Pizza joints, like sushi bars, are not in short supply along Washington Avenue. On the eleven blocks between Sixth Street and Lincoln Road, there are eight pizzerias slinging cheesy Italian slices at the passersby. Though the kitchens are hot and loud, and the guys wrestling the dough sweat and grunt like WWF pros, competition is pretty amicable. Some proprietors occasionally send spies to check out others' styles and prices, and some pizza men are known to rotate positions among the eateries, "stealing" recipes and technique. It's mostly all harmless, and owners agree there is enough room in SoBe pizzaland for everybody.
Photos By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Squaring off: Mama Calabro versus Roman pizza king Pino -- it's not about dough; its about ideas
Photos By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Squaring off: Mama Calabro versus Roman pizza king Pino -- it's not about dough; its about ideas
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Unfortunately this only applies to round New York-style pizza, the usual fare on South Beach. What happened on Washington Avenue is that two pizzerias began selling rectangular Roman-style pies. This meant trouble. You're not supposed to mess with right angles, thin crusts, and gourmet toppings like the Romans do -- unless your name is Pino Piroso.
If you dare flirt with the square stuff, get ready for a litigious letter from Calabria native Pino, owner and creator of Pizza Rustica at Ninth and Washington. He claims to be the first paesano to bring thin rectangles -- the kind he first encountered on the streets of Rome -- to Miami Beach. Since 1996 the normally affable Pino has taken his place as the SPQR-style's first and sole purveyor, and he's bearish about keeping his position.
So when Carmine Puleo, an American with Sicilian bloodlines, dared to open Sopranos Pizza in early May, just two blocks south of Rustica, the local Roman godfather, whose cheery voice and casual style belie a strong-armed pizza lord, got miffed. There was something incestuous about Carmine's methods, Pino implied, from the borrowing of the name Sopranos from HBO, to the wholesale "theft" of his culinary secrets. (Piroso taught Puleo everything about the square-pizza business when Puleo worked for him at Rustica two years ago.) He showed the Siggie how to lovingly knead the seasoned semolina dough on to a 36-inch baking sheet in small batches, unlike the mass-produced floury paste commonly used in pizzerias. He showed him how to lure hungry pedestrians by interweaving gourmet ingredients such as roasted yellow and red peppers, porcini mushrooms, and prosciutto over a crisp crust, and decorating it with eye-catching arugula and kalamata olives.
When Carmine opened his doors, selling what looked to Pino like an unlicensed version of his own pies, Pino sent him a letter -- sealed with a kiss from his attorney Brett Feinstein -- warning the Sicilian to "cease and desist." "It's not about greed or the money," Pino says. "The point is that someone's copying my style of pizza!"
Pino is passionate about his pizzeria and his menu. He switched to pizza from nightclubs after his first Beach partnership venture, Ajaxx International, fizzled in 1994. "I lost everything," he remembers sadly. "It took a lot of good hard work to build this business and to get known. I worked seven eighteen-hour days to open. It put gray hair on my head. And [then] it was so easy for these people to [capitalize] on my recipes!"
Happily Roman-style caught on soon after opening. His menu bridged upward from mundane fast food to upscale bistro-level fare. To protect his recipes, Pino requires his employees to sign confidentiality contracts to ensure they won't reveal his recipes to competitors. Carmine Puleo, who worked just two months at Rustica, agreed to sign, Pino insists.
Chrome-domed Carmine, who likes to dress in gauzy outfits and sandals, obviously knows a good thing when he sees one. His other business, RetireQuickly.com, is a multilevel-marketing get-rich-quick venture that recruits prospective buyers to sell information over the Internet. He describes it as the type of business he can manage "while sitting by the pool." During his short stint at Rustica, he gained intimate knowledge of Pino's product and witnessed its popularity. When he saw that former pizza kingpin-turned-club impresario Tommy Pooch was selling his Pucci's Pizza location on Washington and Seventh, Carmine got his mother, New Jersey pizza queen Antonia Calabro, to grab it and open Sopranos; then he convinced Leo De Vita to invest and, frankly, copped Pino's idea.
"Yes, we did copy [Piroso]," Puleo admits. "Our pizzas are square like his, but we use different ingredients. And we expanded his recipes." He says he researched gourmet cookbooks and trolled Internet sites for new and innovative combinations, such as chicken teriyaki and Philly cheese-steak pizzas.
Mama Calabro, Carmine's short, big-voiced partner, is in charge of his kitchen. Like many Italian mothers, she is gregarious and engaging. But beneath her hearty laugh and heavy accent (she sounds like Tony Soprano) beats a toughness you'd hate to see unleashed. Mama owned pizzerias in New Jersey for 26 years. Between perpetual puffs on Marlboros, she explains that borrowing from other styles is just part of the business and that everybody does it. "It's nothing to copy other people," she insists. "It's normal. Before I open a business, I taste all the different pizzas because I want to know my competition. I study other recipes before I start." She wears a "so what?" expression that you don't want to challenge. She thinks Pino is too uptight: "He could copy me if he wanted -- what do I care?" Yet when pushed on it, she won't give up her sauce recipe, which she claims goes back generations in her famiglia.
