As a child, Dan Richer learned a love for food while watching cooking shows with his mother. While cooking wan’t a passion for her, they both had fun learning how to replicate extravagant dishes that TV chefs would make.
“My mom and I used to sit and watch all the PBS cooking shows, like Julia Child—then we’d make some of the dishes, like fresh pasta. For my 10th birthday, I got a wok!” he says. “We were both curious and fearless, and it didn’t matter how it came out. We wanted to experiment and try things, like puff pastry and cream puffs and eclairs. And just that notion alone, that food can be challenging and educational, made me realize how good food brings us together.”
Since opening his iconic pizza restaurant, Razza, in Jersey City in 2012, Richer has been bringing many, many people together over his fabulous cooking.
Photo: Arron Andrews
Razza is an artisanal pizza restaurant that embraces the Italian way of cooking and eating, with the menu changing regularly based on seasonal ingredients.
Since scoring a stellar three-star review in the New York Times in 2017 (Pete Wells cleverly called it the best pizza in New York), Razza has had so much buzz that it’s practically booked solid every night.
And his talents have been recognized nationally. Richer, 44, has been a James Beard Award semifinalist multiple times, and this year, he was named a semifinalist for Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic—quite an accomplishment for the owner of a pizza restaurant.
Photo: Arron Andrews
While Richer didn’t grow up making pizza, he certainly ate a lot of it growing up in Matawan, he says. “We ate a ton of it because it’s affordable, it’s accessible and it’s everywhere. Every town has got 10 pizzerias, and we knew our favorite spots in each town surrounding ours. But I grew up on a New York slice.”
He actually still picks up a slice sometimes on his way to work. Ray’s in Hazlet is his go-to spot.
A Rutgers grad, Richer, who lives in Middletown, always had a passion for food and spent time cooking in Italy after college, skipping graduation to fly there. That was when he really grew to love Italian cooking.
Photo: Arron Andrews
Despite all the accolades and the love from critics—Razza is on our Top 40 Best Restaurant list this year—does he think pizza gets the respect it deserves?
“In my opinion, pizza is one of the most difficult foods to make, start to finish. We have to be bread bakers and cheese makers. And we have to get all the ingredients to line up at just the right moment in an oven—and we’re baking the pizza in a wood-fired oven. So we have to manage fire and fermentation, and all of these ingredients must be just at their right moment when you put them in the oven,” he says. “It’s very challenging—and I think pizza does get a lot of respect, because people genuinely love pizza, and we all have very, very strong opinions about it.”
Many of the ingredients come from Garden State farms—most notably, the luscious Jersey tomatoes, used in season. Richer says tomatoes are so important at the restaurant, they use multiple varieties. “We try to showcase all of them and use them in different ways, so we always have three different versions of margherita pizza on the menu. When we change one component of the pizza, it changes the entire pizza—that’s why we love doing it,” he says.
His favorite? The burrata pizza, which has a crispier crust than the others on the menu.
“If I had to eat one pizza for the rest of my life, it would be a margherita. I’m a pretty simple person, and it’s just a classic. I also love mushrooms and pepperoni—there are so many great ones. But for me, the real essence of pizza is in the crust, and the pizza maker’s ability to manage fermentation. That’s what leads to great flavors, textures, colors and aromas,” he says.
He’s characteristically modest about all his accolades and awards. But, he says, being nominated for a James Beard Award this year is really special because he feels pizza is underrepresented in these categories.
“We’re not fine dining, but we are there to feed everyone. It’s accessible and affordable, and that doesn’t usually translate to awards, you know?” he says.
“But everybody loves pizza, and, to be honest, that’s all that really matters.”
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