Tucson-style pizza has not yet been defined.
You might think of Empireโs elote pizza, which combined the Sonoran roots of grilled street corn with a classic New York-style slice, just the right amount of dense and chewy. Family Joint Pizzeria one-upped the elote pie with a bubbly Neapolitan crust topped with homestyle carnitas and extra-tangy green tomatillo sauce.
But these arenโt the only craft pizzas in Tucson โ what about Anello, the Tucson disciple of renowned Pizzeria Bianco? Or Reneeโs, whose pizzas shine through their unconventional toppings rather than how closely she can replicate a crust made famous somewhere else? Are their authority and innovation enough to justify a new genre?
Gabriel Moreno, of Jaimeโs Pizza Kitchen, is making a new argument for what Tucson-style could mean. Having grown up in the back office of his grandfather Jaimeโs bar and grill on Fourth Avenue, heโs a student of Tucsonโs restaurant scene.

The Jaime's crew, pictured from left to right: Damian, Hayden and Gabriel Moreno, Travis Holloway and Andrew Silverstein.
When he describes what atmosphere heโs going for in his new restaurant, he references other Tucson restaurants, like the open but old-school vibe at Mama Louisaโs.
โBut there isnโt an oversaturation of pizza in Tucson,โ Gabriel said. โItโs similar to saying thereโs an oversaturation of Hispanic cuisine ... Anello is not like Fiamme is not like Reneeโs is not like this beautiful new spot Penelope ... Thereโs kind of an undersaturation of craft pies ... I wanted to throw my hat in the ring with these big guys. To not only hold up but stand apart from them.โ
โIโm really trying to find what a Tucson-style pizza is,โ Gabriel said. โI havenโt found it in a particular taste or texture, but itโs making the best you can with what youโve got.โ
Jaimeโs Pizza Kitchen is opening a brick-and-mortar in the former location of Little Love Burger, 312 E. Congress St., in August, but the pizza was created in a different place altogether: the commissary at Tucson Food Hub, a ghost kitchen in midtown.

Jaimeโs Favorite Pizza is Gabriel Morenoโs take on a classic supreme pizza. A large pie costs $32.
Jaimeโs Pizza Kitchen will offer conventional pies, like his take on a supreme pizza, alongside more avant-garde pizzas like the sweet swine, with sweet pork belly, balsamic and goat cheese. Heโs not only slinging pies, though โ part of the deal with the lease takeover is cooking the bar fare at the neighboring Good Oak Bar, which shares their kitchen.
โI havenโt overly developed the menu, but Iโll probably do a throwback to my Italian Peasant days and what I learned from those chefs. Maybe a small pasta program, some rotating soups and servicing the Good Oak bar menu. Thatโs where Iโd like to flex the culinary muscle and take that bar menu โ theyโve done a great job of having it not be a (typical) bar menu โ but Iโd like to take that scratch approach to what weโre doing,โ Gabriel said.
He referenced the fried pickles currently on the Good Oak menu. When heโs running the kitchen, theyโd brine the pickles themselves.

Gabriel Moreno spent months perfecting the dough recipe for his artisan pies.
Jaimeโs is able to open mere weeks after securing the lease, in part because he already owns all the industrial equipment he needs, from his Hobart 60 Quart stand mixer to the Bakers Pride oven he uses to bake his pies. Unlike many businesses that were delayed months and years due to supply chain issues, Jaimeโs isnโt on any waitlists or waiting for any contractors to finalize his project.
Todayโs convenience, however, was thanks to months of trial and error trying to get his dough right for his circumstances.
โMy pizza oven โ I got taken back to the Stone Age, which is a great thing because it forced me to redesign my dough,โ Gabriel said. โAt Grimaldiโs the oven could get up to 900,โ he said. At the now-closed Pizza Luna, where Gabriel used to work, the Pizza Master electric oven emulated a coal fire and could reach 700 degrees.
But when he was opening at Tucson Food Hub, he was limited by the space and his own resources. โHere we were thinking about what we could afford โ a Bakers Pride Y-602,โ Gabriel said.
โIf you talk to New York pizzerias that arenโt coal- or wood-fired, itโs going to be a Blodgett or a Bakers Pride. Itโs like being a Ford or a Chevy guy,โ he said.

Gabriel Moreno had to create a special dough that took on the characteristics of artisan pies in this Bakers Pride oven, which only gets up to 650 degrees.
Differences between most other pizza genres can be oversimplified to temperature. The lower heat of a metal oven, like the one Jaimeโs uses, usually creates the denser, crispier dough we associate with New York-style pizza. Classic Neapolitan pizza, with its pillowy crust and thin, spotted underbelly, is formed in the crucible of a brick oven, cooked by hotter, more humid wood fire. The most dry, ferocious heat, though, comes from coal, which makes the acclaimed, charred New Haven-style pizzas. รber-Neapolitan.
Gabriel wanted his pizzas to have the aesthetic and textural qualities that distinguish higher-heat pies from the rest, but his oven maxed out at 650 degrees. So he created a new kind of dough.
โHow hot can I get this oven consistently? How can I make this dough work with me when my oven can only get up to 650? Thatโs what makes us a bit of a hybrid โ weโre definitely not Neapolitan but not New York-style either. People will assume itโs wood-fired because we got the leopard spots on the bottom, have this structured dough,โ he said.

