Patsy Grimaldi died this week

Friends,

It has been a tough week for food lovers with both Tom Fitzmorris and Patsy Grimaldi dying recently. Grimaldi, who died Thursday, was a walking pizza relic. The story of his family’s pizzeria is a bit complicated and, like the king cake drama within the Randazzo family, takes many twists and turns.

Grimaldi began making pizza at the original Patsy’s in Harlem as a teenager. In some interviews he said he started at Patsy’s in 1941 and in others, 1945. His uncle was Patsy Lancieri, the owner, who had opened Patsy’s in 1933 just a few years after arriving in New York, where he apprenticed as a pizza maker under Genaro Lombardi. Lombardi, as many people know, is credited as the godfather of pizza in NYC, with his pupils starting Patsy’s (1933), John’s of Bleecker Street (1929), and Totonno’s (1924) down in Coney Island. All three pizzerias have existed for 90 odd years, serving pizzas out of ancient coal ovens. All three have similar crusts and styles, and some have argued reflect what real Naples pizza would have been like a century ago.

Patsy Grimaldi never strayed far from the food industry, but it was not until 1990 that he opened his own pizzeria, down near DUMBO on Fulton St. He named it Patsy’s. The original Patsy’s owned by his uncle had been sold by the family, and its new owner, sued Grimaldi over his new pizzeria’s name, resulting in the pie shop becoming Grimaldi’s.

Patsy and his wife ran Grimaldi’s as it became a NY institution in the 90s. Frank Ciolli, whose wife’s parents had run famed mob restaurant, Bamonte’s in Greenpoint-Williamsburg, approached Patsy, asking to buy the pizzeria. A deal was made and Ciolli would operate and franchise the pizzeria. Grimaldi would stay on as pizza consultant.

The relationship between Grimaldi and Ciolli went south. Grimaldi was forced out the kitchen and they stopped talking. When Ciolli lost his lease on the original Grimaldi’s building, Patsy saw an opening. And in 2011, Grimaldi opened Julianna’s in the original Grimaldi’s building that had his original coal oven. Ciolli quickly got a new lease in a bigger building next door, reopening Grimaldi’s there. He tried to stop Patsy from opening Julianna’s, but the courts would not intercede.

Patsy Grimaldi was 93 and the last living pizza maker in New York to have a direct connection to Genaro Lombardi. Certainly, it is an end of an era in New York pizza.

Yours,
TulaneLSU