It was never just about the pizza
Tulsa’s Mario’s Pizzeria to close
Tulsa’s Mario’s Pizzeria to close
Although it’s been planned for a while, the news is still so bittersweet.
After feeding the Tulsa area award winning New York Style Pizza for over 30 years, since 1987 Mario’s is moving into retirement.
What can I tell you? It was just a pizza place.
Except it wasn’t.
Nowadays in Tulsa, you can’t throw a cannoli without hitting a place that claims to serve “New York Style Pizza,” but in the mid 80s, when Mario first started making pizza in Oklahoma — back then he worked at a place near the airport called Pizza Quik — it was an antidote to the cardboard, processed cheese and institutionally tasteless sauce that was being passed off as God’s favorite food. Mario was cranky, from the Bronx, had a mustache (of course he had a mustache), and somewhere along the way, left Pizza Quik (it wasn’t a good breakup as I recall) and, along with Mike Selvaggi, opened up on the north side of Harvard on 51st and called the place Mario’s. It was a small place, one bathroom, with abysmally-painted New York vistas on the wall (after 9/11, someone added an American flag between the towers), vinyl seats, chipped countertops, and never a coupon in sight.
But it didn’t matter. In fact, it was better that way.
I was a regular there for twenty years and Mario bought me — count ‘em — one pizza.
“You don’t give away product,” he once told me.
Mike eventually bought out Mario, who moved to Iowa, but was smart enough to keep the name, as he knew that a place called Mike’s Pizzeria would never have the same panache as one called Mario’s.
My children and I went there every Friday night. When my daughter, Nina, was little, Mike used to cut her some pizza dough so she could build and mold things at the table. As she grew, and could eventually see over the counter, Mike once looked at her and said, “Hey, slow down, Nina. You don’t need to grow up so fast.”
He also went out to a local bakery one year and bought her a birthday cake. Thing is, he had dessert there, but Nina was special to him.
She deserved a cake.
Who does that?
Too much death.
Horacio, a big Spanish kid who worked behind the counter, died of drugs; Paul, that was my son, died of drugs; Sam, with great hair, and another great kid, died of drugs.
Mike, too, died. Prostate cancer.
The weekend my son died, one of Paul’s friends, Kyle, who he helped get a job there, opened the place up so we could have an extended family dinner.
Sam worked that night.
Mike gave Paul a job when Paul was 14. To this day, I can’t remember who thought that was a good idea. During the years, Mike fired him, hired him back, fired him, hired him back, fired, hired him back, fired him, hired him back. Eleven times in all.
When Paul was working there, though, before the drugs got a hold of him and all was right with the world, I’d pick him up after his shift. I’d park in front of the restaurant and just watch him through window in front of the ovens — he was an oven man whose job it was to make sure the pizzas weren’t over or undercooked. When he’d serve then, he’d alway tap the bottom of the serving pan to let people know it was hot. Always loved that gesture. When I’d walk inside, Paul would wave at me, but embarrassed by his father, as all good sons should be at some point in their lives, the wave never making it past his waist.
The place, after Harvard Avenue was widened and the strip center it was in demolished, was relocated across the street to the south side of 51st, bigger, fancier with two bathrooms, but by then, there were no more familiar faces behind the counter and no more children playing with dough on the table or standing in front of an oven and almost waving to me.
No more Mike, no more Horacio, no more Sam, no more Paul.
Mario’s was never just about the pizza.
