I learned the ins and outs of what makes a good pie while stuffing my face with slices from restaurants and counters across this dining mecca, analyzing crust-to-cheese ratios and generally becoming unbearable when anyone brought up the topic in casual conversation. My family discovered the place soon after, and while we recognized that the pizzas - crispy and dripping with grease - were much better than any of the Sysco product-laden pies in the neighborhood, we didn't have the palates or experience to really know why.įast-forward ten years, when, like every other recent liberal-arts-school graduate I knew, I renounced my uncouth upbringing and moved to cultured New York City, where I developed a taste for food snobbery - and pizza in particular. When the deal with Lil' Ricci's soured the next year, Ficke bought out his partner and renamed the spot Big Bill's. But Ficke, a native of Long Island, had definite ideas about pizza, and he imported Pete Tutrone, a pizza maker on Long Island, to make the thin-crust New York pies he remembered from back home. At the start, it was under the banner of Lil' Ricci's New York Pizzeria, a slice shop already popular on East Hampden Avenue. In the sea of chain restaurants that were just about the only options in the southern suburbs in the late '90s, Big Bill's was a real catch, and it became the default spot for our nights out.īill Ficke, a former assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets, had opened the joint in November 1995, after he sold the shoe store he'd owned for two decades. This single act of generosity forever changed our family's dining-out habits. She was on an errand in the County Line strip mall that houses the pizza parlor and decided to take my mother a carry-out lunchtime calzone.
My grandma Judy discovered Big Bill's New York Pizza by sheer dumb luck.
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