A Marital Love of Pizza: A Chat with Accanto’s Emily Chandler and Hiram Navarrete

It wasn’t hard for Piazza owner Emily Chandler and her husband, Hiram Navarrete, to fall down the pizza rabbit hole when they first were living in the two epicenters of American pizza lore, New Haven, CT, and Brooklyn. Experiencing the likes of Pepe’s, Sally’s, and the Modern in Connecticut and, later, the famed Lucali and Di Fara in New York City, Emily and Hiram learned that the craft of making pizza was hard-earned and a bit obsessive for these restaurants, as well as for the hobbyists.

Tales of individuals putting a $20,000 oven in their garage, importing water from Italy, or the endless search for the perfect tomato were common observations of the couple as they tasted their way through the Northeast urban zone.

And for years afterward, Emily and Hiram continued to watch and learn, even while Piazza was taking off in Easton. But the real deep dive was triggered by the COVID years, as the young family experimented with different doughs, fermentation, timing, and endless other co-factors that create the perfect pie.

That kind of self-taught exercise came in handy when it was decided that, at its core, Piazza’s new restaurant, Accanto, would be their version of those landmark pizza institutions. While Accanto, in many ways, can comfortably fit into the category of fine dining, with impressive starters, entrees, and desserts, it was important that the new venue’s soul centered on their outstanding pizza.

The Spy dropped by the new joint a few weeks ago for some background information for this intelligence report.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about Accanto please go here.