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Nostalgia by Justin nystrom The trajectory of Artista Pizza in Gentilly was reflective of not only a changing pizza business, but of a city that changed along with it. Walter Forschler started Artista in 1958, when Gentilly remained a heavily Sicilian-American suburb of New Orleans. Located next to the Tiger movie theater, it was a popular family destination. In the late 1960s, Forschler moved on to run his growing Tower of Pizza operation (of which a Metairie location remains open and quite popular today), selling the operation to Nick LoGiudice, who in turn sold it to his brother Sal in the early 1970s. Then the neighborhood changed over a relatively short period of time. The Tiger theater jumbled its letters and became the “Riget” and later the “Grit,” both iterations screening adult films instead of mainstream fare, until one day the movies stopped entirely. In 1986, Alex Martin, a feature reporter for The Times-Picayune , visited Artista for a “last supper” held for a group of old regular customers who crowded into its small L-shaped dining room. “I’m really operating out of the past,” observed LoGiudice, “that’s part of my problem.” Sal went on to take over United Bakery on St. Claude from his father Dominick, once famous for its unique St. Joseph’s Bread. Despite the demise of Artista and dozens of neighborhood pizza places like it, many others continue to persist into our own era, and even thrive. None have done so longer than Venezia Restaurant, whose landmark neon sign has greeted diners since 1957. Started by Anthony Carollo, the son of famed crime boss “Silver Dollar” Sam, and his chef Camillo D’Anna, the kitchen has turned out a variety of Italian-American specialties at its North Carrollton location ever since. Anthony Bologna bought the place in 1987, and has kept much of it the same — one of the essences of its appeal. But as important as nostalgia is to its formula, Venezia’s dining room needed some refreshing, and Bologna made a tasteful renovation to the dining room two years ago. At over 60 years into its run, it remains wise to make reservations at Venezia if you want a table on a Saturday night.

the art. We’ll never know for sure, but it is probable that the movie star Errol Flynn ate there in 1951, a reporter having found him walking down Bourbon Street “looking for a place that served pizza pie.” In the early years Rizzo cut his Neapolitan pie with a scissors (perhaps adding substance to his claim of having learned the trade in Naples) and, although he did not sell it by weight, it brings to mind the recent arrival in New Orleans of the Italian chain Bonci Pizza and the ensuing debate on social media about the propriety of using scissors instead of a rolling cutter or knife to divvy up the goods. (This practice is common in Rome.) Rizzo moved to 440 Bourbon, where he operated for many years until closing in 1974. Customers missed the King of Pizza so much that, by 1978, a new restaurant called “Doc’s King of Pizza” opened in Metairie promising to sell “Rizzo style food.”

Pizza was only one cultural force dragging New Orleans into the national mainstream in the 1950s, and it was aided — or at least abetted — by a series of syndicated newspaper food columns that encouraged homemakers to try their hand at the national craze. As early as 1935, one such article promised to lead cooks to the culinary terrain of Naples through a recipe that under the most optimal condi- tions would have yielded miniature quiches rather than anything resembling pizza. A particularly severe culinary misdemeanor proffered in 1951 suggested making “Maine sardine pizza” by topping English muffins with American cheese, onions and tinned fish. And then there was the Chef Boyardee box pizza mix, which led one columnist to joke that it was the source of Recovered Childhood Lunch Trauma. One forgets how far we’ve come.

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