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 →
Writer/Reviewer
Derek Talstra
Derek Talstra loves food, from a good slice of pizza to the classic dishes, diners and restaurant memories that never quite fade. That appetite for food and its history is why Derek writes for Piaci Pizza.
Derek Talstra on LinkedIn →
Writer/Reviewer
Sierra Usipuik
Sierra Usipuik loves good food, from a homemade meal to the recipes, restaurants and nostalgic dishes people still talk about. That love of food and the memories around it is why Sierra writes for Piaci Pizza.
Sierra Usipuik on LinkedIn →Readers at the Table
Every reader gets a vote.
Piaci Pizza is two things at once: a place to read about the meals, menus and food memories that shaped how we eat, and a source of real data on how people cook today. Instead of one chef’s taste or one writer’s family recipe, we count what thousands of readers actually make, love and skip, anonymously, and publish what we learn so you can cook, host and shop with better information.
One-Tap Reactions
A heart or a thumbs-down under a dish, plus a quick “why?” when you feel like telling us — the rustic plate or the restaurant-polished one, the casserole you grew up on or the one you’d never serve.
Settle-It Polls
Small questions with big answers: potluck or cook everything, Neapolitan or New York, a dinner party that wraps before ten or one that runs past midnight. On nostalgia pieces, “Lived it · Remember it · Before my time”; on price lists, a guess-the-price game.
Better Answers for You
Everything is collected anonymously — no names, no emails, no IP addresses — and published only as totals across many readers. Those totals tell you what hosts actually do, which dinners people really miss and what the table looks like right now, instead of guesswork.
How it works, what we collect and what we never do: Data Collection · Privacy Policy
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.
Browse the archives, dig into a decade, or get the newsletter so our latest deep dives land in your inbox.