About Spill Out

Spill Out is a New Jersey–style pizza bar and restaurant located in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul, a 3-minute walk from Hongdae Station. We specialize in tavern-style ‘tomato pie’ pizza, stromboli, and Italian-American bar snacks, served in a casual neighborhood bar setting. Our food is inspired by the pizza culture of New Jersey, particularly the tomato pie traditions of Trenton and northern New Jersey, and adapted for Seoul using house-made dough, long fermentation, and carefully selected ingredients.

Spill Out is known for its crispy, balanced crust, sauce-forward pizzas, creative toppings rooted in Italian-American bar food, and an atmosphere built for gathering, sharing, and staying a while.

The Story

Pizza in New Jersey is not just food.
It is a culture, a history, an identity.

Italian immigrants brought pizza to America in the early 1900s, and New Jersey became one of its first true homes and one of the most influential regions for American pizza. Cities like Trenton, Newark, and Hoboken were filled with Italian bakeries and taverns that began serving pies to their neighborhoods.

Unlike New York, where the “slice” quickly became fast, street food, New Jersey pizza developed primarily in neighborhood taverns, family-owned restaurants, and local bakeries. That distinction matters. It kept New Jersey pizza tied to specific towns, families, and traditions, where the food was about gathering, sharing, and belonging.

Bringing It to Seoul

Spill Out was founded by three American friends—Scott, Eric, and Kevin—who came to Korea, fell in love with the country, and decided to build a life here. While Seoul became home, there was always something they missed: the food they grew up with.

For years, they researched, tested, and refined recipes, drawing from family traditions, hometown pizzerias, and the tavern-style pizza culture of New Jersey. They cooked, adjusted, argued, and tried again—chasing the flavors they remembered and the standards they grew up with.

Spill Out is their way of sharing a piece of their old home with their new one—bringing pride in their New Jersey heritage to a new community in Seoul, one pie at a time.

The Jersey Style

What we serve at Spill Out is New Jersey tavern-style pizza, often called a tomato pie or bar pie—a style traditionally served in bars and neighborhood restaurants across the state. These pies are perfect with a cold beer, easy to grab one for yourself, or share with a friend.

A bar pie isn’t just a pizza. It’s part of a ritual of gathering, talking, and staying a while.

No place in America rivals New Jersey for pizza diversity. What we grew up with, and what we serve at Spill Out, stems directly from that tradition.

• The Crust: Jersey pizza favors a crisp, balanced crust—thinner than a bready deep dish, sturdier than a New York slice. This style of crust is characteristic of New Jersey tavern-style pizza, foldable, but with a crunch and a crackle. The dough often shows the influence of long-fermentation techniques, producing complex flavor and chew. Spill Out’s sourdough is old enough to start middle school.
  
• The Cheese: The cheese hits the edge of the pie, generous but never smothering. The emphasis is on clarity without overwhelming—every bite is supposed to hit you with a harmony of sauce, cheese, and crust. We use five different cheeses to get just the right profile of cream, smoke, funk, and sharpness.
  
• Sauce on Top: In a true tomato pie, the cheese goes down first, with the sauce spread on top. That small switch transforms the experience. Instead of melting into the background, the tomato becomes the star. This sauce-on-top approach is a defining feature of New Jersey tomato pie, especially in and around Trenton. No tomato paste. No dried herbs. Our sauce is bright, tangy, bold, and fresh.
  
• The Toppings: Unique to New Jersey, many pizzerias double as either bars or white-tablecloth Italian restaurants. Often, most of the restaurant’s menu can be ordered on top of a pizza. Our Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza comes straight out of this tradition—a classic example of New Jersey Italian-American bar pizza, where familiar dishes find new life on a pie.

For generations, the tomato pie has been the signature of taverns and family-run restaurants across New Jersey. These were not flashy places, but anchors of their neighborhoods: spots where you went with family after school, met friends for lunch, or just popped in on the way home from work. But these people, they know their pizza.

The Community

In New Jersey, pizza is woven into daily life. It’s the Friday night tradition after high school sports, the slice and a soda at the boardwalk, and what you crave most when you’re away.

The neighborhood pizzeria is more than a restaurant. It’s a town square. Owners know your order and your parents’ names. They sponsor Little League teams, donate pies to fundraisers, and fuel late-night study sessions. In a state where towns are tightly packed and identities are fiercely local, the pizza joint becomes an emblem of pride. New Jerseyans know which pizzeria is theirs, and believe, without a doubt, that it’s the best.

We carry that tradition with us to Seoul, serving New Jersey–style pizza rooted in those memories, rooted in the history of immigration and new communities.