BREAKING: Nate’s Detroit Pizza Opens a Brick & Mortar in Carroll Gardens
The shop soft opens this week!
Nate Skid and Ivan Gonzalez of Nate’s Detroit Pizza will soft open their first brick and mortar shop at 451 Court Street today; they officially open on Monday September 16th, building off the success of their Atlantic Avenue Pop Up.
The menu at their new shop is all about Nate’s signature square pies, baked in thick steel pans until the bottoms crisp up and the sourdough pizza gets liftoff, bubbling up to an airy pillow under fresh tomato sauce and melting waves of hand-pulled mozzarella cheese.
The hook with their new space is that it will only do slices (pies will still be available to go from its Atlantic Avenue pop up shop), along with beer from Other Half Brewing and a selection of wine and soft drinks.
My advice is to sample as many slices as you can: have a square of Supreme topped with pepperoni, bacon, sausage, and hot honey; a corner of Vodka Truffle flashed with fresh mozzarella and garlic topped with creamy truffle vodka sauce, fresh ricotta and aged Parmesan; a raft of Calabrian Chili & Stracciatella with fresh mozzarella, sliced garlic, aged Parmesan, Maldon salt, and big leaves of basil, or a deep dish slice of broccoli rabe with garlic, crushed red pepper, Italian sausage, fresh mozzarella, and aged Parmesan. You can have them all.
Nate never planned to be a pizza man; he’s a journalist who went to the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and took his first job at Crain’s Detroit Business shadowing a food reporter. The position felt right; his family had been in the restaurant business and he grew up in kitchens. But the experience also made him keenly aware of the industry's inherent challenges. “Our restaurant failed, and it destroyed my family’s finances,” he told me. “I grew up in kitchens, but I also grew up afraid of the business.”
He eventually took over the food beat at Crain’s and stayed for several years, telling stories of business and food. “I saw how important food and restaurants are to a city,” he said. “They are the bellwether of the health of any city. I wrote about young chefs who were returning home from London and New York to build out their own places.”
On the flip he also saw many cautionary tales of folks opening restaurants without sufficient experience or capitalization. “I saw big players that went under and wrote a lot of stories about people who loved cupcakes but then failed when they started making cupcakes out of a commercial kitchen.”
Eventually Nate moved to New York where he became a Senior Producer at CNBC. While producing segments on success and entrepreneurship, he fell in love with the NY slice and also with making his own pizza. He tinkered with a unique recipe, a take on Detroit-style that would bring a little of the NY slice vibe in ingredients and methodology. “I took everything I loved about NY pizza and applied it to Detroit-style,” he said.
He uses a natural sourdough starter (now seven years old); his bright tomato sauce is very simple – made from great tomatoes and little else (no sugar or garlic or celery salt). The deep ultra-heavy steel pans get a little olive oil, then get filled with dough, layered with sauce, then cheese and the toppings.
When his pizzas started becoming popular with friends and neighbors, he found himself volunteering to make pizza for his daughter’s kindergarten class; before he knew it he had agreed to make pizza not just for 25 five year olds, but for the entire school – over 450 kids.
Without a place to bake for hundreds, he began looking for someplace with a commercial Kitchen. He found Cobblestone Foods on Atlantic Avenue, which had just shuttered and was looking for tenants. Nate used the space to bake pizza for 450 elementary school kids, became the most popular Dad in the world, and continued experimenting with his recipes at home, still without any interest in turning his hobby into a business. After all, he knew better.
Then he met Ivan Gonzalez, who was running Table 87 in Industry City. The two became friendly and Nate mentioned he made his own Detroit-style pizza. Ivan asked to try it. When Nate brought one in for him the next day, Ivan nearly lost his mind. “He got really serious after he tried it,” Nate recalled. “He was like, ‘I will build this with you.’ And I said, ‘No, I am not trying to do this as a business.’ But he was like, ‘You have to.’ He said: ‘Be generous. Let me build this with you.’ And I thought about it and we decided to build it together.” That was January of 2024 and the pair set up shop in Cobblestone popping-up Thursdays through Sundays
Word of Nate’s sensational Detroit-style pies quickly spread and lines ensued. The pair turned their three-day-a-week pop-up into a 7-day-a-week venture at the Cobblestone space and began looking for a store of their own.
They found a perfect little storefront — a former donut shop on Court Street — but there was just one problem. Well, maybe two. The store is right between F&F and Baby Luc’s, two of Carroll Gardens’ most beloved pizzerias.
Nate, however, is not deterred. “We are opening smack dab in between some heavy hitters. We think the Best Detroit Pizza in Brooklyn will fit in nicely. It’s a different style of pizza,” he said. “Detroit-style pizza is the best pizza, and I’d put it up against any in the city.”
I’ve had all three pies – Baby Luc’s, F&F, and Nate’s, and I have to say, he’s right. His pizza is wildly different from what’s out there right now. It’s also insanely good. So I feel like they will all do fine. The good news is that you can actually do a little pizza crawl and have three different pie experiences all on one block of Carroll Gardens now. “This is gonna be the Murderer’s Row of Brooklyn Pizza,” said Nate.
It IS good... However, I'm sad to see Detroit Style replacing Neopolitan everywhere in the hood. It's delicious, but I typically feel awful about an hour after I eat that style of pizza.