Bar pizza, anyone?

My sister Kathleen used to live in Hull, a small, funky beach town on Boston's South Shore. I spent a lot of time in Hull over the years she lived there, but none of it was spent in any of Hull's bars of which - given Hull's general funkiness and blue collar vibe - I'm sure there were a few of. But come to find out that, when I was sitting with Kath and Rick on their porch, drinking wine and watching boats float by and planes cruise into Logan, I could have been drinking beer and eating bar pizza, a food item I have just recently become aware of.

But bar pizza is, I have learned, a thing on the South Shore. 

It's been a thing for a good long while, but it became a thing-thing, a known thing, a few years back when Kerry Byrne, a food writer from Quincy (which is on the South Shore) "began identifying and celebrating 'bar pizza,' or 'bar pie,' as a singular dish."

In February 2020, just as COVID-19 was beginning its global havoc, Byrne created a Facebook group, “South Shore Bar Pizza Social Club,” to review the iconic spots and promote the businesses as restaurant traffic slowed. By the end of the first day, he said, the page had thousands of members and took on a life of its own, quickly becoming the central place to answer the question many were asking themselves as the world shut down: How do I make bar pizza at home? (Source: Boston Globe)

Bar pizza, by the way, is not all that fancy. It's a thin crust pizza (made with cheddar, not mozzarella), slathered up to the edges of the pan with red sauce and cheese. So no crust handle to hang on to when you fold and shovel a piece into your mouth. But it sounds plenty tasty, especially if you're half in the bag, and I can see how South Shore folks would want to make their own, especially when they were cut off from their supply during covid.

And, of course, to make the real authentic deal, why not make it in the real authentic deal pan from Bay State Restaurant Products, an outfit founded after WWII and now being run by the third and fouth gen of Owenses, Bobby Owens and his father "Big Bob." Bobby Owens estimates that Bay State has supplied "like 99 percent" of the bars that make bar pizza. 

Byrne's Facebook group turned out to be a real boon for Bay State:

And overnight, the 36-year-old Owens became, in the words of Byrne, “America’s first and only celebrity pizza pan salesman.”

The “Bobby Owens Pan,” as it came to be known, became a phenomenon with the Facebook group, which now has 75,000 members. Diehards swore they were the only way to make authentic bar pizza, and loved everything about the Owens story: a family business, run out of a concrete building on a side street in Brockton. They don’t do online ordering, so you have to call and actually talk to the Bobby Owens to order them.

Owens has now shiped pans ($17.99) to "all 50 states and several countries." And thousands have showed up at the shop in Brockton for a brick and mortar in person shopping experience. 

The origin story for the pizza pan is a good one:

The story [Big Bob Owens]’s always heard is that bar pizza started at Brockton Café after the war, when a cook took a steel waitress tray that Coca-Cola used to give to its restaurants, burned off the paint, and used it to make the first “bar pie.”

As the pizza became popular among factory workers looking for something to wash down with their after-work beers, there weren’t enough Coca-Cola trays to satisfy the demand, so the Owenses — who already sold and serviced most of the ovens used to make bar pizza, as well as just about everything else in the kitchens — started having the pans made for their customers. 

It may or may not be 100% true but the whole thing makes me hungry for some bar pizza. 

Maybe this summer, on a nice day, I'll take the ferry down to Hull's Nantasket Beach, make my way to a dive bar, and order me a bar pie. If I like it, I may have to call Bay State and order me a pan.