Pizzeria Bianco: How a Grocery Store Pizza Counter Became America’s Pizza Pilgrimage

Just before the doors open on Adams Street, the line is already there. People gather on the brick paths of Heritage Square in downtown Phoenix, all of them waiting for a seat in a small red brick building that once fixed machinery for a living.

Inside, a wood-fired oven does the talking. This is Pizzeria Bianco, the place that helped convince America that pizza could be a craft worth crossing the country for. And it all started with one guy, a bag of flour and a corner of a grocery store.

A Bronx kid who picked Phoenix on a whim

Chris Bianco was born in the Bronx and grew up in Ossining, New York. Childhood asthma kept him inside a lot, and he spent those hours watching his aunt cook. By 13 he had a job at a local pizzeria.

His route to Arizona was pure chance. In 1985 he won a pair of plane tickets good for anywhere in the country, and he chose Phoenix. He later cooked in Santa Fe and in Italy before settling back in the Valley, where he made fresh mozzarella in his apartment and sold it to Italian restaurants around town.

A Phoenix specialty grocer liked what he was doing and offered him space to sell pizza. So in 1988, according to the restaurant, the first Pizzeria Bianco opened in the back corner of a neighborhood grocery store.

From a strip mall to Heritage Square

Word spread fast. In 1994 the pizzeria moved into the Town & Country shopping center on 20th Street to make room for the crowds. Then in 1997 it landed at 623 E. Adams St., the address that would make it famous.

The building is the old Baird Machine Shop, a one-room brick workshop from the late 1920s that sits among the restored homes of Heritage Square. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1985. Today the old shop holds roughly 40 seats, an herb garden beside it, and that busy oven.

No mystery, just good ingredients

Bianco has always said his pizza is simple. The mozzarella is made in house, the dough is made by hand and given a long, slow rise, and everything bakes in a wood-burning oven. The restaurant even uses its own Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes.

The menu has barely moved in decades. Six staple pies anchor it: the Margherita, the Marinara, the Biancoverde, the Sonny Boy, the Wiseguy and the Rosa. The Wiseguy pairs wood-roasted onion with house-smoked mozzarella and fennel sausage. The Rosa is the famous one, with red onion, Parmigiano-Reggiano, rosemary and Arizona pistachios.

The kitchen is a family affair, too. Chris’s brother Marco has long worked alongside him, and after a serious asthma attack in 2010 that was linked to years of flour and smoke, Chris stepped back from the oven for a while and leaned on Marco and his longtime crew to keep the pies coming.

The awards, and the pizzeria today

In 2003 Bianco won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest, the first pizza maker ever to take that honor. In 2022 the James Beard Foundation named him Outstanding Restaurateur. That same year Netflix featured him on Chef’s Table: Pizza, and in 2024 the New York Times put the pizzeria on its national best list, saying it “helped pave the way for the craft-pizza revolution.”

The family of restaurants has grown since then. A second Pizzeria Bianco returned to Town & Country in 2013, next door to Bianco’s Italian restaurant Tratto. There is Pane Bianco on Central Avenue for sandwiches and casual pizza, Bar Bianco beside the original at Heritage Square, and in Los Angeles, a Pizzeria Bianco that opened in 2022 plus a Pane Bianco. A Tucson location tried its luck downtown but closed in 2016. Through all of it, the Adams Street original is still open, still busy, and still the heart of the operation.

How to do Pizzeria Bianco right

• Plan for the line. Heritage Square is first come, first served, with no reservations and no takeout. Go early, go on a weeknight, and treat the wait as part of the experience.
• Order the Rosa. Even if you think you don’t like pizza without sauce. Get a Margherita or a Wiseguy for the table too, so you taste both sides of the menu.
• Wait next door. Bar Bianco sits right beside the pizzeria, which makes the time pass a lot faster.
• Want a reservation? The Town & Country location on 20th Street takes a limited number. Downtown, Heritage Square offers valet, and the Heritage Garage at 5th Street and Monroe is close by.

Plenty of places make great pizza now. Part of the reason is a Bronx kid who took a free plane ticket to the desert, set up in the back of a grocery store, and refused to cut corners. A table in that old machine shop is still one of the best seats in Phoenix.

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This spotlight draws on reporting from Pizzeria Bianco’s own website, KTAR News, KJZZ, Phoenix New Times and Islands, along with public records on the Baird Machine Shop. Top photo: Tony the Marine, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.