This new South Philly pizzeria cares more about product than profit

Let the other owners of corner pizza shops try to make a fortune.

Aaron Gordon, owner of the mobile catering company 13th Street Cocktails, said he is going a different way with Agricola, the homey corner shop he opened at 10th and Federal Streets in the former SliCE Pizza. It’s a partnership with SliCE founders Marlo and Jason Dilks, who also own a SliCE in Washington Township, as well as Nipotina and P’unk Burger in South Philadelphia.

Gordon calls Agricola’s business plan “more product-focused than profit” — he’s milling local wheat and farro for the dough and making his own duck prosciutto for toppings. “I can’t lose money, obviously, but this place will never clean up,” he said. “I mean, it’s pizza. It’s simple food. Even when you make it the way I do, it’s cheap. It shouldn’t be 25, 30 bucks.”

Eight thin-crust, 14-inch pizzas (all available gluten-free) are on Gordon’s menu: $14 for the Plain Jane to $18 for the duck prosciutto-topped Duck It and the mushroom-and-truffle-topped Shrooms. There also will be a pizza whose proceeds are donated to a charity. Production is limited to 100 or so pies a night.

Agricola’s Jimmy the Saint ($17), with tomatoes, Calabrian chile sausage, oregano, sweet peppers, caramelized onions, and a mozzarella and Parmesan cheese mix, is a tribute to chef Jim Burke, who died of cancer in 2022. Burke and Gordon met at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons five years ago, when Burke was executive chef.

Gordon asked Burke how he got his pizza so tasty. “He was like, ‘I put some farro in the dough,’” Gordon said. “I never asked him how much. I just started winging it.” That experimentation improved the rest of Gordon’s pizza repertoire.

Also on the menu are meatballs (also gluten-free), a salad, truffle and black garlic-flavor knots, a butter board, and two frozen pastas to go from Gordon’s friend Jason Cichonski’s Little Noodle Pasta Co. at Messina Social Club. The fryer, left over from SliCE along with the utilitarian two-deck, gas-fired Blodgett oven, sits unused.

On Friday and Saturday, Gordon offers three batched $9 cocktails, created by his 13th Street Cocktails, which uses spirits offered by distilleries who lend it their catering licenses. He wants his neighbors to be able to pull up a bar stool along the rail — Gordon, a woodworker, created the front counters, the kitchen counters, the shelves, even the trash can by the front door — and share a pizza, a meatball, and a cocktail.

And they’ll have to pull up: There’s no delivery. “I don’t want scooters outside,” Gordon said. “I don’t want Doordash or GrubHub. What I sell my food for, I can’t afford to lose 20%-30% [the services’ cut].”

After dinner service Sunday, “everything’s garbage.” So Gordon gives away the leftovers on Mondays while cleaning up, or donates them to a food bank.

Gordon, 39, envisions opening other small passion projects along the lines of Agricola, which brings him full circle. He started in the business as a teenager at his local pizzeria, Big John’s in Cherry Hill. “I’m not tall now, but I was like 5 feet tall then and I couldn’t reach in the oven,” he said. “Every time, I burned my arms.” He later worked at Montagnaro’s in Voorhees before moving away, with bartending stops in New York and Miami.

A dozen years ago, Gordon moved back to the Philadelphia area but said he couldn’t crack the job market. When his cousin was planning a wedding, he converted a horse trailer on the family farm into a cocktail bar. That led to his working at charity events. He started his catering company from his apartment at 13th and Chestnut Street — hence the company’s name.

The catering business is lucrative, Gordon said, allowing him to volunteer — last year, he donated pizza parties at $5,000 a pop for Fred’s Footsteps, which helps families struggling with the costs associated with caring for a seriously ill, injured, or disabled child. He also works with the KB Foundation, which teaches cooking to young people.

For now, Gordon is keeping a cool head about the hype surrounding his little corner artisan pizzeria with the batch cocktails. “It’ll get exciting in the beginning and then people won’t care anymore,” he said. “There’ll be another [buzzy] restaurant opening and in like two weeks, then it’s the neighborhood. This [shop] is for this block, and that block over there.”

Agricola is open now Friday to Sunday, but will add Thursday hours in December.