The Fremont of Tony Gemignani’s childhood looks a lot different than the Fremont of today. The world-renowned pizza chef and restaurateur remembers a landscape filled with farms and a wide expanse of city. He remembers cruising up and down the boulevard and dirt-biking across his neighbor’s land. Mostly he remembers the farms.
“It sounds like it was 100 years ago,” the renowned pizza entrepreneur says over the phone. “At one time Fremont was filled with corn and apricots and cherry trees.”
Gemignani grew up amidst some of that, helping work his grandfather’s farm until he was about 17 years old. They grew apricots and cherries, but also fava beans, oranges, lemons, tomatoes and zucchini, on about 20 acres of land—a number that seemed like 50 to a young Gemignani. Eventually his grandfather began to sell off the farm piece by piece, like so many others in the area. The dot-com boom came for Fremont and its farmers. Gemignani left in his 20s.
That’s when he began to change, too. Over three decades, Gemignani went on to become a 13-time world pizza champion and the face of a network of restaurants across California and Nevada, including the recent expansion of Slice House, his fast-casual pizza franchise. With more than 140 locations either open or under development, it’s a growing piece of his empire. It’s also the one that could bring him back home.
A Young Gemignani
Though Gemignani built a reputation on showmanship, he can’t pin down a breakthrough moment that led him to pizza making. The dish, however, definitely played a role in his upbringing.
“Our spot was Uncle Joe’s,” recalls Gemignani about the place his grandfather took him and his brother, Frank, out to eat at once a week. “It was always Friday night; it was pizza night. I remember getting my extra-cheese pizza that I loved. That was a special time growing up.”
Memories like those are among the formative experiences that shaped how Gemignani went on to cook at and run his restaurants. His grandfather, remembered by Gemignani for his “giant hands” as much as his work ethic, showed a young Tony how to pick out the best produce.
Gemignani’s mother taught him how to cook, and had a reputation for bringing friends and family together at lively dinners. She cooked such massive quantities of food that guests left with “more food than they ate,” Gemignani says. And there were always, he remembers, fresh ingredients, plucked straight from the farm.
When Gemignani left home, he didn’t stray too far. In 1991, he went to work for his brother at Pyzano’s Pizzeria in Castro Valley, where Gemignani the showman and pizza master began to emerge. After impressing customers with his dough-throwing skills, he scaled his prowess to a professional level, entering competitions around the world for both pizza-making and pizza-throwing.
In 2007 he earned the title of World Champion Pizza Maker at the World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy. Two years later, he opened his first restaurant, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, in San Francisco. Over the following 15 years, he followed with Tony’s Coal-Fired Pizza and Slice House, Pizza Rock, Capo’s, Giovanni Italian Specialties and, of course, his lineup of Slice Houses.
Today, residential homes dot the acres of the former family farm. Uncle Joe’s is now a Bronco Billy’s Pizza Palace. A pho restaurant occupies the former space of Pyzano’s Pizzeria. There are Slice House locations in San Francisco, San Leandro, Walnut Creek, Mountain View and Belmont, and more that span to Southern California.
For the last four years, Gemignani and his family have lived in Alamo, on about one and a half acres of land. There, Gemignani’s been recreating his childhood for his own young son, however best he can.
From Farm to Garden
“I just got done picking my Blenheim [apricots],” he says. “My cherries just passed. Plums are really in right now. Figs are starting to come in.”
I try to keep up as Gemignani lists off what’s in season, as well as the impressive roster of what else grows in his garden: lemons, limes, tomatoes, persimmons, pomegranates, oranges, nectarines, basil. In total about 24 fruit trees, not to mention the 400 vines in his small vineyard.
“It’s awesome. I have my son totally into it. I wanted him to kind of grow up in that environment,” he says.
At Slice House, 90% of ingredients are scratch-made—from bubbling dough and fresh pasta to verdant green pesto and sweet-spicy hot-house honey. Gemignani also manufactures his own flour and sources his own tomatoes, a concept he began working on about a decade ago and solidified over the years.
“I wanted my pizza to be different than others. That came down to the foundation,” meaning the dough and the sauce, he says. His cheese of choice remains unchanged after three decades: Grande.
Yet in all this time, despite the pull toward his former life, he never opened a restaurant in Fremont. As Gemignani’s career took off and took him away, he says he became more unfamiliar with the city and the market. It was never the right time, he says.
Now that timing is turning around. A new Gemignani property is finally in the works for Fremont in the form of another Slice House outpost. Instead of Gemignani at the helm, a figure from his past, Pritika Rajasanshi, a former high school classmate who owns the Mountain View franchise location and still lives in Fremont, will steer the ship.
“I know that’s gonna be a very big opening. It’s got that heritage factor,” Rajasanshi says. The Gemignani name also helps. “He’s like a rock star. Almost everyone knows of him.” Rajasanshi is currently in the process of finding the right location and negotiating its lease.
The formula for this Slice House will follow that of the others, built around a tightly defined brand. “I love marketing,” Gemignani mentions briefly during the course of our conversation. It shows—from the color palette that carries from website to doorway, to his namesake ingredients that decorate the restaurant walls. Like Gemignani’s other concepts, the menu will also feature pizzas in a range of geographical styles: New York, Detroit and Sicilian, with all-American or Italian-inspired toppings.
With his name associated with so many locations—his East Bay roots, his San Francisco ties, a worldwide title—I had to wonder where Gemignani was meant to be.
“My heart belongs in California. But am I more 415 or 510? I’m kind of in between.” But definitely, he says, “I’m a Cali kid.”
Tony’s Coal Fired Pizza and Slice House, open Mon-Tue, 11:30am to 9pm; Wed-Thu, 11:30am to 10pm; Fri-Sat, 11:30am to 11pm; Sun, 11:30am to 10pm; 1556 Stockton St., San Francisco. 415.835.9888. tonyscoalfired.com
Slice House San Francisco, open Mon-Sun, 11am to 10pm; 1535 Haight St., San Francisco. 415.552.2520. slicehouse.com/haight
Slice House Walnut Creek, open Mon-Sun, 11am to 10pm; 1500 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Walnut Creek. 925.448.8077. slicehouse.com/walnutcreek
Slice House San Leandro, open Mon-Thu, 11am to 9pm; Fri-Sat, 11am to 10pm; Sun 11am to 9pm; 135 Parrott St., San Leandro. 510.281.0725. slicehouse.com/sanleandro
