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Scott Meyers and Vince Lispi, both of Moscow, made a point of coming to Ferri’s for lunch on Wednesday, the first day potato pizza was available in about a year.
The potato pizza is available every day during Lent, ‘for 40 days and 40 nights,’ Sabrina Ferri said.
Bill Ferri brings a fresh tray of potato pizza out of the oven at his Moscow eatery.
JASON RIEDMILLER photos/FOR THE TIMES LEADER
After she’d waited a whole year for Ferri’s potato pizza, could that be what Karen Toy wanted for dinner on Wednesday?
“You know it!” the 52-year-old Moscow woman said as she picked up her take-out order and a bottle of soda.
“I’m a pilot, and I travel all around the country and, definitely, I think Ferri’s has the best pizza,” said fellow customer Mike Rencavage, 47, of Dallas, who brought his 17-year-old son, Chris, to share a few slices.
Potato pizza is a seasonal specialty, served throughout the 40 days of Lent at Ferri’s Pizza on Church Street in the tiny Lackawanna County borough of Moscow.
Serving the pizza only during these weeks leading up to Easter, instead of year-round, builds anticipation and adds to its popularity, said Bill Ferri, 57, who is continuing a pizza-making tradition started by his grandfather, Gaetano, in 1936.
Now, don’t let all these Italian names fool you. Ferri’s heritage is half Irish, and he’s happy to relate a story that shows the Celtic origins of his specialty pies.
Before he moved his pizza-making operation to Moscow about 15 years ago, Ferri said, he rented a shop in Archbald and got to know an older woman from the neighborhood, Grandma Hose.
“She was as Irish as you can get. She had a shillelagh. One day she asked me, ‘If I bring you the “ba-day-das,” will you make me “ba-day-da” pizza?’ ”
Grandma Hose, who has since died, brought a large container of mashed “ba-day-das,” which was the way she pronounced “potatoes.” Ferri added cheese and onions, spread it on a pizza crust, and that was the beginning.
Over the years he perfected the recipe and watched its popularity take off.
Last year he used 2,076 pounds of his potato mixture. Maybe this year, he’ll top even that, he said.
Ferri’s daughter, Sabrina, 29, who works with her dad and mom, Janice, in the tidy shop, proudly showed off a board where customers have written their hometowns. Here you’ll find the Jessup and Honey Pot and Forty Fort you might expect but also places like Charleston, S.C., and Fernandina Beach, Fla.
“One of our customers, a man named Bill Wilson, sent some to his brother who lives in Kodiak, Alaska,” she said, pointing to a photograph of a box of pizza – it has Grandpa Gaetano’s image on the front – resting on a rocky beach in the northernmost state.
“We don’t ship it,” she said, “but our customers can buy it and ship it.”
If you visit Ferri’s, you’ll be sure to notice Bill Ferri’s fascination with the area’s mining heritage. “I think I have a bigger collection (of mining equipment) than some museums,” he said. “Pizza is my livelihood, but this is my love.”
When you enter the restaurant from the parking lot, you’re greeted by mine timbers, shovels and a mannequin dressed like a miner. There’s also a sign warning you not to touch the miner because you’re on camera.
Back in the kitchen, Bill and Janice Ferri have access to the camera monitors.
“It’s like our window,” Janice Ferri said. “You’ll notice we don’t have any other window.”
“I call it our periscope,” her husband said with a laugh.
On Wednesday afternoon, the phone kept ringing with orders for more potato pizza, which sells for $16.50 per tray.
Designed to be a Lenten favorite, the pizza has a thin, crispy crust and a generous layer of fluffy mashed potatoes, cheese and herbs on top. “It reminds me of a pierogi,” Mike Rencavage said.
It’s very filling on a day a pizza-lover might be abstaining from meat for religious reasons.
Not that every person who visited the shop Wednesday was doing that.
“I’m not a Catholic,” Kandi Iannelli, 49, of Moscow said. “But I don’t care for meat anyway.”
In any case, she said, as she left with her take-out order, “It’s no sacrifice to eat this.”
If you go
Chow Chatter
What: Ferri’s Pizza
Where: 106 Church St., Moscow
Potato pizza: $16.50 per tray
Available every day during Lent.
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.
Phone: 570-842-3130
So what’s the difference between potato pizza and pagach? We’re not sure there IS a difference. What we are sure of is both are extremely popular this time of year, and nothing brings out the craving for either quite like the season of Lent.
Some will tell you potato pizza has a single crust, and pagach has a double, meaning a layer of crust atop AND underneath the cheese and mashed potatoes. Others will argue either one can rightly be called a pagach, and potato pizza is merely an Americanized version of an ethnic favorite.
Either way, TL food critics have come across some mighty good pagach/potato pizza in their travels.
Two of our favorites come from Magda’s Pizza Works, 100 George Ave., Wilkes-Barre, and Happy Pizza, 40 West Main St., Plymouth. Both have a double crust, so there’s no argument they are properly called pagach.