The East Bay’s Most Exciting New Pizza Pop-up Is at a Richmond Weed Dispensary
In the hierarchy of foods that pair perfectly with a hit of weed, a cheesy, hot slice of pizza has to rank among the most iconic — right up there with other stoner faves like White Castle, ice cream and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that one of the Bay Area’s most promising new pizza pop-ups would be stationed in front of a Richmond cannabis shop. Every Sunday and Monday, 7 Stars Holistic Healing Center regulars line up at the little tented food stand right outside the dispensary to snag a piping-hot, oil-slicked pepperoni or whipped ricotta pizza. It’s some of the tastiest East Coast–style you can find in this stretch of the East Bay.
The pop-up is called Goldpie, and it’s the brainchild of Scott Hataye, whose day job is as a “budtender” at 7 Stars. For the past seven years, though, he’s also dabbled in the pizza world, moonlighting as the doughmaker at Emeryville’s Rotten City Pizza, a New York–inspired pizza restaurant that closed last summer after an impressive 17-year run. (When I first moved to the East Bay in the late aughts, Rotten City was the closest thing I could find to a proper New York slice shop.)
“I love that pizza and actually really, really miss it,” Hataye says of his time at the restaurant.
When Rotten City closed last June, he took it as a sign that maybe it was time for him to launch his own pizza business. There’s a bit of Rotten City Pizza in the bones of Hataye’s pies, mostly in terms of the dough, which he says is very similar to Rotten City’s, made with a blend of Central Milling 00 flour and bread flour and cold-fermented for up to 72 hours. The biggest difference, Hataye says, is that he makes a denser, richer red sauce, by cooking down Bianco DiNapoli brand crushed tomatoes (Rotten City was a raw sauce pizzeria). And because he bakes the pizzas in portable Gozney mini pizza ovens, which get as hot as 1,000 degrees, they’re smaller and less floppy than your classic foldable New York pizza. They’re about 12 to 13 inches in diameter, the perfect size for one hungry pizza eater (or two slightly daintier ones).
The finished product is a stylistic hybrid, Hataye says — sort of a cross between Neapolitan, New York, New Haven and Chicago-style tavern pizzas.
The important thing is that Goldpie’s pizza is legitimately tasty. The top of each pie is slicked with oil, and the crust is quite thin and crunchy-bottomed, with dark blistered spots verging on burnt toward the edges — in a really delicious way, if you’re a fan of that charred flavor, as I am.
I loved the “Heaven on Earth,” with its salty-sweet palette of pepperoni, pesto, hot honey and fried garlic. The sausage pie, meanwhile, was a more straightforward East Coast–style pizza — an ideal union of oozy cheese, zesty tomato sauce and a flavorful, crispy-chewy crust.
Other top sellers include the classic pepperoni and the “Brooklyn” (garlic, olive oil, whipped ricotta), which is Hataye’s take on a New York–style white pie. Whichever pizza you order, make sure to ask for a little tub of the housemade candied jalapeños — a truly excellent pizza condiment.
Hataye says a few customers have asked whether he ever infuses marijuana into his food (he doesn’t), but in general, he doesn’t have any intention of veering toward gimmicky “pothead pizza.”
“I think they’re pretty satisfied with the pizzas as they are,” he says.
In the end, the best part of the experience is the fact that Hataye and Mike Bennally (a former Rotten City general manager who helps out on pop-up days) make every pizza to order right in front of you, tossing and stretching the dough, and then lovingly tending to each pie the entire time it’s in the oven.
That level of personal care has started to pay off. Slowly but surely, a nice little community has formed around Goldpie, as more and more customers who aren’t even affiliated with the dispensary now go out of their way to visit the pop-up. Some wind up staying to eat at the table that Hataye has set up outside, watching one of the ’80s and ’90s cult classic movies they have playing at all times.
Eventually, Hataye says he would love to turn that community into a full-blown restaurant, though for now he’s mostly focused on just getting the word out about the pop-up. But he and Bennally have already talked about the prospect of opening a brick-and-mortar pizzeria of their own — maybe in Pinole — some time in the next year.
“I would love to be able to do that,” he says.
Goldpie pops up outside 7 Stars Holistic Healing Center, at 3219 Pierce St. in Richmond (across the street from the 99 Ranch Market plaza) on Sundays and Mondays, 11:30 a.m.–7:30 p.m. They currently sell whole pizzas only, for $15–$20 a pie. Customers can call or text 510-529-5007 if they want to place their orders ahead of time.
