Jeff Seizer spent much of his career in fine dining, but his first culinary idols were the cooks at the pizza shop in his childhood Brooklyn neighborhood.
“They were like the coolest dudes in the world,” Seizer recounts. “The shop had this old-school Italian vibe. Everyone knew the pizza guys. They drove cool cars, and I looked up to those guys growing up.”
It is fitting, then, that Seizer now helms the pizza kitchen for Ponysaurus Brewing Co. at the company’s recently opened Raleigh Iron Works space, its third location. Leading a pizza kitchen, he says, is the culmination of a 22-year-long dream.
Seizer has spent his entire career in kitchens, beginning with cooking school at age 18. His first kitchen job was at Montrachet, the illustrious French restaurant in New York City that closed in the early 2000s. He was part of a six-person intern class—and was the only intern to last the summer.
“All I did at that job for six months was make blinis with caviar. I just stood there with a little hot plate and flipped blinis,” Seizer remembers, laughing.
From there, Seizer moved on to Union Square Cafe, where he began as a line cook before assuming the role of sous chef. Union Square Cafe brought him fully into the hospitality company of legendary restaurateur and chef Danny Meyer. Seizer went on to join Maialino’s opening team, eventually serving as the chef de cuisine of the Gramercy Park Hotel restaurant. While leading the kitchen there, he cooked for the likes of Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Questlove.
“I am this little kid from Brooklyn,” Seizer says of his fine-dining experience. “I am earning nothing, working my butt off, and I’m doing dinner for Questlove.”
Seizer cites Union Square Cafe’s Carmen Quagliata as one of his most important mentors. He points to Quagliata’s vision of putting beautiful ingredients on a plate without overly complicating them as a key lesson in his own evolution as a chef, describing that ethos as cooking with “Italian sensibilities” in terms of believing that olive oil, garlic, roasting, and caramelization can drive a beautiful dish forward.
“You let time and heat do the work,” he says. “You develop the natural flavors.”
I first met Seizer when he was guiding the kitchen at the now-closed Royale in downtown Raleigh. Seizer moved to the Triangle with his then-wife to be closer to family. Royale offered a blend of French and American fare, including a much-loved burger that arrived on a locally made English muffin with Gruyère cheese and Royale sauce; fried duck wings made à l’orange; and moules frites.
Some of my fondest memories of Royale’s food came when Jeff would offer one-night tasting menus. On several occasions, the menus were built around “red-sauce Italian” fare—and you could see his love for his grandmother’s cooking shine through. Even then, he would hint that an Italian restaurant might be in his future.
Royale, like many restaurants, fell victim to COVID-19, and Seizer found his way to the Counting House restaurant at Durham’s 21c Museum Hotel. He breathed new life into the menu there with, among others, a Royale burger and an array of pasta that often stole the show.
Shortly after he moved to Durham, Seizer befriended Nick Hawthorne-Johnson, one of the owners of Ponysaurus Brewing Co. They stayed in touch over the years, and one day Hawthorne-Johnson texted Seizer and asked him to chat. After learning that Hawthorne-Johnson’s next project would be based in Raleigh under the Ponysaurus brand—and that in this role Seizer would work with Anthony Guerra of Oakwood Pizza Box and that Seizer’s partner (in both life and the kitchen), Roxy Garza, could join him in the kitchen—it was an easy yes for Seizer.
Ponysaurus launched as a Durham pop-up in the years before it became a full-fledged brewery in 2015. The brand felt creative from the start. From the pony-meets-dinosaur logo to the slogan (“the beer beer would drink if beer could drink beer”), the brand has showcased its creativity, as if it had been made to both delight and reflect the community in which it was built—and brewed.
I caught up with Hawthorne-Johnson recently about Ponysaurus’s expansion from Durham to Wilmington and now Raleigh. Hawthorne-Johnson said it ultimately came down to allowing Ponysaurus to do what it does best in more places: “We do two things,” he says. “We make beer and we hold space for people to gather together and build their community in our space. Opening some more locations where people can get together and where we can provide space for people to enjoy our beers and share in fellowship together was exciting.”
Over the past two years, the Ponysaurus team evaluated markets across North Carolina before settling on Wilmington and Raleigh. Both of the new Ponysaurus locations have opened within the last four months.
“With Raleigh, it came down to the fact that we have amazing friends doing really amazing things in the food and beverage space,” Hawthorne-Johnson says. “We wanted to come and add to the scene here and participate in all that is happening.”
The location’s proximity to the original brewery in Durham will also allow Ponysaurus’s production team to dive into making sours and barrel aging at the Raleigh facility while remaining close to their main brewing facility.
The proximity also means that many Raleigh customers have already visited the brewery in Durham. This comes with a certain amount of pressure, Hawthorne-Johnson adds: “It’s scary to open something that’s so close to our original location. Pretty much everybody here knows who we are and what we’re doing in Durham. We’re going to have a certain set of expectations.”
Over the past several months, Seizer, Garza, and their team have worked to breathe life into the Raleigh location’s menu. The pizza is built around the sauce and dough that Guerra and Oakwood Pizza Box have perfected. Seizer and his team wanted to lean into “good, humble food” that reflects both the flavors that Seizer grew up loving and the seasonal bounty of the nearby farmers market.
On the current menu, you’ll find a clam pizza inspired by Seizer’s love for Frank Pepe Pizzeria in New Haven, Connecticut. It’s built on a white-sauce base, and the chopped clams taste fresh and swim in garlic, lemon, and parsley. You’ll notice just a little spiciness in the zest—and you’ll definitely want more than one slice.
You will also find a blistered-tomato pizza (that has, over repeat visits, become one of my favorites); wings that Seizer says are “cooked with minimal ingredients,” including a little brown butter and sugar; a burger made with LaFrieda beef and aged cheddar; and several salads. And, of course, there’s a pepperoni pizza, because as Seizer notes, “pepperoni and pilsners go super well together.”
Ultimately, pizza will remain core to the menu, even as the team works on varied options to go alongside it.
“Pizza and beer,” Seizer says, “are natural friends.”
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Correction: This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Roxy Garza’s last name.
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