A house-made sauce is one secret to a great pizza

• Bill HR
• Pizza without a homemade sauce? Fermare la follia!

There’s some debate as to who first started serving pizza to Kansas City patrons. Was it downtown’s old Italian Gardens restaurant? Was it the neighboring Gaetano’s? Or was it – back in the 1950s – Antonio’s pizzeria, at 43rd Street and Main, operated by Paul Silvio and the late Jasper Mirabile (who also served pizza at his namesake sit-down restaurant in Waldo)?

Memories are unreliable, but we do know that all of those pizzerias had something in common: They all used house-made, long-simmered tomato sauce on their pies.