Sal Cusumano knows there is no Platonic ideal of pizza. “At the end of the day,” the third-generation South Jersey pizzaiolo said, “it’s all subjective.”
He’s pursued it nonetheless.
For nearly a decade, Cusumano has been chasing his idea of pizza perfection: the crisp, sturdy bottom of a New York slice with the puffy, airy rim of a Neapolitan pie, and well-fermented dough with just the right balance of sauce and cheese.
“Something you can sink your teeth into,” said Cusumano, 43, who grew up teething on crusts in his dad’s shops. The goal has loomed even larger since he bought a vacant Collingswood storefront for his dream pizzeria 4½ years ago.
Getting close to perfection has meant experimenting with dozens of flours, adjusting the water content of his dough, stretching fermentation times, and futzing with oven temperatures.
For at least the last year, conversations invariably began with the question: “Sal, when are you opening already?”
Now, Cusumano has an answer: Pizzeria Cusumano’s debut at 872 Haddon Ave. is scheduled for Saturday. “It’s time to really bite the bullet and let my OCD not get in the way,” he said last week.
A family tradition
Gregorio Fierro, a pizza consultant who has worked with Cusumano since the project was little more than an idea, believes his client might have kept experimenting indefinitely.
“Cusumano’s is basically the answer to the question: What if I just do everything right?” Fierro said. “He’s throwing everything at making it great.”
This dedication is rooted in a family business that has supported three generations of Cusumanos. Sal’s grandfather, Salvatore, an immigrant from Sicily, started making pizza in Brooklyn in 1968 before opening Ricardo’s Pizza in Willingboro in 1971. Sal’s father, Tony, and an uncle opened Brothers Pizza in Paulsboro in 1979, followed by a succession of shops under the Angelo’s name.
Tony, 69, started making pizza at age 10 and still works the oven at Angelo’s in Riverside. “I eat it every day,” he said. “People ask, ‘Don’t you get tired of pizza?’ I don’t.”
Sal worked in the family business through high school. Tony never insisted that his son follow him into the business, and Sal pursued other jobs, eventually taking a position with a cheese company that offered benefits, insurance, and a company car. But one day, in 2012, Sal told his dad that he needed to come back.
“I liked that he made the decision himself,” Tony said. “That meant more to me than saying, ‘Here, this is yours,’ or, ‘This is what you’ve got to do.’”
That year, Sal opened Angelo’s Pizza in a shopping center in Berlin, Camden County; four years later, father and son opened a shop in Voorhees.
A different direction
Sal was back in the business, but he began questioning the way his family made its familiar New York-style pizzas, joining a wave of generational pizza makers who have taken traditions in new directions, including Davide Lubrano Lavadera at Pizzata Pizzeria, Vince Tacconelli at Tacconelli’s, and Danny DiGiampietro at Angelo’s Pizzeria.
In 2018, concerned about the potential cancer risks of potassium bromate, a flour additive that strengthens dough, Sal switched from Pillsbury to King Arthur flour.
“That’s when I really started going down this rabbit hole of making better dough,” he said. “I started figuring out what fermentation does to dough and really became a student of dough.”
Six years ago, Cusumano visited L’Industrie in Brooklyn, the acclaimed slice shop known for its thin, crisp pies and burrata-topped slices.
“I looked my wife [Stefania] right in the eye after I had that first bite of the burrata slice, and I said, ‘This is going to be mine. My legacy.’”
He frequently returned to Brooklyn to watch the pizza makers and attend classes. “I was going up there all the time and just watching, like a kid in a candy store,” he said. (He continued to visit as he readied his Collingswood shop, even bringing his infant son, Anthony, now 19 months old.)
As Sal tinkered with the pies at his Berlin pizzeria, Fierro questioned whether it was the right place for Sal’s ambitions.
“He really wanted it to be great. But the customers weren’t responding to it, and I kind of backed him off,” Fierro said.
That’s when the idea of a Collingswood shop came into play.
“I really wanted to be in a town that supports its small businesses and would appreciate the time, effort, and quality I was putting into the product,” Sal said. “Collingswood just came to the top of my mind.”
Sal chose the family name for his new restaurant in honor of his grandfather, who died in 2017 without seeing it on a pizzeria.
What took so long
When Sal signed the agreement for the Collingswood building in September 2021, he expected to open within a year. He went to settlement the following spring. Formerly an optometrist’s office and later a computer repair shop, it had sat empty for about a decade. Finding a contractor, financing, and municipal approvals took time.
In 2023 and 2024, he focused on moving the Berlin pizzeria to West Berlin. Then he turned his attention to building and outfitting Collingswood with Italian mixers, an electric deck oven with steam injection, specialized proofing equipment, and a walk-in refrigerator large enough for two days of dough production. He decided to invest in significantly more expensive specialty flour, from Italy’s Petra mill.
He was revising the pizza recipe as he went along. “I spent probably a year and a half just tinkering, going over formulas and percentages, figuring out what kind of dough I wanted,” he said.
The kitchen was largely finished earlier this year, and since the spring, Sal has been testing his new deck ovens. His latest challenge was to develop a pizza that his staff can reproduce consistently.
“I think he didn’t want to open until it was exactly what he wanted,” Fierro said. “That’s what it came down to.”
Finally ready
Last month, Sal said he felt ready. During a tasting of his 16-inch round pizzas, he offered a qualified assessment: “I feel this right here is the closest that I got to satisfying myself and still delivering what expectations I was hoping to give.”
The pie had a thin, foldable crust with a crisp, puffed-up rim and a delicate, honeycombed interior. The sauce was tangy, neither sweet nor sour.
He is a proponent of a Trenton-style build, which calls for layering cheese on the bottom before adding sauce. “There’s nothing wrong with sauce on the bottom,” he said. “But putting the cheese on the bottom gives the dough a chance to shine a little bit.”
The subway-tiled shop is designed primarily for takeout, though counters accommodate about 10 diners.
He’ll sell whole pies only. The starting price for a cheese pizza is $23; specialty round pies (about $30) include a combo of white button mushrooms, crème fraîche, and chives; another with mozzarella and ricotta, finished with Sicilian olive oil, basil, and Pecorino Romano; and the White Lotus, a pizza al limone inspired by the family’s history in Sicily’s lemon trade, with thin slices of lemon, ricotta, mozzarella, garlic, and olive oil. Square pizzas will be priced from $28 to $38. Also among them is sfincione, a thick-crust tomato pie, topped with sauce whose recipe is from Sal’s mother, Francesca.
Sal plans to offer specials using seasonal vegetables and farmers market finds. Eventually, he hopes to add bread, panini, and panuozzo, an Italian sandwich made with pizza dough.
The project has cost more than Cusumano anticipated.
“I called it a passion project in the beginning. Now it’s become a financial-burden project,” Sal said.
His father — who has watched the years of experiments, trips to Brooklyn, and second-guessing — has a simpler perspective.
“He’s been searching and researching for a long time now,” Tony said. “I think he’s got it down to what he wants to do.”
Only time will tell if Sal is ever finally satisfied. Last week during a test bake, he said he’s contemplating another tweak to the recipe: adding a little sourdough.
“I don’t want to get stale,” he said. “I don’t want to get too comfortable, either. I always want to be uncomfortable. If you’re uncomfortable, that means you’re growing.”
Pizzeria Cusumano, 872 Haddon Ave., Collingswood. Hours (starting Saturday): 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday; noon to 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Closed Tuesday.