Last October I won the pizza lottery, securing a Secret Pizza Club preorder that has been many-a local pizza lover’s white whale.
New York-style crust that’s springy, thin, leopard-spotted. Light on the sauce, high-quality cheese. Finished with an olive oil brush on the crust, zhuzh of hand-grated Parm and zingy fresh basil chiffonade.
Did it live up to the hype?
Well, my pizza didn’t even make it home whole. I scarfed down a still piping-hot slice (okay, two) straight from the box in the parking lot. It was pretty damn glorious.
DREAMS OF A PIZZA KID
Secret Pizza Club proprietor Sam Pew has been seeking the ultimate pizza for most of his life. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, a folded slice of thin-crust classic pie imprinted hard. “I was always a pizza kid,” Sam said of his first teenage job working in a pizza shop. “And now I’m constantly evolving the style. It’s the chase of always making it better.”
What started out as fresh-fired pizzas for friends—sold out of Sam’s house, where the “Secret Pizza Club” moniker was born—evolved into a semiweekly pop-up while he was a chef at Marmalade fine dining staple, Arlo. His operation briefly moved to an unmarked warehouse before landing at its current spot, Leavity Bread, where Sam spends his days as a baker.
“The toppings are a lay-up,” Sam told me of his pizza philosophy. Whether you order his personal go-to plain cheese pie or the other variation (whatever that is) on offer, “the crust is the soul of pizza,” he said of long-fermented, “nice and lively” 24-48 hour fermented dough. “It’s the elemental part of what we do.”
THE BIG BOOM
Over the past year, the attention to the SPC brand has been exponential. To snag a preorder, hopefuls join the Secret Pizza Club Hotplate portal for a 5 p.m. drop to secure a subsequent-night preorder. In a Hunger Games-esque scarcity model, Hotplate posts how many customers are also waiting in line for each drop. On Friday, Oct. 2, I was one of (at least) 348 poised to smash the “order” button for a pickup the following Sunday. From previous failed experiences, I knew it closed within a hot second or two of go-time. Of course, I let out an audible “eep!” and did a Snoopy dance when allowed to schedule my pickup time (105 total pies are cranked in 15-minute intervals) and submit payment.
Just a week later, a certain bullhorn of the broletariat posted a positive one-bite review (Dave Portnoy’s exact rating was an 8.2, saying it was “superior to any other pizza” he’d had in Utah). The next drop, I spied 1,520 Hotplate customers poised for a Tuesday night preorder. People were reselling SPC pizzas on Facebook Marketplace.
Sam told me that at that point, it felt like things were getting out of hand. He stopped text push notifications due to site-crashing demand. And he personally felt lousy about people not being able to snag a pizza, even though he still regularly saw customers at pickup who had been loyal fans since the beginning. “I know it’s hard to get a pizza, and we’re working on it,” said Sam of the search for a potential permanent storefront for his gig.
Don’t worry Sam, we’ll be here when SPC is ready for the next move. And in the meantime, we’ll gladly get in the virtual line.
Where to get it
Secret Pizza Club
Pickups available by preorder only at Leavity Bread, 1000 S. Main St., Suite 101, SLC
Drop dates and details at hotplate.com/sammakespizza
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