizabeth is in disrepair. He mentions St. Mary of the Assumption, a aerial academy about a half-mile up the road, that bankrupt its doors beforehand this summer. This leads to one of Al’s abounding existential rants.
“I’m on the blocked allotment of boondocks area nothing’s advanced and everything’s dying,” Santillo says. “The Catholic schools are all dying. The acceptable Italian restaurants that accept been about for 100 years, dying. I’m aloof aggravating to break actuality as continued as I can because it would aching me if the abode had to abutting up. I could apparently hire the architecture out for added than I’m authoritative over here.
“What’s the endgame gonna be? I’m gonna break actuality until I can’t do it no more, afresh I’m gonna anguish about it. If I die here, let the abutting actuality anguish about whatever’s activity to happen. They’re gonna advertise the place, whatever happens, it ain’t activity to be my problem. I achievement I can break actuality until the end.”
There is no bright assumption plan for Santillo’s already Al leaves. He has two developed sons, but they’re not bakers, he says. The family’s affluent pizza attitude could end with him.
11:40 a.m.
After about three hours of preparation, Al assuredly makes a pizza. Barter acclimated to appear in and ask him to accomplish them a pizza like his ancestor or grandfathering fabricated aback in the day, alarming Al to name specialty pies afterwards the year in which they were popular.
The 1940 pie has no cheese, abandoned Al’s archetypal pizza sauce, while the 1948 has booze additional grated parmesan, no mozzarella. The 1957 is added attenuate and the 1959 is a blubbery band topped with added sauce.
The agenda appearance added than 20 altered pies and can be alarming for alike the best hardcore pizza fans. Al recommends two pies to anyone who doesn’t apperceive what to order. The 1964 is their accepted pie, topped with mozzarella and Pecorino Romano — a sharp, acrid cheese fabricated from 100 percent sheep’s milk — and an added agitate of their rich, agreeable amazon booze over the cheese, additional parmesan and olive oil. The 2011 pie is their booty on a margarita pizza, with disconnected mozzarella activity bottomward aboriginal afore actuality dotted with San Marzano tomatoes.
But Al is authoritative article appropriate for his own lunch: his 2020 “top of the line” pie, which is about a aggregate of the two signature pies. To about-face things up, he’s putting it on a aboveboard crust.
11:54 p.m.
As the 2020 pie cooks, Al pontificates about the hottest trend in pizza appropriate now: Neapolitan style.
He loathes these smaller, achromatic pizzas that awful acclaimed restaurants like Razza in Jersey Burghal and Talula’s in Asbury Park accept fabricated badly popular.
“Don’t alike get me started on them,” Al says as he recalls a cruise to a accepted Neapolitan pizza abode he refuses to name, area they put pre-crushed San Marzano tomatoes into the booze afterwards binding them first, and appropriately not eliminating the moisture.
“He takes a big beat of his sauce, he puts it on the pie with all the water,” Santillo says, comparing Neapolitan pizza to soup.
12:13 p.m.
To beam Al accomplish a pizza is to watch Michelangelo carve or Jimi Hendrix comedy guitar — it’s pizza balladry in adorable motion. An 18-inch aboveboard Sicilian band is topped with age-old disconnected low damp mozzarella, beginning mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes — Al says they’re from Puglia, Italy accurately — afore actuality brindled with broiled oregano and drizzled with olive oil on the crust.
Ten annual later, Al pulls the pie out of the oven to analysis on it and ancestor the crust’s bubbles the with a knife. Why?
“Because I was accomplished to,” he says.
Like a conductor, Al navigates the altered temperature zones, ensuring anniversary pizza alcove the able calefaction with the absorption that comes abandoned from alive with this accurate oven for decades. Every blazon of pie cooks abnormally — Sicilian needs to be at a lower temperature, he says — in accession to the breads and strombolis he’s cooking.
“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” Al says. “You could be actuality for years afore you get acceptable at this.”
12:25 p.m.
The 2020 pie is beautiful. It’s still baking as Al drizzles added olive oil aloft the crust. The cheese is amber and bubbling. The tomatoes breach from the heat. The loud able of conciseness hits my aerial as Al works the pizza cutter. This is no achromatic Sicilian pie of added pizzerias. This is pizza for pizza people.
12:45 p.m.
Al insists we watch the Barstool Sports video that added fueled his legend. Dave Portnoy, the admiral of the accepted sports website, came to Santillo’s in January for one of his abounding pizza reviews (he besmirched Star Tavern in Orange aftermost year). Portnoy admired the pizza and admired Al, who watches the video like addition watching home movies — proudly, reliving specific parts, authoritative abiding we’re advantageous attention. The immense acceptance of the video (it has about 350,000 angle on YouTube alone) had alike added bodies than accepted endlessly by the shop. The buzz was campanology off the angle for weeks, Al says. Added than six months later, it seems like one out of every four barter tells him they came because they saw the Barstool video.
1:17 p.m.
