Food

The Crossroads of Culture and Migration

A Nomad No More

by Liz Harcharek

Photographs by Andrew Wilkinson

There’s growing excitement in the pizza blogosphere. New York contributors to seriouseats.com, for example, are organizing a trip to Hopewell to sample what one source claims is “the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in New Jersey.” To those in the know, Nomad Pizza Company is comparable, nay, superior to Manhattan’s revered Motorino or Co pizzerias. And yes, they could be set to dethrone New Jersey’s own King of the Pie: DeLorenzo’s of Trenton.

Why?

First of all, Nomad co-owner Tom Grim is obsessed with making the perfect pizza.

Relentlessly experimenting, meticulous in selecting only the freshest ingredients, Grim says “if there ever comes a point where I’m satisfied I made my best pizza ever, then it will be time to do something else.” And he’s not there yet.

Second, the heat of the oven in which the pizzas are baked is “mission critical.” Nomad has an Italian-made wood burning oven that can reach temperatures up to one thousand degrees, cooking each pizza crust to perfection in less than two minutes. Up to five pizzas can be cooked at a time, each rotated on its own spot so that the crust cooks evenly beside the fire. When the oven is cooler, it’s used to bake bread or roast garlic. When completely cold, it must be lit in the morning to be at optimal temperature for the 5.30 pm opening time.

Third, but no less essential, the quality of the ingredients is paramount at Nomad, whether for their signature pizzas, or complementary side salads. The concise menu features a veritable Who’s Who of local producers — Applegate Farms, Simply Grazin’, North Slope Farm — whose nitrate-free pepperoni, organic spicy sausage or plump organic garlic are ideal partners for the carefully-chosen products from Italy. Flour for the dough, (Antonio Caputo Tipo 00), fresh buffalo mozzarella, Parmesan cheese and canned San Marzano tomatoes are flown in from the birthplace of pizza to land … well … on your plate.

Just as there are three essential elements to the making of these pizzas, so there are three parts to the story behind the charming pizzeria which opened its doors last August, becoming the stationery counterpart of its nomadic predecessor.

Part I: Fudge, Chocolate & Ice Cream

Twenty-eight years ago, Tom Grim, and his high school buddy Tom Block, founded Thomas Sweet Ice Cream in Princeton. The path there was paved with fudge and chocolate. Grim trained at the “school” of culinary arts known as “Trial and Error in Your Own Kitchen.” He actually studied Philosophy at college in Buffalo, his home town, but paid for tuition by selling fudge at state fairs with Block, perfecting his fudge recipe at home in the kitchen.

After college, Grim and Block opened a chocolate shop in Princeton. The University entrusted them with the task of luring prospective undergraduates away from Harvard and the enticements of Boston, (so Grim recounts it) by “jazzing up Princeton” with an ice cream store. [Despite a few teething problems, four months after opening, the store was so popular that it ran out of ice cream on a Saturday night, in February. Living up to Grim’s quest for innovation and excellence, the partners worked hard to create something their clientele hadn’t seen before. This was the signature “blend-in” that makes Thomas Sweet immensely popular to this day.

The partners eventually sold their ice cream business and started new ventures — with Grim in pursuit of the perfect pizza, and Block moving on to launch the Naked Chocolate Café in Philadelphia, (which provides the complimentary treats served at Nomad Pizza).

Part II: A 1949 REO Speed Wagon

Back in his own kitchen, Grim’s hobby was baking bread. Making pizza was a natural progression, and he tried everything to get that perfect crust, even lining his conventional oven with terracotta tiles, and ruining it. Then he installed a wood-burning oven and his passion became an obsession, much to the delight of friends attending his frequent pizza tasting parties.

Turning this hobby into a new business was the next step. Googling away, Grim found out about Douglas Coffin in Connecticut who sold pizzas from his truck. Using Coffin’s design as inspiration for his own enterprise, Grim formed the Nomad Pizza Company with partner Stalin Bedon, a longtime Thomas Sweet employee.

It was Bedon’s idea to “flip an oven onto the side of a truck.” Both men are avid antique truck enthusiasts, and in 2006, Bedon won a 1949 REO Speed Wagon on eBay for $5,200. (Fun fact: REO stands for the initials of the company’s founder, Ransom Eli Olds.) The vanilla and chocolate colored truck was transformed into a pizzeria on wheels, with much help from several local professionals. Grim’s long-time mechanic, Joe Nosker, at the Car Depot in Hopewell, was the first to fix the engine. Johnson Design, a high-end metalworking firm located just across the street from the Hopewell Train Station, fabricated the truck body and all the stainless steel compartments, including a three-basin sink, a handler’s sink, and compartments for storing a generator, a refrigerator, and wood for the oven. Wooden serving tables doubled as the sides of the truck, and a retractable awning (to protect the oven outside) and sound system completed the makeover.

