Pizza Roma: Pizza Parlor, Mood Elevator

A first time visit for a slice of pizza on the day before Easter inspired this story…local owner-operated places like this and people like Tony are getting scarce, if you’ve got ones around you, give them some love.

 

Pizza Roma

212 Waverly Avenue

Watertown, MA

April 20, 2019...the day before Easter Sunday

 

Fabulous pizza but the floorshow is da bomb. No sooner do you walk into the shoebox size pizza parlor and the chatter begins.
 
Joe is happy doing two things: making pizza and regaling customers with stories, boasts, and wise cracks. We’re in a chapel in which soft dough is communion and a huge steel oven is the chalice that will consecrate it before serving it to us.  Father Tony is our pastor on this day before Easter.
 
It’s not on a scale with the miracle of the loaves and fishes but Father Joe can replicate making a perfect pizza all day long. He cuts a rectangular hunk from a mound of dough on his podium and within minutes a transformation on the order of water into wine transpires right in front of my eyes. He knows the tactile geography of a round of dough like a man knows the contours of his lover’s body. His palms and stubby fingers shape, smooth, stretch, and pat the yielding dough into a perfect thin circle with pride, self-satisfaction, and well, a with the devotion of a man of the cloth forming a sacrament from flour, water and eggs.
 
He’s standing just inside the entrance in front of the window on Waverly Avenue in Watertown, MA, piled high with pizza boxes soon to be filled and handed to customers who call ahead or come to sit down and enjoy the show while they wait. He notices everything and everybody.
 
“I used to live nearby and moved to Waltham,” says the young woman sitting on one of the six stools arranged against the wall of the place with a wingspan of about ten feet. “I miss the place and I brought my boyfriend here to taste this wonderful pepperoni pizza we’re taking home.”
 
On the left as soon as you walk in is Joe with every topping for a pizza in trays an arms length in front of him. The huge oven and the trusty wooden paddle to insert and remove perfectly cooked thin crust pizzas is right behind him. I would bet money that Joe could make a margarita pizza blindfolded.
 
Every move he makes is done with the economy of movement of a man who’s done it thousands of times. The bonus is that he can sing, joke, tell a story, pose for a photo, and talk to the customers without missing a beat while making a perfect pizza in the process.
 
The man is a born showman. Proud of his artisan-ship, he has more anecdotes than boxes of pizza piled up in the window, and is waiting for the perfect time to regale you with some inspired antic. He was born to do this. You walk out of Roma Pizza feeling better, in a better mood, than when you walked in. Aside from the guy the woman from Waltham brought in, I appear to be the only first-time customer.
 
It is impossible to be here without him engaging you.  This is his stage. We are the paying audience. But we’re getting way more than we’re paying for. I would pay a cover charge to just sit down for half an hour and witness the zany unpredictable interactions that are bound to happen.
 
Aside from everything else this might be the safest store in Watertown. It’s not unusual to see one of Watertown’s finest pop in for a slice or a sub or a good laugh on a day when he could use Tony’s banter to ease a day of tension from being with people who are a light year away from knowing what it’s like to be in Tony’s open-hearted universe.

Irrepressible Joe...

Spaghetti and Meatball..."He calls me Meatball, I'm short and round. I call him Spaghetti, he's like a piece of linguini!" says Joe.

what a team

In a matter of minutes one of the orbs of dough in the pan at Joe's left is transformed into a smooth thin perfect circle of dough waiting to be topped with fresh ingredients...

 

for example, this pepperoni pizza these customers came all the way from Waltham to take home.

212 Waverley Avenue, Watertown, MA...Pizza Roma!


The tiniest of all seven storefronts along a short block of stores at the corner of Orchard and Waverly Streets in Watertown.

 

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Comments

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka PT from Boston]

Tony's been at this bandbox of a store for 23 years...just ask him, he'll tell you. He says he had a twenty minute tutorial back at his first place of employment in 1972 in Arlington. The rest, as they say, is history.

[Gerard McMahon]

You captured it all!!

[JEFFERY PICCOLI]

PIZZA,PIZZA

[Bambi Good]

your open-hearted universe as well, Paul!

[Kristen Eichleay]

Thanks for the tip, Paul!

[Christopher Huggins]

Another example of your ability to connect to the world around you. I love how you show your appreciation of others and the world's warm and trusting response to you.

[Myke Farricker]

Great article - I'll have to check it out!

[Paul Sinopoli]

Great story Paul. Sounds like my kind of place!

[Susan M. Bennett]

PT- Love this piece and want a slice of that pizza and the experience you so beautifully conveyed. S