Pizza On The Parklet: Tony and Matt Molina School The Kids On Pizza

by Joe Bonadio

San Francisco is not a place particularly known for its kids. It’s just another aspect of the culture here: as the most “childless” major city in the United States, with the exception of a few neighborhoods like Bayview and the Presidio, SF is pretty light on the little ones. This leads to the oft-repeated jibe that San Francisco has more dogs than children (it does, by a factor of two-to-one).

Here in North Beach, the adult nature of a lot of our entertainment (bars, clubs etc.) might lead you to believe that we’re even less kid-friendly than the city at large, but that’s not the case. If you look just a little closer, North Beach is a great neighborhood for kids to grow up in. We’ve got a lot of unique amenities that lots of other neighborhoods don’t. Just add it up: between Joe DiMaggio Playground, Washington Square Park, and the amazing Salesian Boys & Girls Club, this is a pretty cool place to be a kid.

Being a dad himself, events that include families and kids are something that Tony Gemignani knows a little about. If you’ve ever seen him toss pizza dough for the crowds in Washington Square Park, you know how much he likes to get the kids involved. His Pizza, Bagel & Beer Fest was organized to be family friendly, with ticket packages specifically priced for families with kids.

And you might remember the pizza box art contest he held for the kids at North Beach’s Saints Peter & Paul School last year, in which the winning student artwork appeared on Tony’s 12″ pizza boxes. He’s always got something going on that’s oriented around kids, including his long standing support for George Mark Children’s Home.

In November, Tony and fellow Pizza Champion Matt Molina (Head Chef at Capo’s) started what might just be a new family tradition. I recently sat down with Tony at Capo’s to talk about it, and lightly edited for clarity and length, our conversation is below.

Joe Bonadio (JB): So you and Matt recently put together a great event here.

Tony Gemignani (TG): Yeah, Pizza in the Parklet. It was actually Matt’s idea. The two of us were talking about doing a brunch, and he suggested we do something with pizza making for kids.

So we decided we could get the parents inside, and let them have mimosas and beers, maybe some pizza appetizers. Meanwhile, Matt and I could teach the kids how to toss pizza, make pizza, and also how to make cannolis.

JB: Wow, the kids must have loved that.

TG: Yeah, it sold out in like a day and a half. Really quick, which was great.

JB: You’re definitely going to want to do that again.

TG: We had sixteen kids, or was it nineteen kids? I think I had ten and Matt had nine. Again we did the whole pizza making and tossing thing with the kids, and it was great. You know, there aren’t a lot of small community events out there. There are festivals and fairs and things like that, but there’s not a lot that kids can go to that’s more geared towards them—where the attention is on them.

You try to get as many people as you can, but this was just 19 kids. So it was small, and it was intimate. The parents had a great time, the kids loved it, and it was really cool. It was on a Sunday, and the Niners weren’t playing that day. So it ended up being really good. In the end, people were more excited about that event than just about anything I’ve done.

JB: Well, when you do something that gets both the parents and the kids involved…

TG: I used to do things like that a lot earlier in my career—I’d do it all the time. I haven’t done it as much recently, because I don’t have as much time in my schedule. But we will do it again in the near future. It was in the parklet, so the weather obviously has to be somewhat decent. But a lot of people seem to be interested in this. We were also asked to participate in the Saints Peter & Paul Church auction, with a parent-child ticket to Pizza in the Parklet being an auction item.

JB: That’s cool. And Capo’s is perfect for an event like that. Good on Matt for the idea.

TG: Yeah, it was great. Grace was a big part of it too, and the crew came in and helped. It wasn’t about being a giant moneymaker, it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was just about doing something local for the community.

And then we had a book signing here, too.

JB: That was a lot of fun!

TG: Thanks. Laura and I wanted to get together because we had a new book that came out earlier in 2024, produced by the World Pizza Champions team, called The Pursuit Of Pizza. Initially we had trouble finding a printer that could deliver a high quality book at a semi-reasonable price. Finally we had an amazing first printing that went out, and we went through them.

But when we got samples of the second printing, they came out terrible. So we found another printer, and we had to go through that whole process, which took a long time. Amazon was trying to find a secondary printer, and it was just kind of a drawn-out process.

So we had a lapse in the middle of the launch of the book. It was really a pain.

But we finally got it, and Laura and I did a book signing at Capo’s. It was a Monday night, and a lot of locals came out. It was really cool, another intimate gathering.

Capo’s is a perfect place to have a book signing. Before Laura ended her time with us and opened her own restaurant, Capo’s was the last place she worked, as Head Chef. So it was a chance to come back and see Laura and Tony. It was sponsored by Campari and Aperol, and by Tovie, which is a nonalcoholic drink.

We served pizzas from the book: my pizzas, Laura’s pizzas, Adam Sachs had his own pizza, and Ken Bryant did his breadsticks, which I didn’t get—and Laura and I were pissed off.

JB: Those were gooood bread sticks!

TG: Yeah, they were good, huh? Those breadsticks were the breadsticks that we made 33 years ago, when I started making pizza. Those were the Pyzano breadsticks, from when Ken worked there. So those were in the book.

We love those things—and they ran out. By the time we were ready to eat, they didn’t have any more. You ate ’em all!

We also had Spencer Glenn come from Pizza My Heart, and he did his award-winning pizza, called Life Is Gourd. That was one of the best pizzas there, I think. And did you have the pomegranate pizza?

JB: No!

TG: Oh, that pizza was to die for. I did a pizza from Chris Decker: a Sicilian pizza with bacon, basil and pepperoni.

JB: I did have that one, I loved that.

TG: And of course I did a Tavern-style for Gino that went around, a pepperoni Tavern-style. So there was a lot of pizza, a lot of food. It was really fun, and a lot of people came out. And we sold a lot of books, so it was great.

I only allowed 80 people, so again it was intimate.

JB: That’s a great way to get your momentum back in terms of the book launch.

TG: I think so. It was right after the election, so people were kind of all over the place. And people kept telling me, Thanks for having this. It’s really nice to get out. I heard that from a lot of people.

JB: That’s how I felt. Something positive to celebrate, and it was great to see the whole group together.

TG: It was good. It was easy, nothing pretentious. You got a glass of wine, and hung out, saw your neighbors. And people came from the East Bay as well. Laura’s in the East Bay, I’m from the East Bay, so it was really nice to see people coming over the bridge.