As a food purveyor, the truck got clearance from Hopewell’s health department. And then, it was time for its first gig: catering the annual badminton party of Jessica Durrie, owner of Princeton’s Small World Coffee. Durrie had been one of the regulars at Grim’s pizza tasting parties, and was thrilled at the novelty of having a catering truck make pizzas on her own doorstep:

“The big beautiful REO Speed Wagon was parked in my driveway and it was such a surprise to everyone.”Durrie recalls.  “Not only did it look super cool, but the pizza was amazing.We had our kids and some neighborhood friends passing around the pies to the guests.  Subsequently we have used them for my son’s 13th birthday and for the annual Small World Coffee staff party.”

Grim chuckles as he recounts his version of the event: “Our truck got a flat tire, our chimney blew up, we barely made it there. There was a thunderstormv — we all waited inside and then went back out to make the pizza.”

Since then, the pizza truck has become a familiar sight in Princeton and surrounding areas, often visiting the university campus for lawn events, turning up at county fairs or private parties, and attracting long lines at Communiversity, Princeton’s annual Spring town and gown fair.

“It’s because the crust is so good,” raves 16-year-old Shelby Yvon, a Princeton High School sophomore who made a point of locating the truck at Communiversity this year to get her Nomad pizza fix. She didn’t mind waiting in line. “It’s so cool to see your pizza being made so fast, just for you, in the oven.”

Nomad has catered some “very nice parties” as Grim puts it, including one for Jon Corzine at the Governor’s Mansion, and another for Donald Trump, who reportedly ordered and enjoyed two Margheritas. Prices to hire the truck begin at $1,100 for 25-50 guests and two hours of serving time — the food is served buffet style, with a salad of fresh local greens, followed by non-stop pizza “until everyone has had what they want.” Dessert, which isn’t served in the restaurant, is a Nutella and banana pizza.

Part III: Nomad’s Home and Garden in Hopewell

“It’s a beautiful space, I’m very proud of what we’ve done,” beams Grim, as he surveys the garden adjoining the neat patio he and Bedon had built onto the restaurant. They gutted the location vacated by Soupe du Jour on Hopewell’s East Broad Street, and installed a gorgeous Italian-built wood-burning oven with a domed roof, tiled in blue. The narrow kitchen space is separated from the dining area by a long bar and marble prep counter. Customers may choose to eat their pizza at the long wooden table inside, or on the patio, where there is seating for 25. Grim “hates” to serve pizza to go because the texture of the pie crust changes over time, but the limited seating has made this a necessity (he recommends re-heating your pie on a pizza stone in a 400 degree oven. The result is excellent.) To keep up with turnover, there’s no coffee or dessert; on busy nights, Nomad makes up to 200 pizzas.

Landscaper Peter Soderman helped Bedon and Grim design the garden adjacent to the pizzeria. It actually belongs to the neighboring building and headquarters of Dana Communications, Inc, but the partners were granted free range to transform it.

“The space is designed to be an outdoor art gallery” says Soderman, who believes that the garden’s uniqueness lies in its three-dimensionality. A sculpture of a head, housing a miniature garden, is on permament display, alongside a carved wooden bench, a water fountain, and a Peace Pole with the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” inscribed in four languages. Soderman describes plans to install screens on the cedar trellises (built by David Robinson of Natural Edge in Trenton), creating an enclosure for a revolving art display. Morning glory, wisteria, clematis, and other succulents have been planted, with vines trained up the trellises. Fragrant basil and peppery arugula for the kitchen flourish in the ten raised beds tended by the owners, who have also planted garlic in the grounds.

A truck, genuine wood-fired ovens, a garden as art installation — these are all remarkable elements of Nomad’s success story. Attention to quality and detail sets Grim apart, ever since those days of experimental fudge-making in his kitchen. Refusing to serve North American soda, because it contains high fructose corn syrup, Grim tracked down a distributor of Mexican soda, made with sugar cane and sold in glass bottles. On a trip to Italy this winter, Grim discovered how the Roman pizzaiolos (Italian for pizza maker–apparently there is no feminine form of the noun) were making their dough. Back home, he experimented with a recipe that has about 25 percent semolina flour, rolling the dough to a characteristic thinness and spreading the toppings to the rim, just as in Rome. Now the restaurant menu features a choice of Pizza Napolitana and Pizza Romana, the difference in the crusts being chewiness versus crispiness, yet both with the “yummy wood fired char” that customers cannot get enough of.

Grim and Bedon sampled countless New Jersey tomatoes last year, but decided to continue using canned San Marzano tomatoes whose distinctive flavor derives from Mt. Vesuvius’ volcanic soil. To make the Margherita, Nomad’s pizzaiolos drop whole tomatoes onto the crust: “it’s amazing what happens in two minutes” says Grim, referring to the tomato’s transformation to a sauce in the oven. Even the salt is special: it’s pink and Himalayan. Grim always sticks to his golden rule of “Less is More,” letting the quality of the ingredients, not the quantity, speak for itself.

When you enter Nomad Pizza, look for the white trays of pizza dough stacked up in the kitchen, labeled by day and type. Years of Grim’s experimenting have brought you 300 grams of impeccable dough, its yeast, salt and flour precisely weighed. Left to rest for four days, it’s ready to be deftly rolled into shape, adorned with the freshest toppings, and personally watched over in the oven. It takes just two minutes to make what is arguably the best pizza in New Jersey.