Meatballs and 2-foot pizzas take starring roles at the new Italian Family Pizza in Center City
Steven Calozzi, a pizzeria lifer from Bucks County, by way of Seattle, has opened Italian Family Pizza on the Parkway. The 24-inch pizzas barely fit through the front door.
Pizzaiolo Steven Calozzi’s story started in Bristol, veered off to Seattle, headed back cross-country to New Hope, and zoomed down I-95 to land on the Ben Franklin Parkway in Center City.
Last week, Italian Family Pizza premiered at 17th Street and the Parkway, across from Friends Select School, in what had been a Subway sandwich shop for 30 years.
That’s a lot of traveling for Calozzi, who grew up in a family of pizzeria owners. His specialty is a 24-inch cheese-on-the-bottom, Trenton-style pie with a thin, crispy crust that is some approximation of round. (Calozzi wants to keep it homey.) The pizzas are baked till well-done — the outer crust has a pleasant char but doesn’t have that burnt effect. You may have to tilt the box slightly as you wrestle it out the door. (There’s a 12-inch version, too.)
The other calling card are his tender, oven-roasted meatballs, whose outer nubs beautifully capture the red sauce. You can order them on a plate — his childhood best friend and sidekick, John Paul Adamson, ladles them out from a slow cooker — or in a baked-to-order roll made from pizza dough.
Calozzi, 50, and his family owned pizzerias throughout Northeast Philadelphia and Bucks County. He, his older brother, Al, and an uncle had a place in Bristol, “but we sold that because we were fighting all the time. Everybody went their own way,” he said.
In 2008, Al Calozzi relocated to Seattle to follow a girlfriend and open Calozzi’s Famous Cheesesteaks, first as a food cart and then as a brick-and-mortar store. Meanwhile, Steven and his wife, Jennifer, were considering opening a pizzeria in Wildwood.
“My brother called and said, ‘Mommy told me you’re going to open a place in Wildwood,’ ” Steven Calozzi said. “ ‘Before you go off and work the Ferris wheel rides, remember it’s seasonal. Are you stupid?’ He said, ‘Come out here.’”
Steven Calozzi relocated his family to Seattle, where the brothers partnered on Calozzi’s. “Boom, it caught on fire,” Steven Calozzi said. But he and Al had another falling out. Al kept the cheesesteak shops (there’s also one now in San Diego), while Steven opted to go the pizzeria route, with three Italian Family Pizza locations.
Life rolled along in Seattle. In 2018, Steven Calozzi said, his older son got into college in suburban Washington, “and my wife woke up crying, saying, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’”
He sold the three Italian Family Pizza shops, and the family moved to Fairless Hills, Bucks County — only a few hours from their son — and opened a shop called Russo’s in an old coffee shop in New Hope. Business was good, especially after 2023, when Dave Portnoy of Barstool gave the pizza a respectable 7.5 rating.
But Calozzi wanted to run a shop in a big city, and with their younger son enrolled at Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, he and his wife sold Russo’s and signed the lease for the Parkway.
“And here we are,” said Calozzi, who said he revived “Italian Family Pizza” to spare his son from having to explain why the pizzeria a few blocks from his school bears his family name, though the brick-walled dining room is adorned with family photos.
Calozzi is using his grandmother’s recipes for pretty much everything on the menu. She worked by eye and so does he. (Asked the percentage of hydration in his dough, he replied: “I don’t know. I just pour in the water until I see it’s wet.”)
There’s a tomato pie drizzled with Pecorino and olive oil (“just like what the old ladies did on Friday nights at home”), a sauceless white pizza, and a cheese pie (heavy on the toppings), as well as a thicker-crust Sicilian and one topped with meatballs. The 12-inchers start at $12.50, while the 24-inchers will run $30 to $40. There’s also fried dough, another Calozzi family Friday night staple.
Everything is simple: The tomato sauce, for the pizza and the meatballs, is just peeled tomato, a little bit of salt, and a little olive oil. The “salad” ($13.50) is a head of Romaine, artichoke heart, Kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, and feta topped with a roasted red pepper dressing. There’s a house-made cannoli ($7) for dessert.
In keeping with the simplicity, there’s no online ordering or delivery, just phone ordering for takeout and dine-in.
Italian Family Pizza, 1701 Ben Franklin Parkway, 215-801-5198. Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.