Owner Gabriel Moreno pictured with his Hobart mixer. Moreno grew up in his grandfather's bar on Fourth Avenue, Jaime's Bar and Grill.
Though he didnโt open Jaimeโs Pizza Kitchen at Tucson Food Hub until he had a dough he liked, he knew it wasnโt his final recipe. In the first months the pizza kitchen was open, Gabriel was experimenting every day.
โIโd sit there looking at a gumline. I wasnโt getting the honeycombing I wanted to. You donโt have a spiral mixer to give attention (to the dough). You have a 60 Quart Hobart. Maybe we need to play with something else,โ Gabriel said of his process.
Heโd give away pizza to friends and family. โYour payment for free pizza is brutal honesty,โ he said.
Because of his unique fermentation process, the dough took three days to develop. Gabriel would have to wait to see the results of his latest experiment, and keep the process straight from what he was doing today. The difficulty of the process compounded in the summer, when Tucson Food Hub would change the air conditioning dramatically whether tenants were present.
โWhen hydration is a huge factor in your dough, humidity plays its part,โ Gabriel said. โIn the ghost facility, interestingly enough, theyโll throttle the A/C depending on when people are in there. Itโs been a huge issue for us to find consistency. If theyโre playing with the air conditioning in Montana summer, no one cares. If youโre playing with it in Tucson, it has its effect.โ
After three months, he found it.
โWhat got us to where we needed to go, our trade secret, is our dough isnโt entirely replicable,โ he said.
โI took all these new techniques, but it went back to my absolute roots with The Italian Peasant. I completely disregarded everything I knew. I found what I was looking for when I went backwards,โ Gabriel said.

The Jaime's crew, pictured from left to right: Damian, Hayden and Gabriel Moreno, Travis Holloway and Andrew Silverstein.
Gabriel helped open The Italian Peasant in Tubac in 2010. Itโs where he was introduced to a Bakers Pride pizza oven and baking pizzas at 525 degrees.
โI learned there was so much more to pizza than salt, flour, yeast, tomato and cheese,โ he said. โThe simplicity of the cheese, complexity of the dough โ when you add the salt itโll give you this totally different texture. From that point on I wanted to learn everything I could.โ
He learned a lot from the owner, a transplant from Long Island, and the other cooks in the kitchen, who were educated at the Culinary Institute of America and Le Cordon Bleu. But the most influential person he met at The Italian Peasant turned out to be Travis Holloway, the 17-year-old dishwasher who decided Gabriel would be his ride or die. Theyโd go on to work together at Pizza Luna until it closed.

Travis Holloway followed Gabriel Moreno from their early days together at Tubac's Italian Peasant restaurant.
โHe wasnโt my number two in rank at Luna, but he was my most trusted,โ Gabriel said.
โWhen I opened Jaimeโs after Pizza Luna closed, (I said) โYouโre the first one coming with me when I can afford you,โ and he said, โPay me when you can afford me,โโ he said. โOf course I was able to pay him quickly, but his willingness to help got us into a 7-days-a-week operation. Weโve had challenges with the facility itself. Thereโs no quit in that boy; failure is not an option with him. As much as heโll say I inspired him, heโs behind the tenacity at Jaimeโs.โ
When he opened Jaimeโs with Travis, Gabriel intended to work out of the ghost kitchen for at least two years as a proof of concept. He had long eyed the Little Love Burger property on Congress, but when it last went on the market, he wasnโt ready.
Fate intervened in the form of Tim Walsh, who runs the liquor program at LoveBlock Partners, the restaurant group that owned Little Love Burger as well as the downtown restaurant and ice creamery Hub.

A sign at Jaime's Pizza Kitchen reads: "Next stop bigger and better things."
Tim reviews local pizzas in his spare time. When he came across Jaimeโs, he loved it and introduced Gabriel to the LoveBlock Partners, who were looking for someone to take over their lease.
The offer was too good to pass up.
โWe fell into each otherโs laps. From the first meeting with everybody, we got hungry. The wolf in the cartoons โ licking his chops and grinning. It seemed like our opportunity to do something special,โ Gabriel said.

Gabriel Moreno, his wife, Vivian Moreno, and Travis Holloway pictured in the ghost kitchen they occupied.
After helping generations of restaurateurs open their pizza concepts, finally Gabriel has the chance to make his own mark on Tucsonโs pizza scene.
โThis is really exciting for us โ Iโve always been in the back end, behind owners and chefs,โ Gabriel said.
Their ascension to their own brick-and-mortar represents a homecoming for Gabriel, who admits customers sometimes mistake him for Jaime, assuming he named his restaurant after himself. He didnโt. Instead, the name, right down to the retro font in the logo, comes from his grandfatherโs bar and grill. His grandfather is Jaime.
โIโve had a lot of fun being called Jaime,โ Gabriel said.
When Gabriel and his wife, Vivian, decorate their new restaurant, they will channel the decades of history from Jaimeโs Bar and Grill. They might forgo the โ80s neon color scheme. Instead, theyโll represent the color Jaime Moreno brought into the lives of Tucsonans with lush greenery and photos of the Tucsonans his family has been bringing together for generations.
Jaime's Pizza Kitchen
Location: 312 E. Congress St.
Hours: TBD. Follow them on Instagram for updates.
For more information, check out their website.
Watch now: New downtown pizza restaurant Jaime's Pizza Kitchen was named after owner Gabriel Moreno's grandfather, Jaime, who owned the popular Fourth Ave. bar and grill through the 80s and 90s. Here's vintage photos from the now-closed bar. Video by Ellice Lueders / This Is Tucson. Photos courtesy of Jaime's Pizza Kitchen.