SOUTHEASTERN N.C. — An almost 2-ton pizza oven imported from Italy is churning out charred pies that entrepreneur Jeff Verderame calls the best pizza nationwide.
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“New Haven has a reputation of being the pizza capital of the United States,” Verderame said.
The area ranks on national lists annually by foodies, including by Food & Wine just this June. Historians chalk it up to Italians emigrating to the area in the 1900s, bringing Neapolitan-style pizza with them.
It’s where Verderame’s love for pie begins.
The entrepreneur — also Italian — runs a catering company, Crust NC Wood-Fired Pizza, out of Leland. The venture began six years ago up North but Verderame sold the company when he and his wife relocated to the South last year.
It wasn’t long before Verderame missed cooking and interacting with people. So he decided to go back to what he loved and launched a smaller catering business, at first doing neighborhood events, such as in The Bluffs.
“It’s all been word of mouth, but it just really picked up,” he said.
So far, Verderame has overseen at least 100 caterings in the area. With wedding season in full swing, it’s a busy time of year; multiple July events already are booked. He does events up to 125 people, with a minimum of 25; rates start at $750 per event and include a buffet of pizzas and salads.
The pies are cooked in an 850-degree wood-fired, dome oven, made by Valoriani, a company that started in 1890s Figline Valdarno in Florence, Italy. The pizzas go in for one-and-a-half minutes; that’s all it needs to create a char on the crust. It’s a simple dough made of flour, water, yeast and salt.
“What you get is the flames licking over the dome of the oven to cook the top of the pizza,” he said. “The very high intense heat on the Italian masonry that the pizzas sit on, you have to time it so the bottom, the crust, is cooked perfectly.”
He only cooks two 16-inch pies at a time, though the oven could likely do four. But it takes longer than a minute or so to roll out dough and add toppings for more incoming pies; Verderame doesn’t run the risk of overcooking.
Because the ovens are so hot, he said the trick is adding more water to the dough.
“That’s what I love about doing caterings,” he said. “I’m not stuck at a window in a food truck talking to people but on the ground. So if someone asks me the trick to good pizza dough to cook in their new backyard pizza oven, I can engage with them.”
He pulls up to events with the oven on a trailer and cooks the pies fresh in front of the crowd. Expected toppings are plenty — pepperoni, mushrooms, sausage, onions — atop his wife’s homemade pizza sauce.
But the specialty pies is where Crust NC shines.
Verderame has a lobster-mac-and-cheese 16-inch round, packed with five cheeses — mozzarella, parmesan, cheddar, smoked gruyere, cream cheese. Homemade, the mac-and-cheese is chilled and topped onto the pie without a base sauce.
“It was an instant hit,” Verderame said.
He also does a baby-back ribs version that has been popular down South.
“People love their barbecue here,” he said.
It’s basted in a marinade of mayonnaise, apricot, honey and brown sugar, among other ingredients, slow cooked and the pork pulled from the bone, before topped on a pie with hot cherry peppers and mozzarella. No sauce is added — the same with a brisket version, meat procured from Northwest Land and Cattle.
The brisket is also cooked in the wood-fired oven.
“Some of these pizzas are like head scratchers because maybe you haven’t had brisket on a pizza before, but they work so well,” Verderame said. “There is a crispy chewy crust and of course the melty cheese, and then you have that really rich piece of brisket. I don’t do anything in terms of a barbecue sauce because I think it overwhelms it.”
However, Verderame’s fresh marinara — his grandmother’s recipe — finds its way on eggplant or chicken parm pies. It’s stewed for four hours with fresh tomatoes from Eagle’s Island Seafood and Market, which also make their way onto the pizzas, with garlic and a dash of oregano and basil.
“I learned to cook from my mother and both my grandmothers,” he said. “I absolutely fell in love with it and have always cooked for family, friends and neighbors.”
Yet, the food industry wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of Verderame’s career. For 20 years, he owned and operated a risk management company, Vertex Solutions, which works in the telecommunications and energy spheres. The 60-year-old retiree still owns half the business, though exited the career.
In 2015, when Verderame attended a party in Connecticut, it was catered by a pizza company dishing out thin-crust Neapolitan pies.
“A couple of chefs were hand-stretching pizza right in front of the guests and they were putting them into this beautiful Italian wood-fired oven, next to an open flame,” he recalled. “And I just fell in love with it — the experience.”
Rather than succumb to the laid-back life of his golden years, Verderame decided to venture into the food business. He was booked every weekend for five years, he said.
The pizza company has always been catering-centered, though Verderame said he considered earlier this year transforming Crust NC into a brick-and-mortar.
“I went through the process of actually looking at a couple of venues and decided that it just wasn’t something that I wanted to do,” he said.
While operating a full-on restaurant isn’t in the cards, he has not totally abandoned the idea of selling pies to the dining public. Recent conversations have arisen with another business in Brunswick County — Verderame would not disclose who, as talks are still “very early” — about popping up a couple times a week outside to serve diners.
If all works out, he envisions it being limited: making up to 150 pies, for instance, sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. Once Crust NC runs out, he would close for the day.
“But who knows if that will pan out,” he said. “I don’t want to be tied to a restaurant — obviously I want to enjoy my retirement. But I love cooking for people, I love feeding people, I love watching them eat what I make. But I don’t want it to become a chore.”
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