Sidework

“What’s a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?”

                                                                                         – The Waco Kid, Blazing Saddles

Rafi Bildner is a pizza phenom. For five years now, Rafi, his mobile pizza oven, and a rag-tag crew of Hilltown Hot Pie partisans have roamed the Berkshires and Hudson Valley, doing seasonal pop-ups and one-off events. This summer, the Hilltown team has been slinging its pizza magic out of the Egremont Barn (a short drive from Great Barrington, MA).

If you’ve already been to a Hilltown pop-up—whether this year or in past summers—you’re in the know (and in good company with Ruth Reichl). If you haven’t, this year’s residency runs through Labor Day so there’s still time. The parking lot fills an hour before opening and people wait—usually patiently—for spectacular pies, fried delights and the Hilltown squadra’s vibe. There’s an irrepressible bonhomie in the Hilltown experience, and Rafi’s mile-a-minute, pizza-proselytizing charm has a lot to do with it.

I connected with Rafi through a string of coincidences that revealed a few uncanny parallels. My cycling advocacy pal Aaron—who had met Rafi at a Third Coast radio workshop—pointed the intersections out to me. Rafi, a passionate cyclist and pizzaiolo, was bike touring in 2022 through an obscure inland region of southern Italy called Irpinia, posting updates of his adventure and restaurant aspirations to Instagram. I, an urban/suburban cyclist and former pizzaiolo, had spent four months working in Irpinia in 2003 ahead of opening A16 in San Francisco, and was now in the business of helping people develop restaurants.

Rafi was right then staging at Antica Trattoria Di Pietro in middle-of-nowhere Melito Irpino. Antica Trattoria Di Pietro is an obscure yet low-key legendary restaurant—mostly known to a small coven of Slow Food geeks—that embodies the ideals of rigorous, place-based gastronomy. I ate at Di Pietro a couple times in 2003 and it was magical. Minestra maritata, cicatielli con pulieio, and lots of grappa from the owner Crescenzo’s personal collection are what I remember. Bearded and bespectacled in his ubiquitous shirt-and-tie, Crescenzo looks more like a history professor than a chef. But accidenti, his food is delicious and the place has a grounded vibe.

And here was Rafi—cavorting around in the Di Pietro kitchen, living with the family, organizing chef collab nights, celebrating their culinary traditions, dancing the tarantella metaphorically if not literally. It was like we’d both seen the same super niche band in a secret club in a foreign land, twenty years apart. But whereas I just went to the show, Rafi figured out how to be a roadie.

I sent Rafi a message and we met up to talk shop and compare stories. He was buying a property where he planned on opening his first brick-and-mortar restaurant. He needed some guidance, so we worked with him to develop preliminary financial projections, advised on sequencing the project and thinking about his future venue, and helped build his project team. Opening a restaurant is always more consuming and protracted than people expect, but Rafi has deep, unquenchable wells of optimism and energy. The Egremont Barn residency is likely to be the swan song of Hilltown’s nomadic era—by this time next year, Hilltown Hot Pies will be open at 224 Hillsdale Road in Egremont.

Bocca al lupo, Rafi.