Meet the Editor
Where memory meets the menu.
Meet Erika Eineigel, Managing Editor at Piaci Pizza. From the discontinued diner classics of the 1970s to the suppers your grandmother actually made, Erika brings a cook’s eye and a historian’s curiosity to every story we publish.
Connect with Erika on LinkedIn
“Every dish on a modern menu is borrowing from something older. The fun is finding out where it came from.”
Managing Editor
A lifelong love affair with cooking.
Erika has spent her life in kitchens, cookbooks, and food archives. Collecting old recipe cards from estate sales. Tracing where today’s trending dishes actually came from. Learning the stories behind the brands that filled American pantries for decades.
Her curiosity runs in two directions at once. On one side, the history — the Jell-O molds and aspic salads of the 1950s, the casserole era of the 60s, the avocado-green kitchens of the 70s, the microwave revolution of the 80s. On the other, the now — why a forgotten regional sandwich gets rediscovered, why a discontinued cereal becomes a TikTok obsession overnight, why a particular pasta shape suddenly trends.
“You can’t really understand a new food trend until you know what it’s referencing. The best stuff always has a backstory.”
As Managing Editor, Erika shapes Piaci Pizza’s voice across every guide, deep dive, and decade snapshot we publish — whether it’s a profile of a vanished restaurant chain, a holiday traditions piece, or a long read on a single iconic brand. Her hand is in all of it.
The Founder
Publisher with two decades behind the keyboard.
Piaci Pizza was founded by Jon Dykstra, an independent digital publisher with over twenty years of online publishing experience. Jon launched Piaci Pizza to give food history and nostalgia the dedicated home they deserve — a place where the meals, brands, and rituals that defined American eating get the long-form treatment they’ve never quite gotten online.
He oversees the publication’s direction and operations, working alongside Erika to keep the voice warm, curious, and rooted in the real memories readers bring with them to the table.
Jon Dykstra on LinkedIn →On the Menu
What we cover.
Food history is a wide kitchen. Here’s the territory we work in — decade by decade, brand by brand, dinner table by dinner table.
Lost & Discontinued Foods
The cereals, candies, sodas, frozen dinners, and snack brands that vanished from American grocery shelves — and the stories behind why they disappeared.
Vintage Restaurants & Diners
Howard Johnson’s, Bennigan’s, Burger Chef, Sambo’s, the carhop drive-ins. The casual dining chains and roadside eateries that defined how Americans ate out for fifty years.
The Family Table
School cafeteria trays, Sunday suppers, holiday menus, metal lunch boxes, and the decade-by-decade reality of what American families actually cooked and ate at home.
Start Here
Pull up a chair. Dinner’s ready.
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