By Charlie Pogacar
Nobody is more surprised about pizzaiolo Auggie Russo’s ascension toward the top of New York City’s pizza pop-up landscape than Russo himself.
“I have never been good at anything,” Russo said. “Even in my two decades as a [film and television] editor, I was mediocre at best. I’m 55 years old. I never thought I’d be doing something successfully. And that’s not artifice—it’s just true.”
Did anyone reinvent themselves during the pandemic as effectively as Russo? Russo operates the highly acclaimed Tiny Pizza Kitchen, a Brooklyn-based pop-up that was initially run out of his home in Clinton Hill. He started it up in 2021 after spending two decades in the film and television industry doing postproduction work. In the years since, his pizza has been written up in the New York Times, he’s had a recipe featured in a Stephen and Evie Colbert-written cookbook and he’s become a Gozney ambassador.
Related: Two Pizzaiolos Share How They Mastered the Pizza Pop-Up
Standing at about 5’5”, his signature Rex Specs wrapped around his head, Russo looks like a character before he even opens his mouth. And then he gets to talking. Russo’s self deprecation knows no bounds, but his positive attitude is equally palpable. The two things make for a perfect balance, perhaps best exhibited by the way he talks about his social skills.
“I’ve always been better at socializing when there is a plate of food between me and whoever I’m interacting with,” Russo said. “And so the pop-up business has had the beautiful side benefit of allowing me to socialize with humans in a fun way that doesn’t stress me out. And they’re happy! Because if you give somebody a pizza, they’re happy.”
Russo, who went by A.J. prior to becoming a pizza maker, attended Goddard College in Vermont in the 1980’s. The school, which is no longer in operation, was known for its alternative education and small class sizes. Russo estimated he went to Goddard with about 100 other people and the experience was, he said, “like attending summer camp,” or the perfect antidote for somebody who was “woefully unprepared for being an adult.” The classes he took at Goddard included far-out experimental education—like practicing yoga in his own dorm room. “I’d get out of bed, do yoga, and then go back to bed,” Russo said. “That was literally one of my classes.”
Upon graduating, Russo bounced around working restaurant jobs in the Northeast. After landing a regular gig at a restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he gained invaluable experience in the kitchen, Russo’s passion for food began to blossom. “I spent summers there watching the sauté cook do his thing and just soaking in everything I could,” he recalled. “It was a chaotic environment, but I thrived on that energy. It was like a dance, moving quickly and knowing exactly what to do in the heat of the moment.”
Russo did a year of culinary school at Johnson and Wales, where he would, in his own words, write essays about “how the French stole [culinary traditions] from the Italians. I had a massive Italian-American chip on my shoulder.” Russo didn’t make it more than a year at Johnson and Wales.
Upon moving back home to New York City, Russo worked at the now-defunct Pintaile’s Pizza on the Upper East Side, and then Two Boots in Alphabet City.
But it wasn’t until, years later, the pandemic struck and Russo made his way back to pizza. The film industry had shut down during the pandemic, and Russo got back in touch with his culinary roots. “I started experimenting with pizza in my backyard, inviting friends over for casual gatherings,” he said. “At first, I had no idea what I was doing. My first pizzas were terrible. I mean, inedible.”
Determined to improve, Russo dove headfirst into learning everything he could about pizza making. He read countless articles, watched YouTube tutorials and consulted with fellow pizza enthusiasts. Memorably, Russo began cooking pizzas for two six-year-old twins who lived next-door to him—critics, Russo said, who pushed him to get better. “It was trial and error,” he said. “And you want to talk about scary? Six-year-olds will tell you like it is. They have no problem telling you when your pizza sucks. But with each attempt, I got a little better, and it became this exciting challenge. I was hooked.”
As word spread about his homemade pizzas, demand began to grow. What started as a fun project quickly transformed into a burgeoning business. “I turned my backyard into a makeshift pizzeria,” Russo said. “I’d set up a small oven, and friends would come over, line up, and I’d serve pizzas until I ran out of dough.”
His rise in the pop-up scene caught the attention of local food enthusiasts and critics alike. For much of that, Russo credits Scott Wiener of Scott’s Pizza Tours and Slice Out Hunger, who took a shine to Russo early on. Wiener also connected Russo with people like Frank Pinello, the pizzaiolo behind Best Pizza Williamsburg.
“I can’t believe how quickly it all happened,” Russo said. “One day I’m making pizzas for my friends, and the next day I’m getting calls from people wanting to host events with me.”
The most impactful visitor Russo ever hosted was Pete Wells, the renowned food critic for the New York Times. Russo noticed Wells’s name on a receipt one night and thought, “that can’t be him. It’s got to be some other Pete Wells, right?”
Not only was it the Pete Wells, but the food critic wrote up a story about the New York City pizza pop-up scene that heavily featured Russo. “It was [friggin] crazy,” Russo said. “I mean you have to understand: this is my hometown paper. The Times! To this day, I still can’t believe that’s a real thing that happened to me.”
In the piece, Wells was particularly complimentary of Russo’s adventurous pizzas.
“The other two were pure Tiny Pizza Kitchen originals,” Wells wrote. “One, the Miss Betty White, is Mr. Russo’s name for a seasonal vegetable pizza. Each time Miss Betty White appears, her wardrobe changes, depending on what Mr. Russo has found in the produce markets lately. On that night she was dressed in gooseberries, pomegranate seeds, spiced butternut squash and sautéed leeks, among other things, and accessorized with edible flowers and fresh herbs.
The other pizza, A Farewell to Figs, featured raw figs Mr. Russo had picked from a backyard tree belonging to some generous friends; spicy fig jam from a small-batch preserves outfit in California; charred cherry tomatoes; salted raw onions; thin ribbons of salami; and at least five kinds of cheese. Remarkably, all the ingredients stayed in harmony, although they didn’t all necessarily stay on top of the pizza.”
Wells’s stellar review got to the heart of who Russo is as a pizza maker. Somebody who isn’t afraid to take chances, especially when it comes to the ingredients he’s willing to mix together. “I like to have fun with my toppings,” he said. “Why not put fennel and candied chilies on a pie? It’s about enjoying the process and sharing that joy with others.”
In fact, those candied chillies have taken on a life of their own. For $20, one can order a package of Russo’s Fennell-Bourbon Candied Chilies, the recipe to which landed in Evie and Stephen Colbert’s recently published cookbook, Does This Taste Funny? The connection there was a twist of fate: the mother of the twins who Russo was feeding during the pandemic happened to be Colbert’s hairstylist for The Late Show. She brought some of the chilies to Colbert and the talk show host couldn’t get enough. He put in one order of 300 chilies, and then a second order of 250.
“I feel like I’ve been crazy lucky with stuff like that,” Russo said. “I booked a party for some seamstress, like a fancy dressmaker in Williamsburg for a Christmas party. And I thought it was just her staff. It turned out that her husband, his job was at one of the producers for Succession, which I had not seen. And thank God I hadn’t, because half the cast showed up, and had I seen the show, I would have been a nervous wreck.”
Russo’s pop-up now runs out of commercial kitchens across the City. He hopes to one day open his own pizzeria. He sees the chilies, and his increasing success selling them, as a way to obtain the capital to make it happen, too. With champions like Colbert and Wells on his side, the man who once thought he’d never be good at anything might just fulfill a dream he never knew he had: to own his business, and propel his pizza making legacy forward.
But even if that doesn’t happen, Russo doesn’t much care. He’s already made it so much further than he ever could’ve imagined. “I never set out to be a pizzaiolo; I just wanted to make people happy with my food,” he said. “And if I can do that while staying true to myself, then I’m already winning.”