We lost one of the all-time greats this week. Mr. Patsy Grimaldi, founder of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria and Julianna’s Pizza, has died at age 93. It’s no overstatement to say that Patsy Grimaldi had a greater impact on pizza in New York (and beyond) than any other person in the last century.
Back in 1990, pizza in New York fit into three categories. There were restaurants that sold pizza, slice shops, and a very small number of holdouts from the first half of the 20th century. That last category includes places like John’s, Totonno’s, and Patsy’s. You’ve probably been to at least one of them. They use coal-fired ovens and only sell pizza by the whole pie (with the exception of Patsy’s in East Harlem). Besides these few old school spots, pizza in NYC was a casual on-the-go food. Then Patsy’s Grimaldi came along and revived a dinosaur.
He opened a pizzeria at 19 Old Fulton Street in an old hardware store. The neighborhood was desolate, nothing close to what DUMBO is today. He named the pizzeria after himself, as all the classic spots did, and Patsy’s Pizzeria was born. Patsy modeled the pizzeria after the old classic spots that had by this point entered the endangered special list.
He had a close personal connection to the old coal oven pizzerias because he worked for his uncle Patsy Lancieri up at his pizzeria in East Harlem. Funny enough, that pizzeria name fell under a licensing agreement in the mid 1990s, which is when Grimaldi changed the name of his pizzeria from Patsy’s to Grimaldi’s.
When Patsy opened his pizzeria under the Brooklyn Bridge, it was a big deal. The ripples from this pebble led to the reopening of Lombardi’s in 1994. It led to the expansions of both John’s and Totonno’s later that decade. Relatives of Grimaldi even opened their own very similar pizzerias on Long Island, New Jersey, and Queens. The Grimaldi’s chain and other coal-fired chains like Anthony’s Coal Fired owe their existence to Patsy’s Grimaldi. The man was directly responsible for hundreds of pizzerias and the rebirth of the coal-fired pizza.
I’d even argue that Patsy Grimaldi reset the public’s definition of pizza itself. No longer was it a casual greasy slice; Patsy made pizza respectable. His contributions paved the way for the Neapolitan movement in the early 2000s, which kicked open the doors for all the artisan styles we enjoy today. Patsy Grimaldi was the most significant figure in American pizza since the first Neapolitan immigrants brought it to us in the late 1800s.
