ABOVE: At just 19, Xavier John Paul Machado (a.k.a. JP) is a pizza wunderkind; the pies he makes at JP’s on the south shore of Kauai are said to rival even the unparalleled Brooklyn slice.
A bold claim, given that the public face of JP's is little more than an improvised takeout window and a short length of melamine counter. Even bolder because JP's is about as far from Brooklyn as you can get and still be in the United States: the small town of Kaumakani, on the west side of Kauai.
In the diminutive and tightly packed 180-square-foot kitchen, Xavier John Paul Machado (a.k.a. JP) juggles six pies: four in the ovens, one being prepped on the peel and another being sliced and garnished with grated Italian Grana Padano cheese and olive oil. Once a pie is in the oven, JP cooks by instinct—no timers. Hanging out the window is Chad Machado, a garrulous but sweet ex-bodybuilder, proud father and first employee at his 19-year-old son's paean to the pie.
"Serious pizza making? I've been doing it since 2018," says JP. Do the math on that. "Yesterday I sold the most pizzas I ever did—eighty-five, plus twelve Sicilian pizzas," he says. When he gets an evening rush like the one on the previous night, "Dad has to come in the back sometimes; I try to keep him in the front so he doesn't have to work too much. I still manage to make the pizza good, consistently, at a high volume—fifty pizzas in a span of two hours." And the pizza is good, some say the best in Hawaii, from a teenager so humble it's as if he doesn't quite grasp the level of his mastery. He says of his pizza obsession, "It's almost like an illness towards pizza."
How did this first-rate pizzaiolo, who has never been to New York, let alone Italy, learn the craft? "Watching pizza videos every morning for about an hour" on YouTube, he says. Afterward he heads into work at the pizzeria, where JP says the hardest part of his day is worrying about his pizza being good. But good pies appear second nature for JP. Even with Hawaii's tropical humidity—variable and high humidity might be his most consistent foe in preparing dough—he's won over some of pizza's toughest critics: East Coasters. "It makes me so happy to hear people from New Jersey or New York that moved here say, 'I feel right at home. The pizza is just like in New York!'"
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