(exciting music) - Pizzas, they're a living and breathing thing.

When it comes outta that mixture like you give birth to it, you gotta nurture it, you gotta know what you're doing with it.

Could grow up to be a bad teenager if you don't treat it right.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - You ask anybody in the coal regions about Cerimele's Pizza - I'm gonna drop them on here.

- They'll know what it is.

- So the Cerimele family was always synonymous with food and quality of food.

- Alex, this is the real underground pizza.

You wouldn't know there's a pizza place here.

I grew up upstairs, my grandparents and my uncle first started a catering business here in the basement in 1958.

And it's been here ever since.

My grandmother would make pizza for my uncles to eat for lunch.

And instead of eating them they would take 'em to the local bars and sell it.

Then she started making more and they sold it and kept making more and sold it.

And lo and behold, they started making pizza every Friday.

Are people starting to come in Theresa?

(upbeat music) - What do I like about the pizza?

Everything.

I still come home, drive an hour just to come home and get pizza on the days that they make it.

- Taste, it's got the best taste around.

No pizza shop around here can beat it.

- But I've never eaten pizza like this anywhere in my entire life.

- [Tony] Very similar to Old Forge, I would say.

But the sauce and cheese are different, obviously.

Everyone has their own little spin.

- Cerimele's pizza on a Friday has been a staple in our lives for 56 years.

I'm 56.

- We just do it the same way my grandmother did.

We sauce and cheese 'em, they go in the refrigerator overnight.

They come out in the morning, they get baked.

- We have our regulars every week.

They support us.

They love the pizza and they tell us to don't stop making it.

- And you know what?

They tell me when it's different, that when I tried to change it, I got crucified.

- There's no flavor like theirs.

They have a secret recipe that's only theirs.

- [Tony] Crust has a little bit of a buttery taste to it.

Our sauce is a little savory, little sweet.

Our cheese, we have two different kinds of cheese on there.

One really, really sharp Italian cheese.

And then the other is a secret.

- It's not too much cheese, not too much sauce.

Just perfect.

- Oh, it just, the crust.

It's always excellent.

The sauce.

They make their own sauce.

It's wonderful.

Cerimele's Pizza has always been the best.

(phone rings) - New Columbus Pizza.

(pensive music) - Now my favorite memory of this pizza, I was a little kid and we would cater weddings and cocktail hour would always have this pizza on it.

And that was my favorite time to eat it.

There were small little pieces.

- Hor d'oeuvre style.

- Hor d'oeuvre style.

- [Theresa] Yeah.

- [Tony] That's my favorite way to eat this pizza.

- [Theresa] Yep.

- And Uncle Rick would yell at us, "Stop eating the pizza!"

But I didn't have an interest in making pizza.

I really didn't until I met my wife, Maryanne, who's from Old Forge.

And then I started making pizza.

'Cause I loved the pizza on Old Forge.

When I found Tony Gemignani every video you would look up or every article he would pop up and pop up and pop up.

I went to his school in San Francisco.

'Cause I loved all the different styles of pizza.

There's so many different styles of pizza, right?

First pizza of 2023 in the wood fired up.

(bright music) Our wood fired pizza, that's more of an artisan dough.

It's very wet.

It's hydrated.

It's a lot crispier because it's made in an 800 degree oven and it's very thin.

Hear the crunch?

You could eat six or seven of these, honestly and you're not gonna really feel very full.

Going to school with Tony, I learned about how to make pizza digestible.

All of our pizzas, even our other Sicilians, they look like they're heavy, but they eat very light.

And that's where the science comes in.

The yeast and the bacteria will eat at the stuff that makes you feel really full.

And we use the best ingredients.

People will say to me, "What's in your sauce?"

My wood-fired sauce.

Salt.

That's it.

(upbeat music) It's Saturday folks, and it's 100 degrees.

I love everything about it.

From the creativity to making it.

Our family has a lot of crazy sayings that I turned into names of our specialty pizzas.

like this week we're making the Sunny Boy.

And when my father was mad at me he'd always be like, "Sunny Boy, what are you doing?"

- I'm excited to try it.

It has pistachios and ricotta and red onion which is crazy to me.

But I've never had pistachios on a pizza.

- [Tony] The people who are still here, who grew up here have a very strong sense of family.

And I think just as my family started we did go north, everybody in Old Forge from all these other places they started so many years ago.

- A lot of it's for our father.

That's why he continues to do this.

My father didn't wanna let this business to die.

So, we'll keep it up as long as we can.

You know what though?

I don't wanna see it die either.

You know?

So many people when I'm out will come up to me and they'll tell me "Please don't ever stop making this pizza."

And I'll tell 'em, "Well, we'll do the best we can."

- That's a memory, I think.

Pizza's been at a lot of family histories from weddings to funerals, to graduation parties to football games, for generations.

- [Theresa] Especially Christmas Eve.

- [Tony] In the Panther Valley area.

- Having it with family growing up was always great to have.

- Every time we get it, we let people know and be able to share it.

- There's so much negativity in the world.

I love when I give somebody pizza or we cater their wedding.

"You made our day."

As long as our customers know that, we try and do the best by them.

Always have, always will.

That's really all I could ask for.

(thoughtful music)