Ernesto Gutiérrez, the secret sauce behind Gravesend Pizza

Hanging on the wall inside Gravesend Pizza is a shirt that reads, “made with extra love.” For the restaurant’s head pizza maker, Inés “Ernesto” Gutiérrez, the phrase is not just a catchy line. It is a personal mission.

“Every day I thank God that we have a lot of customers,” Gutiérrez said. “And I have to make sure that we make the pizza for those people with extra love. It’s the right thing.”

According to John Ferrara, one of the pizzeria’s founders, Gutiérrez is the key ingredient behind the restaurant’s popularity.

“He is dedicated to his craft and what he does. Not only that, he won't let a garlic knot leave unless it's perfect. He's on top of everything. He makes sure everything is to perfection. No matter what you order, he's going to make sure that it comes out to his liking. As if he's eating it or his family's eating it,” Ferrara said.

Gutiérrez’s son Chris, who works behind the counter taking orders, said he did not realize how popular his father’s pizza was until he started working at the restaurant a few years ago.

“They come all the way from the Bronx, from Jersey, just to try my dad’s pizza,” the younger Gutiérrez said. “I didn’t know he was that elite until I started working here. But it’s because he’s dedicated to his craft.”

Gravesend’s origins

Ferrara founded Gravesend Pizza in 2020 out of necessity. He was working from an office in Industry City at TradeZero, an online electronic trading services company he also co-founded, and was frustrated by the lack of pizza options in the area. This was a real issue for Ferrara, who grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn, which he described as the place with the greatest concentration of pizza shops on earth.

“L&B Spumoni Gardens, Chicho’s, Pizza Park, Tony’s, all just the absolute best.”

So he and two other co-founders opened Gravesend Pizza.

Tragically, their first pizza maker died soon after.

That was when they found Gutiérrez, who at the time was working at a pizzeria where he felt people were not going above and beyond to make the best pizza possible.

“The owner didn’t know what he wanted the sauce to be like. He was asking me, but I’m not the boss. He didn’t know what he wanted,” Gutiérrez said.

An indomitable work ethic

Gutiérrez quickly elevated the restaurant with a dedication shaped by decades of work in pizzerias.

Gutiérrez immigrated from Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1988. “Tlaxcalita, the beautiful,” he calls it. His first job in the United States was washing dishes at a pizzeria in Bay Ridge, and he has worked in pizzerias ever since.

“He never stops working, even when he has a bad foot. We have to force him to stop working,” Ferrara said about Gutiérrez. “We’ve been trying to get him to pass on his wisdom, make him more of a supervisor than the person making all the pizzas. But he still wants to make every single one.”

A few years after Gutiérrez began working at Gravesend Pizza, Ferrara and his two co-founders made him an equal co-owner.

“We did it because we would be nothing without him,” Ferrara said.

Although Ferrara praised Gutiérrez for his work ethic, Gutiérrez does not describe himself as someone with unusual discipline. For him, his work is in service of others.

“Everything is for my family. And everything I do is through the grace of God. Without the grace of God you can do nothing,” Gutiérrez said. “God gave me hands to work and make food for people. And you always make the pizzas with extra love.”

These days, Gutiérrez has been able to surround himself even more with the people he loves. Both his sons work behind the counter, and his wife comes in to help take orders and tidy up.

“I just thank God we can be together,” Gutiérrez said.