How a Rockaways Pizza Chef Spends Her Sundays
Nicole Russell makes all sorts of pies with toppings ranging from tandoori to jerk chicken in her home kitchen.
Nicole Russell serving up pizza as her mother, Dorothy Russell, looks on. Credit.Bess Adler for The New York Times
By Andrew Cotto
March 12, 2021
In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the Rockaways in Queens, Nicole Russell, a longtime resident of Arverne by the Sea, a community there, began making pizzas out of her home. She did this in part to please her sister, Joan, a pizza lover who had recently learned she had cancer.