Viraj Thomas is redefining craft pizza, but it’s his impossibly light, ricotta-fluffed meatballs that are the real sleeper hit.
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The margherita pizza at Char / Photograph by K.C. Tinari
Behind the counter at Char, owner and pizza savant Viraj Thomas is cutting pies. He’s working the peel inside the small, wood-fired stone oven, making the pizzas dance — rolling them up on their edges, rotating them with an expert’s grace. What he’s making are the most exciting pizzas in the city: simple margheritas with black-bubbled crusts and leoparded bottoms that go thin and chewy in the center; pepperoni with a lace of hot honey that balances rather than overwhelms; specials like a pie topped with delicata and honeynut squash, onions, and pancetta for a slick of meaty, salty fat.
And Viraj does all this while answering emails, joking with his team, introducing himself to customers. He does it while making sure the dining room lights are just right even if, in the early days, lights were the last thing to worry about. A few months ago, massive lines, huge waits, unexpected sell-outs, and an inability to consistently offer workable table service plus walk-up plus takeout without things falling to pieces were his priority. Char was a restaurant learning how to be a restaurant while actively operating as a restaurant, and while there was some fun to be had in that — an undeniable energy and vitality and we’re-all-in-this-together spirit of charming fuck-uppery that defined the whole vibe — it never felt guaranteed that the place would survive.
But it did. And that’s owing to the brilliance of Thomas’s work with that peel. His New School Tomato Pie is genius, pairing squashed red and yellow datterini tomatoes, all sweet and pulpy, with a fall of crisp breadcrumbs for texture and grated Fiore Sardo to bring it all together on that stiff-stretchy, fire-blackened crust. His pizzas feel alive, like the one you’re eating is a unique object, never to be exactly replicated, as singular as any work of art.
And honestly, the pizzas are only the second-best thing. The side plate of beef and pork meatballs, heavy on the slivered onions and fluffed up with ricotta, are magic. Pair them with the little slabs of focaccia topped with clouds of sweet ricotta and slices of fig, and you’ll forget that the pizzas are what you originally came for.
All of this, and Char is just getting started. Thomas began as a teenager with an as-seen-on-TV Roccbox pizza oven, cooking for family, for neighbors, for friends. He cut his teeth at a hundred different pop-ups before he turned 20, then opened Char. He’s 22 now. A baby in this industry.
And I can’t wait to see what he does next.
3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly
Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America
Published as “The Next Great Pizza Chef” in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.