Andrew Bellucci, Pizza Visionary With a Troubled Past, Dies at 59

Returning to New York in 2017, he worked as a driver, a chef at Rubirosa on Mulberry Street and a consultant on several far-flung pizzerias. All the while he looked for a backer to finance his dream restaurant, a cathedral of pizza where clam pies would take up a full page on the menu, the clams shucked to order by a worker at a prominent station built to resemble a pulpit.

No Medici stepped forward, but in 2020, he was hired to open a more modest, 300-square-foot shop in Astoria, Bellucci Pizza. His employer, Leo Dakmak, owned a piercing shop on St. Marks Place and a tattoo parlor, but was a novice in the pizza business.

“He got my vision and said he would follow me blindly,” Mr. Bellucci told The New York Post. “I told him that was maybe the stupidest thing he would ever do.”

Baked in a new $35,000 electric oven, the pizza came in 25 varieties, including pepperoni with vodka sauce and chicken-bacon-ranch. All pies and slices, the restaurant said, were sprinkled with 18-month-aged pecorino Romano and ground aranya peppercorns harvested in Kerala, India.

Less than a year later, Mr. Bellucci quit. Mr. Dakmak said that they had argued about “repeated high charges on the company credit card.”

Mr. Bellucci told the food website Grub Street that “the final straw” had been Mr. Dakmak’s desire to open a second shop “whether I was there or not.” Almost immediately, he found a new associate, Matthew Katakis. Together they built a splashy, red-and-white restaurant a few blocks from Bellucci Pizza and nearly five times its size.

They named it Bellucci Pizzeria. Mr. Dakmak, who had trademarked the name Bellucci Pizza, sued.

The legal action, popularly but imprecisely known as Bellucci v. Bellucci, was irresistible to the news media, generating at least as much press as Mr. Bellucci had received during his criminal case. In an out-of-court settlement, he agreed to rename his restaurant Andrew Bellucci’s Pizzeria.