Sweet sauce pizza one of Wyoming Valley’s culinary delights

WILKES-BARRE — If you travel outside of the area and order a “large pie with sweet sauce and bacon,” you’ll more than likely be met with a look of bewilderment from the staff.

Ask for that same order at most pizza shops around here, and they’ll ask if you want it “upside down” and have it ready for you in 15 minutes.

The love for sweet sauce on pizza is well known in the region, but how did this unique staple of the Wyoming Valley get started?

It turns out it was a family affair that started with a son’s unusual request to his mother, as we learned in our quest to find the roots of this local culinary tradition — and what our readers’ favorite places for sweet sauce are.

We teamed up with Chris Bohinski of Eyewitness News WBRE/WYOU to learn more. You can watch our interviews on our YouTube channel.

The people of the Wyoming Valley overwhelmingly told us that Angelo’s Pizza in Wilkes-Barre, Gerry’s Pizza in Wilkes-Barre, and Shelley’s Pizza in Luzerne were the top three spots. So we set out to find out what makes their sweet sauce “the best around.”

Angelo’s Pizza

William “Bill” Ricci, the owner of Angelo’s Pizza on Hazle Street in Wilkes-Barre, didn’t hesitate to give his thoughts on the popularity of sweet sauce on pizza in our area.

“It’s become a staple of Wilkes-Barre. It’s like Abe’s Hot Dogs or some of the other places. You think of them you think of Wilkes-Barre. You think of sweet sauce, you think of Wilkes-Barre,” Ricci said.

Angelo’s Pizza has been in business for nearly 60 years.

“My grandfather started this business in the ’60s and moved to this location in 1970,” he explained.

Years later Ricci’s grandfather helped his sons begin their own pizza shops. First came Ricci’s Pizza owned by Angelo Ricci’s son Angelo Jr., and in 1981 came Gerry’s Pizza, owned by Angelo Ricci’s other son, Gerald.

All three locations are known for their sweet sauce, and that’s because they all shared the recipe. What started at Angelo’s made its way to the other family-owned pizza shops.

“We’re family, we shared the sauce recipe with each other,” Ricci said.

While these days sweet sauce has found its place in people hearts, and stomachs, it hasn’t always been a menu option.

When asked how and when Angelo’s Pizza started offering a sweet pizza sauce, Ricci gave all the credit to Angelo’s former store manager, Dawna Sofa, as the original inventor of their sweet sauce.

“Dawna came up with it. It was all her,” he said.

One day about 20 years ago, Sofa’s son Ryan asked her to make a pizza with a sweeter sauce than normal.

“Her son wanted something different one day. He asked his mom to make him a pizza with a sweet sauce. So, Dawna made him a pizza with a sweet sauce. He loved it. He took it and shared some with his friends at G.A.R. and they went nuts. The rest is history,” Ricci said.

We asked Angelo’s current manager, Jason Porter, for the secret to the sweet sauce, but he just smiled and referred us to Ricci, who didn’t seem ready to part with that information just yet.

“It’s our secret. Sometimes we tell people it’s grape jelly, sometimes we tell them it’s maple syrup, but it’s neither of those.”

Bohinski asked Ricci what he would recommend to someone who was going to try a pizza with sweet sauce for the first time. Ricci says the best bet is to try the sauce first.

“I don’t like sweet sauce, I prefer a pizza with garlic and light extra cheese, but we have 2-ounce cups we use for samples,” he said. “We’ll fill them up and let them try the sauce if they want.”

Ricci said he sees a bit of a “generational divide” when it comes to sweet sauce.

“Our older customers seem to like our traditional sauce. Our younger crowd seems to prefer the sweet sauce,” he said.

Still, Ricci said he sees people of all ages eating their pizza with sweet sauce.

Taking it to the streets

Pizza probably wasn’t the first thought on most people’s minds as they hustled in and out of Gerrity’s in Luzerne doing their morning grocery shopping, but a few stopped to chat after seeing two reporters holding a pizza box.

Thomas Anderson of Trucksville said he really enjoyed the slice from Angelo’s pizza, remarking that he has some stomach issues and has to stay away from spicy food, so the sweet sauce pizza was “perfect” for him.

Bill Davis from Kingston was excited to try a slice as he was exiting Gerrity’s. Davis said he enjoyed the slice of sweet sauce pizza but was concerned his wife would find out he was enjoying a slice without her.

Davis smiled and excitedly took our last piece home with him, as a peace offering to his wife.

Ann Rembish of Luzerne, and George Tensa of Plymouth both enjoyed their slices as well, stopping to take a bite. Tensa remarked that he enjoyed the slice, having been a while since he has had sweet sauce, since his favorite spot in Plymouth, Arnold’s Pizza, was now closed.

Shelley’s in Luzerne

Shelley Davis has been making pizzas for about 50 years, with the last 11 at his current location on Union Street in Luzerne. Davis echoed what seems to be the thoughts of a lot of people in our area when asked about sweet sauce.

