The Big Heat:
Chicago's Food & Drink Fifty 2014
#49
Giuseppe “Joe” Quercia
Pizza maker
Joe Quercia’s been working at Freddy’s Pizzeria since he was a boy. He marched right up to the owner of the deli and asked him for a job cleaning up around the place. “I told him if he didn’t like how I worked he didn’t have to pay me,” Quercia recalls. Forty-six years after he first pushed a broom across the floor, he’s still manning the team that cranks out some of the best homemade pasta, gnocchi, lemon chicken, pizza and gelato this side of Salerno. Don’t miss the gelato con brioche, made by sandwiching homemade gelato between two slices of fluffy brioche bread—and sealing everything up in a special gelato brioche press.
Big Heat 2020:
Chicago’s Food and Drink 50
#44
Joe and Ann Marie Quercia
Chef-Owners
Freddy’s Pizza is a throwback gem, a grocery that carries Italian products almost exclusively but is also a deli bar serving beautifully simple and satisfying lunch items like rapini and beans, sausage with potatoes and peppers, pizza and other warm items, including wonderful breads, most made in-house. And gelato! Every lunch, the aisles of the small store are lined with construction workers, cops, firemen and others who know where to score a wonderful meal. Joe tells us that his proudest moment is “when customers tell me Freddy’s is part of their childhood and family memories. I have served generations of people since working here in 1968 at the age of thirteen upon my arrival from Naples. It is an honor to have people from all walks of life enter Freddy’s and enjoy our creations.”
