Hands from Around the World Toss East Tennessee Pizza
Cooks at Greg’s Pizza in Johnson City, Tennessee, do their work behind a fortress of cardboard boxes. It’s a carry-out business and always has been. The only seats in the place are for waiting. There are no tables.
Greg’s goes through about 1,400 of those boxes in a typical week’s time. The red artwork on the boxes depicts a smoking mountain with the words “Greg’s Volcano Pizza.” The descriptor hearkens back to the time when pizzas were sent out covered in tented brown paper, to protect the molten cheese.
Greg’s is one of the oldest pizza joints in East Tennessee. Greg Campanello, a native of Elkhart, Indiana, opened it in 1963, in an area north of town that was then surrounded by cornfields. But his timing was perfect. That year, East Tennessee State College became East Tennessee State University, triggering a period of growth in the city that has never abated.
In opening pizza businesses in Elkhart, as well as Johnson City and Elizabethton in Northeast Tennessee, Campanello was building on his Italian heritage, but the current owner, Eddy Zayas-Bazán, is Cuban-American. He is emblematic of the international nature of pizza in East Tennessee. Although Italian in its origins and American in its adaptations, pizza in this part of the state is crafted by the hands of immigrants from all over the world. In addition to Zayas-Bazán, whose parents left Cuba two months before he was born, I’ve come to know pizza craftspeople from Greece, Germany, Morocco, Iran, and, yes, even Italy.
When the Zayas-Bazán family moved to Johnson City so that Eddy’s father Eduardo could begin teaching Spanish at ETSU, Eddy developed a childhood love of Greg’s that eventually led to his purchase of the business. He has kept many of Greg Campanello’s original recipes and techniques and even ventured to Elkhart to meet the late Campanello’s family and talk about the history of his businesses.
“There are many facets to a good pizza,” Zayas-Bazán tells me. “First is the dough, which has to be proofed properly and be the right texture. That’s very, very important. If it’s too thin, you’re going to have a hole in it. If it’s over-proofed, it’s going to taste like beer. You don’t want that. Not in a pizza anyway.”
In addition to freshly chopped vegetable toppings and house-made Italian sausage, Greg’s is known for two techniques. First, the whole-milk mozzarella cheese from Wisconsin is scattered on top of the other ingredients. Given the fact that this is a carry-out business, my theory is that the cheese serves as a good insulator for the trip home. Second, the pizza is cut into one-inch strips with a mezzaluna.
One of the ovens at Greg’s dates to the restaurant’s beginning, 60 years ago. “They’re natural gas-powered,” Zayas-Bazán says. “We bake pizzas old-style, at about 450 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the number of toppings.”
Keeping the “old ways” going is one of the foundations of the business. “I love traditions. I love legacies,” Zayas-Bazán tells me. And there’s another. Honoring his Cuban heritage, Zayas-Bazán sells slices of tres leches cake at his restaurants.
Across town, just a couple of blocks off the ETSU campus, Burt Kordamiri runs the Italian Pizza Pub. A native of Iran, Kordamiri was unfamiliar with pizza as a child. He had his first slice in Boston in 1978.
One of the criteria for a good pizza place, in my book, is the constant presence of the owner. Kordamiri closed the business with the intention to retire in June of 2021. Less than a year and a half later, he came out of retirement. He isn’t an absentee overseer. He’s behind the counter every day, elbow deep in flour, building pizzas just like every other employee.
He estimates that his ovens are about 75 years old, but with a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering technology and a master’s in industrial technology from nearby ETSU, he can handle oven maintenance himself.
Growing up in Iran, Kordamiri developed a love for eggplant. It’s one of the topping choices at Italian Pizza Pub.
Most shopping mall pizza is produced by chains, but not so at the Fort Henry Mall in Kingsport, where the Italian Village restaurant is run by an Italian family. Raffaele, Ricardo, and Michael Misciagna emigrated to the United States from their home near the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy, first settling in Long Island, New York, before moving to Tennessee.
