![]() Pizza is a fixture growing up in the NY-NJ area – baseball games, birthday parties, school lunches, Tuesday night dinners and the quick stop while running errands with my mother,” Richter told The Nosher. The leader of this trend was arguably Dan Richter of Razza, whose obsession with pizza was a home-grown affair: Photo credit Evan SungĬontemporaneous to Katz’s boom in Chicago in the early 21st century, a new phenomenon was emerging on the East Coast: The rise of the Jersey Boy pizzaiolo. Burt’s Place continues to wow Windy City residents with wonderful slices. Katz passed away in 2016 but, ever the planner, he’d been training his chosen successors, Jerry Petrow and John Munao, for four years prior. Numerous accolades followed the commercial success, and in 2012, the editorial staff of Men’s Health named Burt’s the “USA’s Best Pizza Parlor” based on a survey of more than 80,000 readers. Katz had already enjoyed success by opening other pizza chains, but thanks to a timely visit in 2009 by Anthony Bourdain, his namesake joint achieved stratospheric popularity. In 1989, Katz and his wife Sharon opened Starback’s Pizza (later renamed Burt’s Place to avoid litigation from Starbucks). Katz laid the foundation for a small group of Jewish pioneers to participate in and influence North America’s pizza scene. In some cases, kosher restrictions presented another challenge, as mingling dairy with meat (let alone verboten pork pepperoni) was not an option. In addition to the fact that their Italian immigrant brethren (particularly those hailing from Naples) had a corner on the early market, many Jewish transplants were unfamiliar with the ingredient combinations found in traditional cheese-and-tomato pies. Preparing pizza did not come naturally to many first-wave Jewish immigrants in the United States. But Katz was not simply referring to himself, for he was certain of what others have only started to realize in the last decade: A new generation of pizza chefs and experts are proving that pizza is for everyone (this is America, after all), and anyone – not just those with Italian blood – is capable of making good pizza, including Jews. That was certainly true of Katz, whose pizzeria Burt’s Place remains a Chicago icon. “People used to say to me for years: ‘You must be Italian, you make good pizza.’ I got so damn sick and tired of hearing it, I had the sign made up: Jews Make Good Pizza.” Midway through Vice, Munchies’ “The Pizza Show: Chicago” episode (2016), restaurant and pizzaiolo extraordinaire Burt Katz (now deceased) issues an important declaration:
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