Pizzeria Beddia makes Esquire’s list of best new restaurants

Fishtown’s Pizzeria Beddia, which earlier this year moved from its two-man shop on an Girard Avenue corner into grander quarters nearby behind a chain-link gate in a back alley at 1313 N. Lee St., is ranked fourth on Esquire’s list of best new restaurants in America, announced Nov. 13.

The blurb by Jeff Gordinier:

Pizzeria Beddia would probably snatch a spot on this list for the mere fact that it has a party room where you can throw down with magnums of wine and a “hoagie omakase experience,” as the place advertises it. (Am I dreaming?) But even if you simply dine with the regular crowd, chef Joe Beddia’s geeked-out approach to cheese-and-crust mastery (a recent summer pie involved New Jersey peaches and a garlic-thyme cream), on-the-nose appetizers like a bowl of Judion beans bathing in olive oil, and a gently curveballing wine list mean that you will only fail to enjoy your dinner if you happen to be dead inside.

The last Philly restaurant to make this list was The Love last year.

Sbraga, on Broad Street, made the list in 2012. (It closed in 2017.) In 2008, Zahav and Distrito made it.

In 2015, Bon Appetit named Beddia, then a two-man operation in the original location, the best pizzeria in America. Earlier this year, Time Magazine named the new location to its list of one of the 100 greatest places in the world.

“We’re just going to do the thing,” Beddia said. “This is a whole, big project and it doesn’t stop.”

Asked if he and his partners planned more locations, he replied: "Oh, I hope not.” An inveterate traveler, he said Paris or Tokyo would be the only cities he would consider.

Article corrected to note The Love’s inclusion in 2018.