Rob Birdsong
Glide Pizza | Atlanta
april 2023
Although he worked in plenty of restaurants while growing up in Atlanta, Rob Birdsong didn’t work with pizza until he was in college at The University of Colorado, Boulder. He found a home at the late night spot Cosmo’s Pizza, which Birdsong saw grow to two locations while he worked there. In 2006, he moved to New York to work in video production and marketing, and developed a rabid obsession with pizza. Living in North Brooklyn, Birdsong was a regular at Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop, Carmine and Sons, and Best Pizza, often dropping in five or six times a week. After living in New York for 12 years and beginning to raise a family, Birdsong wanted to be closer to home, and moved back to Atlanta.
When he got back home, Birdsong felt that the pizza in Atlanta was not hitting in the ways that he had become accustomed to back in New York. There was plenty of artisanal, wood-fired, Neapolitan-style pizza available, but Birdsong saw an opportunity and a need for “a bangin’ New York-style slice shop.” He bought a home countertop pizza oven, and got to work on his dough recipe. Birdsong opened Glide Pizza in July 2020 along the BeltLine, a 22-mile pedestrian loop that snakes through the city. Quickly outgrowing the 600-square-foot space, Birdsong moved about 100 yards away to a bigger location. He then opened a Glide Pizza inside Inner Voice Brewery in Decatur, and has a third location set to open in summer 2023. Birdsong’s short menu carries all the classics, and rotates through special pies (often in collaboration with local businesses) in an effort to make sure his thin-crust pizza is reaching its marks: consistently crispy with a proper housemade mozzarella-to-sauce ratio, reminiscent of Birdsong’s time in New York.
