After School, 11-Year-Old’s Real Homework Starts at His Own Pizzeria in Brooklyn

Sebastian Wilson has a bright future in pizza, especially for a sixth-grader.

Sebastian is the 11-year-old entrepreneur behind Sebastian’s Spices and Slices in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood. He believes his pizza shop, which he runs with a lot of help from his parents, is “a good opportunity to show that Black businesses actually matter,” as he explained to News 12 Brooklyn.

The pies are Caribbean-inspired, thanks to his family’s roots in Trinidad and Grenada. “My mom taught me how to do the recipes,” Sebastian told Pix 11. “I used to eat those sometimes, and they were good. Yeah, my mom used to cook them all the time.”

Related: How a man who has ‘never been good at anything’ became great at making pizza

Toppings on the menu include shrimp, oxtail and breadfruit—even fried shark—along with more traditional ingredients like pepperoni, pineapple and Buffalo BBQ chicken. “He lives in a house where we cook oxtail, make curry shrimp and stew chicken,” his mother, Natalie Lamming, told Pix 11. “I always try to show him creative ways to play with our food.”

Items on the menu include the Salmon Delight Pie with sweet chili-infused salmon; the Spiceman Pie featuring roasted breadfruit, spinach and a pesto drizzle; the Calypso Shrimp Pie topped with shrimp, calypso sauce and sweet peppers; and the Welcome to Jamrock showcasing jerk chicken and diced plantains.

Despite the artisan ingredients, the pies are priced between $8 and $12.50, the most expensive being the Oxtail Pie.

As for the fried shark, it’s listed as a topping on the Maracas Bay Pie, along with pineapple and a chadon beni glaze.

Sebastian’s parents are entrepreneurs themselves and have been showing their son the ropes of running a challenging restaurant business. Although child labor laws put a limit on the number of hours he can work in the pizzeria, Sebastian is the “face” of the business when the news media shows up. Recent TV news reports show him topping pies, brushing chadon beni sauce on the crusts and peeling the pizzas into and out of the oven.

His parents signed a 10-year lease for the restaurant’s business, which suggests Sebastian’s Spices and Slices will serve as a longtime learning project for the youngster until he’s ready to take the reins himself.

“I kind of want to be there with him, and obviously, there’s a time I’ll have to let go, but I’m trying to provide the things that maybe my parents provided for me and more,” Lamming explained to Pix 11.

“I think it’s going to teach [Sebastian] a sense of responsibility, discipline, money management [and] time management,” Lamming added in the News 12 Brooklyn interview. 

Hours for Sebastian’s Spices and Slices are 12 noon to 9 p.m., Tuesdays through Thursdays, and noon to 10 p.m. on weekends.