2. The birth of ‘Bad Cholesterol.’
When Milazzo transitioned to making pizza, he called the new endeavor “Bad Cholesterol,” in honor of his blood test results after leaving his former litigation job. Milazzo bought dozens of bags of all-purpose flour from the grocery store, nice buffalo mozzarella from Paisanos, his local butcher, Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes, pulled out a Ken Forkish recipe, and went from there.
He started with an Ooni 12 portable pizza oven. “As I got better, I burnt the control knobs off,” he says. His next oven was a Gozney Roccbox, followed by two Breville Pizzaiolos, and then back to Oonis (many of which you’ll see in operation at his restaurant today — they circumvent having no gas and still imbue pies with wood-fired flavor). In October of 2021, he incorporated Bad Cholesterol, and returned to Grimm to make Roman-style pizza al taglio.
“It was more like really bad focaccia — pre-made slices that I’d heat up and serve,” Milazzo says. But by the next year, he was making what he calls “neo-Neapolitan” pizzas, cooking smaller pies, faster than he had before. He started gaining a following, teaming up with Talea brewery’s Cobble Hill outpost to serve his pies over the past year-and-a-half, and using nearby Nimbus Kitchen in Downtown Brooklyn as his commissary for concocting sauces and proofing doughs. The orders kept coming and Milazzo needed help to keep up. Luckily, his now-partner Sean Klim answered the call.
Klim, who co-owns a small accounting firm, had been following Bad Cholesterol on Instagram for a while, and when he saw Milazzo post a job opening for an assistant of sorts on Culinary Agents, he jumped at the opportunity. Although Klim had no prior experience when it came to making pizza, he had always dreamed of opening a bar, and thought this was his chance to get in the business. “I sent Chris a photo of bread I made at home, then he had me come out for a trial,” Klim recalls.
“Any warm body will do,” jokes Milazzo, who was actually in search of someone without pizza experience. “I love collecting professionals who want to get out of their jobs,” he says. Bad Cholesterol currently has a physicist and journalist on staff, too.
At first, Klim delivered pizza and worked in the commissary, but when Milazzo decided he wanted to open a brick-and-mortar, he asked Klim to be a partner in the business.