Photography by Shelby Tauber.
You can’t buy a pie from the most esoteric pizzeria in Oak Cliff. But if you’re nice, John Gaither might just give you one.
Lonelyhearts Pizza started a year-and-a-half ago with a book, The Elements of Pizza, which Gaither received as a birthday gift from his partner’s mom, Ann Rogers.
“I never really even liked pizza that much,” he says. “But then she gave me the book, and I don’t know, I just liked feeling the dough. Like, feeling the dough transform in my hands.”
He enjoyed the process so much that he perfected a 48-hour dough and bought a Gozney outdoor pizza oven that can cook a pie in about five minutes.
Most of the groceries come from H-E-B in Waxahachie. Gaither picks up online orders Saturday mornings, and he says the drive gives him time to let his mind wander.
Pepperoni, Jimmy’s Food Store sausage, mushrooms and jalapeños are among the toppings he preps ahead and spreads onto his pies. Each one has whole-milk mozzarella, fresh mozzarella and parmesan.
Symmetrical thin crusts come out crisp and chewy with consistency and flavors that could rival any pizzeria around.
But this is not really about pizza.
A corporate bankruptcy lawyer with Neligan LLP, Gaither says he never knew he was creative until he found a way to express himself through pizza.
“This gave me a thing that I could do and is totally me,” he says. “I get in my zone and make pizza and who cares how it turns out?”
He is critical of the results, but that’s part of the fun for him.
A lifelong tennis player, Gaither says he never cared about matches that much. He played because he loved practicing.
Photography by Jessica Turner.
“The whole thing to me was about the iterative process of getting better and the discipline and enjoyment of watching visible improvement,” he says. “And it never had an end. You could always get better. It wasn’t like, ‘I’m satisfied now.’ It was an evolution, and it was something fun to go apply yourself to.”
Tennis and pizza haven’t been his only obsessions. He also has a full-size wine fridge and is active in a local wine club. He owns hundreds of vinyl records and a 1970s hi-fi system with speakers inherited from his grandfather.
He developed the Lonelyhearts Pizza branding with his partner, Andrea Rogers, an abstract painter who also makes a line of skincare products, Beige Dusk Greys, and is a bartender.
She made the final logo design from his idea and showed him how to order his printed pizza boxes online. They’re cute, but they’re not cheap.
“The boxes are what kills you,” he says. “I order 50 at a time, and they’re like $2 each, which is more than the pizza costs to make almost.”
The name came to him a long time ago, when he daydreamed about having something called Lonelyhearts, like a party or an event.
He finally got to use it for his pizzas, complete with an Instagram account and landing site, and matches it with playlists, heavy on ambient music and retro goth sounds.
This all takes place in the backyard of the Kessler/Stevens cottage Gaither and Rogers bought 10 years ago.
Because the interior didn’t need much renovation, they focused first on outdoor spaces. They spent several years dreaming up a redesign before hiring landscape architect Wendy Meyer for a plan they could execute.
Photography by Shelby Tauber.
Gaither’s vision for a high gray fence and 10 symmetrical live oak trees wound up looking like a prison yard, just as the architect had warned, he says.
But Rogers warmed it up with seating arrangements and tons of potted plants.
“She took my symmetrical stuff and was like, ‘We need to soften this and make it more organic.’ It’s so much cooler; it’s so much greener; it’s so much more inviting,” he says.
He never knew he liked entertaining until she threw him a 30th birthday party 10 years ago.
She taught him that sincere generosity is the key to entertaining.
“No one ever wants to be the person to take the last one. And then when there’s not that much left, if it’s drinks or food, it scares people off of it,” he says. “You want them to feel welcome and comfortable and invited. She does that by overdoing everything.”
That rationale of abundance shows in her charcuterie boards.
“You just have to fill in all the blank spaces,” she says. “As long as it looks really full, it will look good, whatever you put on there.”
Lonelyhearts Pizza isn’t well-known. It’s just John and Andrea and their friends, but it’s not actually that exclusive, he says.
“I can’t eat 10 pizzas myself,” he says. “I actually need more people to give them to.”
