When B Side Pizza Bar closed its doors in December, Hell’s Kitchen lost one of its go-to pie joints. Luckily, it only took three months for the ovens to fire up again in the cozy eatery on just off the corner of W51st Street and 9th Avenue. Sama ’Za, which opened March 2, carries on the legacy of B Side, with a few twists.
David Muhs took the lead on curating the menu for Sama ’Za — some are his own creations from his backyard pizza oven in Astoria. Photo: Brennan LaBrie
When David Muhs took over the space with partners Rishi Rajpal and Avi Singh in January, he didn’t want to “stray too far” from B Side’s recipe for success. Like the previous owners, he planned to focus on serving good pizza and curating a “small neighborhood vibe,” he said.
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Brennan LaBrie is a Manhattan-based multimedia journalist who originally hails from Washington State. He began reporting in elementary school, when he published a handwritten weekly paper covering local news for three years, and reported on events like the 2010 Winter Olympics for TIME For Kids. He returned to journalism in college, reporting for the school paper and his hometown newspaper during summer breaks. He also co-directed three feature documentaries, one of which received a 2021 College Emmy. He moved to New York City in 2022, and, following a stint as a server in fine dining restaurants, began freelancing for publications around the city. His favorite topics to cover are urban development, housing, education and environmental issues, and his work can be found in The Rockaway Wave and the BK Reader.