By Tracy Morin
Photos by Erin Byrne
When I make my annual return to New Jersey, where I grew up (and haven’t lived in decades), one of the undeniable highlights is eating my way through the Garden State. And, if I need even say, one of my favorite foods to eat back home is pizza. New York and Connecticut get a lot of attention, but New Jersey is, I believe, an underrated pizza destination.
Still, this eating extravaganza can easily spill over into New York City or Philadelphia, because…more is more, right? I felt like I had to venture out of my home state to try Pizza Studio Tamaki (PST) when I traveled up North this summer, thanks to the interview I’d recently done with Tsubasa Tamaki, the mastermind behind this growing brand.
By the time it hit Manhattan’s East Village, PST had already established two locations in Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan, and branched out to Bangkok; Singapore; Manila, Philippines; and a new location in Sydney. (And it’s not the only pizza restaurant of this kind landing in the U.S. this year; Royale Pizza Napoletana, the first Tokyo-style Neapolitan pizza restaurant in South Florida, is set to open in October in Miami Beach.)
But more than the impressive global growth of PST, I was struck by the sheer pursuit of perfection that characterizes the Japanese-style Neapolitan style. In our interview, Tamaki detailed his painstaking process to create the perfect pie: “I spent years developing the flour blend and tested around 700 different combinations before arriving at the formula we use today, which combines Japanese, American and Canadian flours,” he said. “The dough ferments for approximately 30 hours, which helps create the airy texture and deeper flavor. Compared to more traditional Neapolitan pizza, my style uses a slightly higher oven temperature and allows for more browning. I use Okinawan salt during the baking process, which is one of the techniques that gives the pizza its distinct finish.”
Anyone who’s this obsessed deserves my attention, right? So I hopped on the train and headed to, as we call it in New Jersey, “The City” for a taste test at PST. The pizzeria received a lot of buzz when it opened in May (rightfully so: Tamaki was ranked No. 10 in the pizza category by The Best Chef Awards 2025), and a few months later, I figured things would have settled into a comfortable rhythm.
With a back-room seat, where I could watch the pizzaioli at work as I dined, I admired the Moody Tongue beer menu (the world’s only Michelin-starred brewery), focused on Japanese citrus-based lagers. But, since I don’t drink alcohol, I went for a refreshing guava NA cocktail instead. (Special thanks to anyone who crafts their NA drinks as thoughtfully as those with booze—we teetotalers want fun drinks, too!)
For dinner, the staff recommended the Tamaki pizza—and, since it’s named after the chef himself, it felt like the must-try on the menu. An elevated spin on the classic Margherita, the Tamaki combines cherry tomatoes, smoked mozzarella, Pecorino Romano and basil.
As Tamaki had noted, the high heat of the custom-built oven (480°C, or nearly 900°F) creates more intense blackening around the crust. As a char fan, I don’t mind that, but even the ample blackened spots did not taste bitter, and the 30-hour fermentation makes the dough feel light as air and easily digestible. The staff also warned me about puncturing the now-blistered cherry tomatoes before biting into them, no doubt to avoid scalding tomato explosions. That extra interactive step created a pleasantly soupy experience on the slice, at least in the tomato-dotted areas scattered across the pie (Japanese-style Neapolitan is otherwise less soupy than a traditional Neapolitan).
The surprising star of this Japanese style, however, was the Okinawan sea salt. This addition isn’t just a gimmick—its superfine texture and clean taste truly took an already beautiful pizza to the next level. Perhaps it’s a good thing that PST isn’t just around the corner from me; I could see this stuff becoming addictive.
In the bigger picture, I’m interested to see how Japanese-style Neapolitan unfolds in the U.S. Even though “Tokyo Neapolitan” was getting food-media press back in 2017, it was only in August 2026 that Food & Wine declared in an article title, “You’re About to See It Everywhere in the U.S.” And, after a successful first outpost that opened in 2022, the Tokyo-style Neapolitan hotspot Pizzeria Sei just launched its second Los Angeles location last June.
Where will it all go? And, as it expands, can it maintain the rigorous attention to detail and painstaking processes that define this style? I’m looking forward to finding out—taste-testing along the way, of course. If I need to book a winter trip to Los Angeles or Miami Beach (both cities where I have also lived) to track the trend, so be it!
Tracy Morin is PMQ’s associate editor.
