Editor’s note: This is a new feature at BINJE, one in which editor Tom Bergeron talks food, family and work with leaders in New Jersey.
Alberto Garofalo starts with the crust.
“It’s got to have the right umph,” he says, sizing up the slice in front of him, one that doesn’t bend as he holds it outward. Garofalo likes his crust midsize, not too thin, not too thick. Crispy enough that it holds its own even before the sauce and cheese show up.
“It’s got to taste good on its own,” he says, rattling off another aspect of his first rule for pizza.
Rule two involves the sauce — and here’s where he gets particular. Not too sweet. Not too tangy. Somewhere in a range only his own palate can detect.
“There’s a chemical reaction that happens when I eat it that tells me when I have it,” he says, only half joking.
Then there’s the cheese. It has to taste fresh. No exceptions.
That’s the whole equation — crust, sauce, cheese, each one earning its place before the others get to matter.
It’s a small speech, delivered with the seriousness of a man laying out a philosophy, not just a food order. Which, as it turns out, isn’t far off.
Garofalo is Bank of America’s president for New Jersey, and he’s talking pizza from a booth at De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies in Robbinsville — a red-sauce institution he’s been driving to for years.
“It’s the best tomato pie in the state,” he says.
***
Ask Garofalo about running Bank of America’s New Jersey market, and he seemingly circles back to the same instincts that built his pizza order.
He talks about his team the way he talked about crust, sauce and cheese — how they need to be able to stand on their own but work better together.
“It’s always been about the long game,” he says, referencing “The Infinite Game” by Simon Sinek — a philosophy of building for years, not quarters. Twenty-three years into his career with the company, across multiple states and multiple roles, Garofalo says the vision has never changed: invest in people and the results follow.
“If you ask me, ‘What is the single most important thread of leadership?’ — it’s building super talented teammates around you,” he says.
It pays off in many ways, Garofalo says.
“It’s how you are able to disconnect,” he says.
He means that literally. He recently took a week off in the middle of one of the busiest stretches of his career — he’d just wrapped 23 years with the company — and the team ran without him. It’s a byproduct of prioritizing talent development.
“The team elevated and handled everything perfectly,” he says.
Investing in people isn’t a management technique to him; it’s a worldview.
“When you invest in people, and not results — the results come,” he says. “It’s always been about the people.”
***
Back at De Lorenzo’s, the pizza arrives. And the inspection starts.
Garofalo checks the bottom first — not burned — then the cheese, browned just right. The fresh tomatoes pass his test, too.
He’s been coming here for years, a habit that started when he ran the bank’s consumer business in New Jersey — a role that had him crisscrossing the state. Wherever there was a branch, he found the pizza place nearby.
“Just about anywhere I have a financial center, I know a pizza place within a mile, a mile and a half,” he says.
When he finds a new place, he always starts with his three rules on crust, sauce and cheese. He’s not a big toppings guy, certainly not on the first visit.
“I go plain first,” he says.
If he has to add a topping, crispy, smaller pepperoni is his preference. On this visit, a second pie came with half pepperoni, half sausage and peppers, mainly to assuage his dining companions.
He was more than willing to modify his order. With one exception. Pineapple.
“Does not belong on pizza,” he says, holding up a hand before the conversation can go any further. “I’m sorry. That’s not pizza.”
De Lorenzo’s doesn’t offer pineapple. It’s one of many reasons it has earned a permanent spot in his rotation. It’s a tough lineup to crack.
Garofalo is candid that his loyalty runs deep once it’s earned. Pizza, in his accounting, isn’t really about variety. It’s about finding the version that meets his standard, then sticking with it.
***
Garofalo doesn’t just order pizza with intention. He runs his whole life that way.
His mornings start between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. — sleep, prioritized the night before, is what he calls his “secret weapon.”
From there, it’s family time with whoever’s up, a workout — weight training three or four times a week — and a deliberate moment of reflection before the day gets away from him.
Nothing about his day is incidental.
Making time for what matters, starting with his family, is what matters most to him.
He credits his work philosophy — build the right team, so the structure holds without you constantly propping it up — for making the impossible work-life quest, actually possible. Because his team can run without him for a week, he can actually be present for the parts of life he’s decided matter most: dinners with his wife and daughters, phone calls when he’s traveling, a nightly wind-down that ends with the phone shut off by 9:30.
“I want to be around for a very long time,” he says. “And I want to enjoy every moment of it.”
Both of his daughters are in college.
His oldest is premed, his youngest is studying to become a veterinarian. The fact they choose to attend the same school — and live together — tells him that he and his wife have done something right.
“Family is very important to us,” he said. “It’s all about family.”
***
For all his particularity about pizza, Garofalo insists he isn’t a snob. Here’s the proof: he eats Costco pizza, too.
“Costco pizza: 45 grams of protein — one of the highest concentrations of protein I’ve ever eaten in pizza,” he says, genuinely delighted. “I will eat that every day.”
He wasn’t always this settled in his tastes. A few years living in Southern California tested his loyalty to New Jersey pizza. He never fully found a substitute, eventually settling for a Long Island-style spot as the closest he could get.
“There’s only so much they can do,” he says of the West Coast. “I feel like just the water is different.”
His own family history runs straight through pizza’s homeland. His father’s side traces back to Sicily. Stunningly, Garofalo has never actually eaten pizza in Italy. He’s determined to change that.
“I’m going to try to go there this year,” he says.
Whatever he finds there, he doesn’t expect it to top the meal that started it all.
Garofalo was 6 years old, newly arrived in the U.S. after his family left Cuba, when his uncle brought home pizza from a hole-in-the-wall spot in North Bergen.
He doesn’t remember the name of the pizzeria; he just remembers the moment.
“It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted,” he says. “It’s when I fell in love with pizza.”
