Tina Fey’s favorite Delco pizzeria announces that it’s closing
Pica's Restaurant, which won national attention when Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon ate its pizza on TV, intends to shut down this summer and move to a smaller spot in Delco.
Pica’s Restaurant, serving its cheese-on-the-bottom, sauce-on-top pan pizza in Upper Darby since 1956, announced Thursday that it would close this summer and would relocate and downsize elsewhere in Delaware County.
The Facebook announcement was light on details, including the closing date or the new location, which appears to be in the planning stages. The Pica’s location in West Chester, which opened in 2017, will remain unchanged, the family said.
The square pizza at the old-school Italian restaurant on West Chester Pike has its admirers. For a 2014 Yahoo Travel article, James Beard Award-winning chef Greg Vernick, for whom Pica’s is a family Thanksgiving tradition, said it would be his choice for his last meal. In a 2017 review, Inquirer critic Craig LaBan found what he called “a unique character to the crusty edges of this pan-baked dough, which is pleasantly chewy without being heavy like a deeper dish pie, and is ideal beneath the sauce-topped cheese and heat-charred crumbles of sausage with fresh mushrooms.”
Pica’s — say it “PEA-kahs,” not like the unit of measurement — got national attention in March 2014 on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. While Tina Fey, his former Saturday Night Live castmate and a Delco native, sat in the guest’s chair plugging her role in the movie Muppets Most Wanted, Fallon reached down and pulled out a pizza box to surprise her.
Pica’s is 5 minutes from Fey’s alma mater, Upper Darby High School, and 10 minutes from her childhood home in Upper Darby’s Drexel Hill section.
“This pizza is the best,” Fey squealed. Picking up a slice, she lapsed into Full Delco Mode to explain, “Your sauce — gravy — is on da top.” (The connection: Tonight Show writer Luke Cunningham, an Upper Darby native, had mentioned in a Philadelphia magazine article that he and Fey had talked about the pizza. The story mentioned that Fey would be a guest and included the words “Hint to Pica’s: SEND PIZZA.”)
» READ MORE: Watch Tina Fey dig into Pica's pizza on 'Tonight'
Reaction online to the Pica’s news was predictably heart-tugging, as customers recounted baby showers, wedding showers, parties, and even weddings.
The future of the property — whose site at 7803 West Chester Pike in the 19th century was Howard House, a onetime stop on the Underground Railroad — is not known.
A Pica family history said Frank Pica Sr. was born in Fumone, Italy, in 1903, and immigrated to the United States at 18. After spending a few years in Chicago, he moved to Philadelphia, where he had a bread delivery route.
In 1941, Pica opened Frank’s Pizzeria, a shop with a brick oven and a counter, at 62nd and Race Streets in West Philadelphia. Pica and his son Frank Jr. moved to Upper Darby, where it grew into a full-service restaurant and banquet hall. Frank Pica Jr., who ran it with his wife, Camille, died in 2019, and the business is run by their children.