‘Never seen pizza boxes at a wake before’: Mourning a New York pizza legend

Some people are born into royalty.

Andrew Bellucci’s admission to a royal family came a little later.

On Tuesday, in the long drawing room of Farenga Funeral Home in Astoria, a collection of restaurant industry bigwigs gathered to pay their respects to Mr. Bellucci, a former federal prisoner who became a pizza-making pioneer in New York City .

In the far corner was Ravenna Wilson, owner of The Native Bread and Pastry in East Williamsburg. Sitting next to her was Justin DeLeon of Apollonia’s Pizzeria on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, who had flown in for Mr. Bellucci’s wake. In the center of the room was Drew Nieporent, whose list of New York restaurants includes Nobu and Tribeca Grill.

In this collection, Paul Giannone, founder of Paulie Gee’s, ran a pizzeria in Greenpoint with locations from Baltimore to Chicago. As he scanned the room, his eyes fell on some pizza boxes with oversized photos of the deceased.

“I’ve never seen pizza boxes at a wake,” said Mr Giannone. “I need to check that.”

Mr. Bellucci worked in his restaurant, Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria, in Astoria, when he collapsed from heart failure on May 31, Matthew Katakis, his business partner, said. He was making a clam pizza, his new signature dish, Mr. Katakis said. He was pronounced dead a short time later. He was 59.

“He died the way he wanted: with his boots on, making pizza,” said Nino Coniglio, co-owner of Williamsburg Pizza.

At his wake, Mr. Bellucci was celebrated for making pizza like no other in New York. Sure, his ingredients were expensive and fresh, the restaurateurs and big eaters in attendance agreed. But where Mr. Bellucci excelled was dough. Hot out of the oven, a pizza crust from Mr. Bellucci managed to be crispy and chewy, thin but airy at the same time.

“Before coming here on this trip, I thought I had a great slice,” said Mr. DeLeon, whose own crust was praised by the Los Angeles Times as having an “airy, almost focaccia-like base.”

“This morning I went to his house and ate there for the first time,” said Mr. DeLeon. The meal led to the realization, “I have a lot of work to do.”

Mr. Bellucci’s rise, fall, and resurrection ranks among the most colorful in recent New York restaurant history. As head baker at Lombardi’s pizzeria in Little Italy in the early 1990s, he helped create a renaissance of traditional Italian pie that inspired generations of pizza aficionados and entrepreneurs. But his fame was cut short, first by a 13-month prison sentence for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his previous job at a law firm, and then by more than two decades of self-imposed exile, spent driving a cab in New York. and baking pizzas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

More unfortunate twists followed, including a falling out with an investor over the naming rights of Mr. Bellucci’s first pizzeria in Astoria. The resulting lawsuit in federal court was settled in December 2022.

Finally, his friends and fans said, Mr. Bellucci was ready to claim his place at the table of New York pizza royalty.

“They just ended the lawsuit,” said Sean Robinson, Mr. Bellucci’s boyfriend and a former chef. He had just started.”

While still unknown to most casual foodies, Mr. Bellucci returned to New York and quickly gained admirers among the city’s elite restaurateurs for his dual talents of cooking and self-promotion.

“We don’t get together for a beer and talk about the Yankees,” Mr. Coniglio said. “No, we talk about pizza history and pizza stories and who we think makes the best cheese.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Bellucci regularly walked from his Crown Heights apartment to East Williamsburg, where he followed Mrs. Wilson into her bakery.

“He walked for an hour. He was very driven,” said Mrs. Wilson. “He wanted to bake better bread than I did.”

Mr. DeLeon stood by a circular arrangement of white pom pom flowers, some spray-painted red and brown, like a pizza’s pepperoni and crust. Rare for this crowd, Mr. DeLeon cried. He remembered Mr. Bellucci riding a scooter to cheese and bread shops, all the while talking on the phone about his hunt for rare ingredients.

“Talking to him was my weekly ritual,” said Mr. DeLeon. “It was religious to me.”

After four hours of telling stories about Mr. Bellucci’s unlikely life, his fans and friends gathered in a circle at the front of the parlor in front of a gold-colored urn of his remains. Behind them, a flower arrangement of soccer moms stood above a bed of green lemon leaves. The white flowers read ‘The Don of Dough’.

Someone poured smoky Mezcal into little plastic shot glasses, which they passed around.

“He was given a second chance to do better,” says Sean Fahy, a restaurant entrepreneur in Kensington, Brooklyn. “He did it. It was spectacular.”

Mr. Coniglio raised his cup.

“He was the original pizza nerd,” said Mr. Coniglio. “Never to be forgotten in the industry.”

The don of dough was dead. They all drank and shuddered.