Back in 2019, pizzaiolo Craig Melillo would spend his Saturday nights in his crowded cave of a St. Johns restaurant space, Gracie’s Apizza. He’d pull naturally leavened pies, topped with house-made mozzarella, from the wood-fired oven, which would arrive at tables crowded with salads and glasses of wine. He would banter with regulars — almost all St. Johns locals, like Melillo himself — and gently rotate wheels of dough in his hands, letting gravity stretch each pie into a thin crust. On Sundays, he would spend the day at home alone, drinking tea, relaxing before the week ahead.
In the last few years, that pattern disappeared almost entirely.
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