When the Misciagnas arrived in the States, they were virtually penniless. Despite almost constant store closures around them in the Fort Henry Mall, they have operated a thriving business since 1978.
Stone, wood, and iron are the elemental requirements for pizza baking at Italian Village. Cooks form Neapolitan pizzas on wooden paddles and slide them onto stones in the restaurant’s three ovens. For the Sicilian or thicker-crusted pizzas, dough is placed in black iron pans and allowed to rise.
The Misciagnas make the simplest of sauces for their pizza. It isn’t even cooked. It’s a combination of tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh basil, the southern Italian staples they grew up eating. In the early days of the business, fresh basil was so rare in East Tennessee that the Misciagnas had to grow their own.
“We come from a country of farmers and fishermen, and we stick with the old traditions,” says Raffaele.
On the Tennessee side of Bristol, Chicago traditions are the theme at The Angry Italian. A native of the Chicago area, owner Keith Yonker moved to the Tri-Cities in 2015 to oversee food service at Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport.
Most East Tennessee pizza is of the thin crust variety, which Yonker serves as “tavern style,” but his is one of the few establishments in the region that specializes in deep-dish, which requires 45 minutes of cooking time.
Outside Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town, Rocky Hendrix opened Rocky’s Pizza in 1996, and it instantly became one of my favorite spots. Little League athletes pack the place on game nights. The cooks at Rocky’s use a fairly light hand when it comes to sauce and cheese, and the balance is perfect, especially with thinly sliced ham, pepperoni, and mushrooms.
Simms Pizzeria opened two years later in the Boones Creek community of Northeast Tennessee. New York style pizza is the specialty, with a thin and crispy crust. Owner Simms Umberger says the proper way to eat it is to fold it so that a furrow is created down the center of the slice. His pizza recipe originated in Sicily.
The Greek contribution to the culinary history of Knoxville has been profound over the years, but with the closure of such places as Peroulas on Market Square, The Regas on Gay Street, and The Varsity Inn on Cumberland, Hellenic connections in the city are quickly disappearing. Yet The Pizza Palace on Magnolia hangs on. The drive-in pizzeria was founded in 1961 by three Greek brothers, Al, Gus, and Arthur Peroulas. In 1997, after earning degrees from Emory University and the Culinary Institute of America, Arthur’s son Charlie joined the family business. The Pizza Palace holds the distinction of being one of the oldest pizza purveyors in Tennessee, and the menu still uses the term “pizza pie.”
In nearby Oak Ridge, the late Ed Neusel, a former race car mechanic, railroad man, and semi-pro football player, opened Big Ed’s Pizza on Jackson Square in 1970. In this dark beer-hall of a building with oiled oak floors, the former Marine not only fed the community, he provided countless first jobs for hundreds of Oak Ridge High School students, along with lessons about cleanliness, punctuality, and getting along with people.
Big Ed’s has always been about pizza, period. There are no salads. There are no sides. There are no sandwiches.
“Everything here is made from scratch, by our own recipes,” Ed’s son, the late David Neusel, told me. “We do our own hamburger. We use Canadian bacon because it’s lean. Our cheese is whole-milk from Wisconsin. We make our own dough. We mix the spices for our sauce that is made with Italian pear tomatoes.”
Ed Neusel’s countenance, in caricature, is one of Oak Ridge’s most cherished symbols.
And my pantheon of storied East Tennessee pizza includes a place that is no more. Lieselotte “Lottie” O’Brien, a native of Augsburg, Germany, often scattered sauerkraut on pizza at Mama Mia’s Pizza in Kingston, Tennessee, from 1971 until her death in 2020 at the age of 94. Working almost until the day she died, this tireless German lady, who married an Irishman, served Italian pizza near the banks of Watts Bar Lake in the East Tennessee community of Kingston. And you can’t get much more American than that.
About the author: Fred Sauceman is the author of The Proffitts of Ridgewood: An Appalachian Family’s Life in Barbecue.