Steve Madan, co-owner of T-Bird's Pizza in Los Gatos, is in the dough.




Photograph by George Sakkestad







T-Bird's Pizza satisfies patrons' hunger and its owner's dream

By Suzanne Cristallo

Combine a strain of sourdough developed in San Francisco in 1926, local tomatoes and vegetables delivered fresh each day and a sauce created in the cafe every morning, and you have the beginnings of a T-Bird's pizza. Since 1986, the pizza cafe in downtown Los Gatos has been serving what a daily crowd of teenagers choose for lunch and what business locals use as a pick-me-up.

"We even change the music to suit the crowd," says owner Dana Smith, who provides a musical repertoire spanning classic '60s rock to '90s pop.

The pizza can be classic too. Names like La Bamba, Peppermint Twist and Great Graffiti evoke visions of the '50s in tune with the restaurant theme inspired by a 1956 Ford Thunderbird. The T-Bird pizza is the best seller, offering a smothering of pepperoni, red onions, green peppers, mushrooms, Italian sausage and tomatoes on sourdough crust.

The Real Italian is Smith's favorite. A vegetarian, he relishes the extra thin crust brushed with olive oil, lightly sauced and topped with mozzarella and Jack cheeses, basil, oregano and Gilroy garlic. After baking, it is topped with fresh tomatoes, Parmesan and Romano cheeses.

Smith, 35, tends to know what he wants. A native Los Gatan, he began working at age 12, delivering newspapers before school, cleaning a bakery after dinner and driving a forklift at a cannery. But it was the weekends he spent helping his older brother with business seminars that provided the basis of the work he would enjoy for the next two decades.

When he wasn't in school, young Smith was traveling--hitting 48 of the 50 states, Europe and Australia--and gradually taking a bigger part in the seminars. At 19, he was giving the lectures, running his own lecture business on the side and dabbling in writing programs for computers. By 22, he had opened T-Birds in Los Gatos and Florida, followed later by three others: in San Jose and Watsonville and another in Florida. He took on some real estate investments and a computer programming company as well.

"I'm kind of a workaholic," he says with a grin. Knowing that about himself, he began planning a work schedule that would free him to devote time to the family he wanted to have.

Today, he is married to Yvette, whom he has known since Blossom Hill Elementary school. After he graduated in 1982 from Los Gatos High School, five years passed without their seeing one another. Then one day Yvette saw a pizza menu stuck to her sister's refrigerator with Smith's name on it. She called, and the friendship resumed.

The couple now has a 3-year-old and 1-year-old, the first one born just as Smith finished selling off the last of four pizza cafes. He keeps Los Gatos out of sentimentality, checking in on Fridays while leaving the running of the place to co-owners and longtime employees Lisa Muzzio, 34, and Steve Madan, 35. Smith harbors a wish for others with an entrepreneurial spirit: "I would love to see everyone who wants to do something in this town succeed."

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T-Bird's Pizza, 444 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos. Open Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sun. 3-9 p.m. Call ahead for large party deliveries and take-out orders. 395-2525.

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