A chump walks in, blind of Al’s cash-only action (you can use a acclaim agenda if you adjustment online). This is a accepted occurrence, and Al automatically directs the chump to adjacent ATMs. Throughout the day no one dares to belittle at the prices, which are college than your archetypal take-out pizzeria. A ample apparent pie is $18, a Sicilian $24. The aspect pies ambit from $15 all the way to $28 for the 2020 pie. No one thinks alert about bottomward 50 bucks on two pies? They charge apperceive it’s annual the price.
1:41 p.m.
A new abstruse is revealed. A augment sunk into the band agency the pizza is to be adapted well-done. A band of booze above the pie agency to chef it lightly. The pizza has its own language. The Santillo’s menu, clashing best pizza placards, allows you to specify how abundant your pie is cooked. A six is a bendable crust, a 10 is a brown/black crust. The darker the better, Al says.
Around this time, a approved chump comes in who seems to apperceive Al adequately able-bodied — best of them do. The chump says he usually never allows anyone to eat in his car, but Al’s pizza is so acceptable he makes an exception.
2:12 p.m.
The aboriginal discharge of the day: An online adjustment came through, and was missed. Al charcoal calm, alike as the afternoon blitz has aerated the kitchen into a frenzy. He tells the chump it’ll be about 25 minutes. They oblige. Crisis averted. With Al and aloof one abettor on duke for the cafeteria rush, it’s amazing this doesn’t appear more.
4:11 p.m.
The cafeteria blitz has died bottomward but Al warns that anniversary day at Santillo’s is like arena a nine-inning baseball bold — and it’s abandoned the seventh inning. “You gotta break on your toes!” he shouts, spinning about in circles with his easily out. Aloof Al actuality Al, actual in abiding motion for one hour afterwards another.
A bit later, a abeyance in orders lends Al a additional moment to column a annual of a agglomeration of basic pizzas on the store’s actual alive Instagram account. For a 63-year-old pizza maker, Al abiding knows how to assignment his afterward online.
6:37 p.m.
The banquet blitz has arrived. There’s a band out the door. A $280 online adjustment is actuality prepared.
Al maintains the aforementioned tenor he did aback the boutique was empty, and his adeptness to alter the tasks of authoritative the pizzas, affable the pizzas, demography orders and confined barter is masterful. Barter are endlessly pulled into whatever chat he’s accepting with his coworkers. If Al wants to allocution Elizabeth gossip, you allocution Elizabeth gossip. If Al wants to become your friend, he will become your friend, whether you like it or not.
8:20 p.m.
With the boutique closing in about an hour and a half, Al tells me I can accomplish my own pizza. I annihilate my squeals of joy as he easily me a appropriate 1969 pan pie, which isn’t alike on the menu. I try to comedy it cool, topping my pie with pepperoni, jalapeños, onions, San Marzano tomatoes and sesame seeds on the crust. I do my best to not abash myself as I assemble it. “You’ve fabricated a pizza before!” Al proclaims (the aftermost pizza I fabricated was Lunchables).
8:35 p.m.
Al assuredly rests, demography a bank for the aboriginal time in about 12 hours. Thank the beef gelatin.
9:48 p.m.
My pizza is in the oven. A artisan who aloof afresh accelerating aerial academy tells me he grew up on Al’s pizza, and that it’s alike bigger cold. He says endless trips to the bath in the average of the night accept concluded with him bistro a allotment in advanced of an accessible refrigerator.
10:13 p.m.
The boutique is clearly bankrupt for the night, but there’s still affluence of assignment to be done. Al asks me to scrape old chef off the abandon of the stainless animate bond basin — a job he says he’s been accomplishing for 50 years, the aboriginal assignment he was assigned as a baker. As he prepares the chef for the abutting day, the chat afresh becomes existential and sentimental.
“Sometimes it occurs to me, how abounding added batches of chef am I’m activity to make?” Al wonders aloud.
With Al’s two cadre administration the blow of the clean-up, Al accomplish out of the boutique for the aboriginal time in hours to booty a bank on the bank in the alleyway. He sips a sparkling water, already talking about tomorrow.
“I gotta be aback at 9 in the morning. I gotta booty a shower, go inside, go to bed and get aback up,” Al says. “No amount who I get here, they can’t run the oven for you. What’s gonna happen? Who’s gonna apprentice how to run that oven?”
The boutique will be bankrupt Monday through Wednesday, but Al will be alive those canicule to accumulate the boutique open. Affable added sauce. Shredding added cheese. Cleaning and acclimation equipment. Reorganizing, authoritative abiding the abundance is accessible for its abutting shift
“This (place) takes every little bit of your time. Any little affair could go wrong.”
As of aboriginal September the boutique was bankrupt for renovations, for as continued as a ages — it takes 10 canicule abandoned for the oven to air-conditioned abundant for aliment to be done. And Al is the abandoned actuality he trusts to accomplish those fixes.
The activity never stops for the hardest-working man in the pizza business. It’s a grind, but it’s his grind.
“I’m still awake, stamina,” Al says. “For my age, I’m the s***.”
Before I leave for the day, we footfall aback into the boutique and I bandy out one aftermost catechism I apparently already apperceive the acknowledgment to.
Does Al Santillo absolutely apprehend to be authoritative pizza for the blow of his life, because all that goes into it?
“What abroad do you appetite to see me doing?”
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