“I always thought there was a lot of dough here,” jokes 62-year-old Barbara Tacconelli of her family’s third-generation, Zagat-rated pizzeria in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia. Even after 46 years in the business (and 47 married to 71-year-old Vince, grandson of the restaurant’s founder), she still marvels at how Tacconelli’s pizza crust has become the family’s bread and butter.
It all started in the 1920s, when Giovanni Tacconelli settled in this working-class section of Philadelphia, built a 20x20-foot brick oven and started baking bread. His two sons, Anthony and Charles, came into the business and worked there until World War II intervened. When the men returned, according to Barbara, “nobody wanted to bake bread.” Since, as she puts it, “they already had the oven,” they decided to make tomato pies.
The pizzeria was successful enough. “Back then, we were happy with half a loaf,” Barbara says. Anthony ran the restaurant and when Charles died in 1955, he bought out his share. Anthony’s son Vince started in the business at age 15 and took over when his father passed away in 1968.
Life was copacetic for the humble pie makers until 1985, when Philadelphia magazine raved about their pizza in an unsolicited review. Tacconelli’s became an overnight sensation, garnering the magazine’s “Best of Philly” awards five years in a row and eventually entering its Hall of Fame.
And that’s when the dough reservations began. “My husband believes in fresh, and he won’t hold dough over from one night to the next,” Barbara explains. Hence each night he made enough dough for only 60 to 70 pizzas, the amount he knew he could sell. Suddenly, there were disappointed customers, many of whom had traveled a distance only to be told the supply was gone. Innocently enough, Vince suggested that next time they might want to call ahead.
So they did. And they still do. Members of a large party will call up to a week in advance. The 90-seat, pizza-only, paper-plate restaurant— open for just 5½ hours a night Wednesday through Sunday—is usually sold out, though Barbara notes that “every night is different.”
So why not just make more dough? Because the secret to success lies in Giovanni’s original brick oven. “It takes five hours to heat up to 850 degrees,” explains Barbara. “Then, for the rest of the night, we cook as it cools down. I know the inside of that oven better than I know my husband.”
Even though she calls the restaurant “my Tara,” Barbara admits that she and Vince are ready to turn over the reins to their 45-year-old son, John, “very soon.” John’s son, 13-year-old Giovanni, is next in line. Last year, Barbara and Vince’s other son, Vincent, opened a Tacconelli’s in New Jersey, where rumor has it you don’t have to pre-order the dough. (He has a bigger oven.)
“What can I say?” Barbara comments. “The tree has branches as well as roots.”
Kathryn Levy Feldman is a freelance writer based in Bryn Mawr, Pa.