The oldest pizza shops in Philadelphia are not food-media darlings. They don't have neon signs in their windows or collaborations with local breweries. Their menus haven't been redesigned since the Reagan administration. And they are, in many cases, making some of the most consistently excellent pizza in the city.
Why Old MWers
We're not arguing that old automatically means good. There are plenty of old pizza shops in Philadelphia that have been coasting for decades on neighborhood loyalty and the inertia of habit. But the ones that have survived multiple generations of ownership (or kept the same family through multiple generations) and still have lines out the door — those shops have earned something.
What they've earned is calibration. When you've been making the same pizza for fifty years, you know exactly when the dough is right. You know what the sauce is supposed to taste like. You know what the bottom should look like when it comes out of the oven. This is institutional knowledge that no amount of culinary school training can replicate. It's embodied knowledge — knowledge in the hands, in the eyes, in the smell of the kitchen.
The Traditions They Carry
Philadelphia's oldest pizza shops are carriers of the city's Italian-American food culture. They represent a direct line back to the immigrant communities of the early 20th century, even if the people working in them today are not themselves of Italian heritage.
Tacconelli's Pizzeria in Port Richmond — one of the most celebrated old-school Philly pizza institutions — has been operating since 1946. You have to call ahead to reserve your dough (they only make a limited amount each day and when it's gone, it's gone). The pizza is thin-crust, coal-fired, and resolutely old-school. It doesn't taste like anything you'd find at a "modern Neapolitan" spot. It tastes like something its own, something that couldn't exist anywhere else.
What They Get Right
The old shops tend to excel at the things that require time and repetition to master: dough management, sauce balance, the bake. They are usually less adventurous with toppings than contemporary spots — you won't find 'nduja or truffle oil on the menu — but they're not trying to be adventurous. They're trying to be exactly what they've always been.
This is actually a useful thing to understand about pizza: the margherita at a sixty-year-old institution and the margherita at a two-year-old "neo-Neapolitan" spot are both trying to make a good pizza, but they're trying to make different things. The old shop is trying to replicate a known quantity. The new spot is trying to establish a new standard. Both are valid projects. Both produce interesting results.
Visiting Old Philly Pizza Shops
A few practical notes about visiting the city's oldest pizza institutions:
Call ahead. Many of the old shops have limited hours, limited seating, and in some cases (Tacconelli's being the famous example) limited dough. Call ahead. Read their websites carefully.
Bring cash. Old-school pizza shops often don't take cards or have a minimum. Cash only is a common policy.
Don't expect ambiance. The oldest shops are often in strip malls, rowhouse basements, or storefronts that haven't been renovated since the 1970s. This is not a problem. It is the experience.
Order the plain pizza first. Before you try the fancy toppings (if there are any), get a plain tomato pizza or a plain mozzarella pizza. It's the most revealing thing on the menu and the thing the kitchen has been making the longest.
We're planning dedicated visits to several of Philadelphia's oldest pizza institutions for The Philly Pizza Project. These won't be straightforward to score against our criteria system — a fifty-year-old shop isn't optimizing for leopard charring or Instagram-worthy presentation — but they'll be illuminating in their own way.