Good Friday — this Friday — is the most solemn day of the year for Christians and also a day to get your pizza orders in early. Specifically, pagash, an unusual potato-based pizza, is an Easter-season specialty found in abundance in Northeast Pennsylvania but in few other places.
Potato pizza? Yes, a white pizza topped with mashed or shredded potatoes, it is sometimes called pierogi pizza.
Why? A cross-pollination of immigrant cultures particular to Northeast Pennsylvania, according to a food historian.
More than 1,600 people follow a Facebook page dedicated to local pagash.
Ferri’s Pizza, Moscow (Ferri’s Pizza)
Mary Ann Colarusso at Colarusso’s Cafe in Jessup on Friday, April 11, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Prepared pagash pizzas at Colarusso’s Cafe in Jessup on Friday, April 11, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Mary Ann Colarusso layers cheese to make pagash pizza at Colarusso’s Cafe in Jessup on Friday, April 11, 2025. (REBECCA PARTICKA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
After this weekend, the food will mostly disappear for a year.
Pagash has roots as a yeasty flatbread in Slovak and other Eastern European cultures and could be sweet or savory, said Adam Shprintzen, a food historian and associate professor of history at Marywood University.
“That has transformed over place and time,” Shprintzen said. “So that l think it means something very specific in our little corner of the world.”
Shprintzen owns a copy of what he believes to be the first Slovak-American cookbook in the United States, published in Cleveland in 1892 and republished in the 1950s. It contains a recipe for pagash that calls for sugar, and more sugar sprinkled on top. The book suggests several fillings, starting with sauerkraut, followed by cabbage, and only then potatoes, and separately, cheese.
To get from a sugar-topped bread to pizza, Shprintzen notes that pagash shares a common etymology root with the Italian word for focaccia, another yeasty flatbread. Italian and Eastern European immigrants came to Northeast Pennsylvania in large numbers in the late 1800s and afterward.
It’s an example of cultural exchange through food, he said.
“Immigration is part of that story: that we have people showing up into a region where there are also a lot of Italian immigrants, who are formulating what pizza is going to look like in the United States and Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shprintzen said. Some pagash versions still contain cabbage.
Both groups were largely Catholic. Pizza is popular during Lent, the period before Easter when some Christians, particularly Catholics, abstain from meat on Fridays. Prior to the mid-1960s, the Catholic Church mandated abstaining from meat every Friday.
Shprintzen said pagash can be found in Western Pennsylvania but is particular to Northeast Pennsylvania and the coal region.
At Cafe Colarusso in Jessup, Teresa Colarusso said the pagash is based on her Polish-Slovakian grandmother’s pierogi recipe. It was added to the menu by customer request a few years ago. They tried the stuffed style before settling on the open-faced variety. They make 15 to 20 trays on a Friday and sell out, Colarusso said. It’s too time consuming to make more. Just sauteing the onions in butter takes an hour over low heat, until melty but not caramelized. A half-tray, or six pieces, costs $12. A full tray, or 12 pieces, is $20. Cafe Colarusso offers gluten-free crust in the smaller size for a few dollars more.
John Yablonsky, who lives in Elmhurst Twp. and works in information technology, thinks pagash is becoming more popular. About a decade ago, Yablonsky started posting on Facebook when he found a good version. “My page was blowing up with pagash,” he said. He spun it off into the Pagash Reviews Facebook page, which has 1,600 followers.
Yablonsky’s favorite: Ferri’s Pizza in Moscow, an Old Forge-style takeout shop that opened in 1936 and has an anthracite mining theme. Ferri’s menu calls it “potato pizza.” Yablonsky likes Ferri’s Pizza’s medium-chunky potato filling and “absolutely fantastic crust.”
Some other regional pagash places are:
Luzerne County: Happy Pizza, Plymouth; Alta Pizzeria & Pasta House, Hazleton; Benito’s Restaurant & Lounge, Hazleton; Sicilian Bella Festa, West Wyoming; Rodano’s, Wilkes-Barre; Mountaintop Pub & Eatery, Mountain Top; Pizza Perfect, Trucksville.
Lackawanna County: Mutant Brewing, Scranton; Benny’s, in Clarks Summit, Scranton and Peckville; Cusumano’s, Old Forge; Armetta’s Restaurant & Pizzeria, South Abington Twp.
Schuylkill County: The menu for DiMaio’s Mustard Seed, Orwigsburg, lists a pierogi pizza topped with, among other things, actual pierogies, plus bacon. Via Nuova Pizzeria and Restaurant, McAdoo, also calls it pierogi pizza.