“It’s a phenomenon! I don’t understand it, but people love it,” Davis said.

Looking around at the stacks of boxes filling the backroom of Shelley’s Pizza, Davis said he and his staff go through about 1,400 pizza boxes a week. And he estimates that between 35 to 40% of those pizzas have sweet sauce on them, a number that continues to rise year after year.

Why are more people choosing the sweet sauce?

“Because ours is the best! Some love it, some hate it, but ours is the best,” he said.

What makes it the best?

“There is no secret,” he said. “If you want something to be sweet, you put sugar in it.”

With no connection to the Ricci family in Wilkes-Barre, we were curious how Shelley’s Pizza in Luzerne came to have a sweet sauce option on their menu.

Davis credits his son, Anthony Kochanski as the creative force behind Shelley’s sweet sauce. Sometime in 2009, he saw his son sprinkling some sugar onto a slice of pizza. He tried it, and liked it, and it became kind of a “secret menu item.”

“We had it as an option for about two years after Anthony tried that, but we didn’t add it to the menu or advertise it,” Davis said.

Once its popularity began to grow, they added it as a menu option once they settled into their current location, in 2011.

Davis says his sweet sauce “Isn’t going anywhere,” and that if people are looking to taste sweet sauce for the first time that they “Should just try it! But not if they’re diabetic, it’s way too sweet for that!”

Gerry’s Pizza

Gerry Ricci, the owner of Gerry’s Pizza on Carey Avenue in Wilkes-Barre says he didn’t always have sweet sauce as an option.

“It started up at Angelo’s. And before we knew it, we would have people come in and say do you have sweet sauce? And we would tell them no, and they would walk out the door, and go to Angelo’s. So, I said alright let’s develop a sweet sauce.”

What’s in it? We asked there, too.

“Well, what do you think would make a sauce sweet,” he replied. “It’s just our regular sauce, but with sugar, and it’s always fun to hear what people think though, some say brown sugar, some say honey.”

And while Gerry Ricci was quick to offer up sugar as the ingredient that makes their sauce sweet, he was also quick to remind us that while they are similar, by design, their sauce might be a bit different than Angelo’s as they developed it with their own tastes in mind.

“Everyone seems to like it,” he said. “It’s always been popular with the younger kids, especially the kids at Meyers High School.”

He said he isn’t sure when it started, or who came up with it, but he has heard Gerry’s Pizza referred to as “The sweet sauce heavyweights” in the valley, and he’s OK with that.

But what does he think of the sweet sauce himself?

“I don’t particularly like it, it’s a bit too sweet for me,” Gerry Ricci said, adding that there aren’t different variations of sweetness, as they try try to keep it consistent.

Gerry’s son, Brian Ricci, offered similar thoughts.

“I prefer our traditional sauce, rather than our sweet sauce,” he said.

Gerry Ricci was quick to note though that the rest of his staff, especially his younger staff, really love the sweet sauce.

When asked what it means to him to see other pizza places trying to replicate the sweet sauce that started with his father’s pizza place, Gerry Ricci offered us this thought

“A lot of pizza places that are trying to replicate the sauce, are even putting it on the pizza in a similar design to what we do. And we look at that as, you know, competition breeds excellence.”

NEPA exclusive?

We were curious if the love for sweet sauce had spread outside the borders of NEPA so we reached out to some friends and family out of the area for their take on sweet sauce pizza.

Brothers Caleb and Cade Williams, 19, originally from Plains Township, are currently residing in Conway S.C. while attending college.

“Pizza here doesn’t compare to the pizza back home,” Caleb said, while Cade added: “We haven’t found any sweet sauce here.”

Shawn Allgood, 31, of Jackson Mich., said he had never heard of sweet sauce on pizza.

“The only thing similar around here is the vastly superior Detroit Style pizza. I would be open to trying a sweet sauce pizza,” he said. “It makes sense, sweet and salty. Like pineapple on pizza, but not gross.”

Leah Vnuk Vernon, 37, of Winter Garden Fla., originally from Lehman, says that despite her best efforts over the last few years, her and her husband David have not found any pizza places at all offering a sweet sauce as an option.

“Nope no sweet sauce down here,” said Vernon “It’s not a thing at all.”

But you don’t have to look out-of-state to find areas lacking in sweet sauce. In fact, you don’t have to stray much further than the Poconos.

Deborah Homulka of Stroudsburg took an almost hour drive to Angelo’s Pizza in Wilkes-Barre recently to try pizza with sweet sauce for the first time.

“I love to try new things, and I love pizza.” Homulka said, adding that her husband makes pizza at home about once a week, sometimes more.

She offered a simple assessment as she dug in and took her first bite.

“It’s good. It’s sweet,” she said.

When asked for her score on a scale of 1 to 10, there wasn’t a second of hesitation.

“10 out of 10! I would try this again,” Homulka said, adding that she and her husband will be making a drive back down to have some sweet sauce pizza again very soon.

Perhaps we have another culinary tourist attraction on our hands.