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A song
in their hearts. A Harley, too. But right now, let’s
talk pies with the Pizza Girls.
Instead
of hairnets, they wear ‘do-rags, this duo known as the
Pizza Girls, sweating in front of the ovens in their eponymous
pizzeria. The truth is, Phoebe Reckseit and Jennifer Morales
are wearing bandannas around their foreheads not to keep a
stray strand off the counter: It’s to keep their motorcycle
helmets comfortable on their way to work. Jennifer rides a
Harley; Phoebe has a Yamaha.
This is
not your mother’s pizzeria, but sisterhood certainly
rules here. Modern to the marrow, Reckseit and Morales are
feminist enough to have balked when someone first suggested
they call their new place “Pizza Girls” when it
opened a year ago across from Centennial Fountain.
Still, the honorific was hard-earned. In 1996, the longtime
friends left Pennsylvania to come south and manage Pizza Etc.,
a half-block away on Clematis. Reckseit had been controller
for a textile manufacturer; Morales, a teen counselor. Their
combined restaurant experience? Stints at a Burger King, a
bowling alley and a Chuck E. Cheese’s. But when Reckseit’s
stepsister called looking for help with her then-investment,
their now-rival operation Pizza Etc. (the stepsister has since
sold it), Reckseit and Morales packed their bags.
It wasn’t
long before they learned the business. When they jumped on
the “pizza man” - in pizzeria-speak, the guy who
makes the pies - for cutting the slices unevenly, he turned
to the novices with disdain. “If you don’t like
it, cut them yourselves,” he said, and quit.
They cut,
they kneaded, they mixed, they tossed. They got used to seven-day
work-weeks. On nights of street fairs like SunFest, when they
worked until nearly dawn, they took a room among the retirees
at the Helen Wilkes Hotel. Three years later, they broke the
family ties and went out on their own, offering the same hand-tossed
pizza, still by the slice but with gourmet cheeses and fresh
vegetables. They added salads and pasta dishes to the menu.
Their sophisticated combinations of tastes - artichokes, fresh
tomato and gorgonzola, goat cheese with marinated portabellos,
roast chicken with cheddar and chilies - right off attracted
a very devoted clientele, thrilled that this new location
was willing to deliver - mostly to Palm Beach, they note.
They say
with certainty that most of their in-store customers are also
from Palm Beach. How can they tell?
“We
know them,” says Morales.
“We
know everybody,” says Reckseit. “We make a point
of talking to everybody while they wait in line.”
“And
if there’s a good song on the radio,” says Morales,
“we’ll get everybody singing.”
Morales dusts flour off the top edge of a plaque on the wall
beside the cook’s station. It features a clipping from
a local magazine naming Pizza Girls’ pizza the best in
central Palm Beach County. They proudly describe their Christmas
pies that Willard Scott featured on a special on Home and
Garden TV - a ricotta snowman and a spinach Christmas tree
with a roasted red pepper bow. Their new Web site (www.pizzagirls.com)
features the Pizza Girls Gallery and other girls-girls-girls
gimmicks (they have been known to make custom-shaped pies
for bachelorette parties).
Not that
they discriminate. The Pizza Girls have a few men on staff,
“Pizza Girl guys,” they call themselves, who occasionally
take a phone order in falsetto.
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