On a cold evening in January, some of Chicago’s top chefs and restaurateurs packed a Downtown auditorium for the annual Jean Banchet Awards, Chicago’s top local food honor.
About halfway through the ceremony, local pizzamaker Jonathan Goldsmith and his wife, the artist Ginny Sykes, took the stage. Their Ravenswood restaurant, Spacca Napoli, was crowned Chicago’s best pizza that night. Unlike the other awards, this one was decided by the people in the room.
I immediately wanted to know more about Goldsmith, how he perfected his craft making classic Neapolitan pizza and how it feels to be regarded by your peers as the best, in a town world famous for its pies.
What I didn’t yet know was that the couple had been facing some serious personal challenges. Goldsmith had been battling stomach cancer and was scheduled to have the tumor in his abdomen removed just days after graciously accepting the Banchet Award.
Before Goldsmith went in for the operation, photojournalist Manuel Martinez and I spent a day with the pizzamaker at his restaurant as he prepared for a leave of absence. He told me then how much the Banchet win boosted his spirits. “To have the recognition from within the community itself … it felt good and, in some ways, needed,” he told me at the time.
I checked back in with the restaurateur recently to see how his recovery is going and how he and Sykes are managing in a year that has served up ample challenges, both personally and professionally.
On a weekday afternoon in mid-November, I returned to Spacca Napoli’s cozy dining room at the corner of Sunnyside and Ravenswood avenues, where the restaurant first opened its doors nearly 20 years ago.
As Goldsmith, who is 70, greeted some familiar diners, Sykes told me that they are in a far better place than they were the last time I visited. The surgery went well and his doctors now say Goldsmith is “cancer clean.”
“They don’t like to say you’re cured at this stage, but we have gotten a clean report up until this point,” Sykes said. “That’s a big worry off our shoulders.”
The road to recovery has not always been straightforward. After the surgery, Goldsmith was supposed to undergo an additional four rounds of chemotherapy, but the side effects were too much to bear. After one round, his doctor called off the rest, opting instead for a CT scan and regular check-ups to make sure Goldsmith remains in good health.
“Going through cancer is like having a wrecking ball come through your life,” Sykes told me. “And we certainly had all the associated ups and downs and unexpected turbulence within the treatment program, but we had great care, and, fortunately, surgery went really well, the chemo went well, and his overall outcome is really positive.”
When I first spent time with Goldsmith back in late January, he faced several unknowns: Doctors weren’t sure how much of his stomach they’d be able to save. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be out of work — something that he admitted at the time was causing him angst. And, he didn’t yet know if he’d be able to board a plane for Italy in the spring, as planned.
But, after a postponement, he made the trip over the summer. When I asked him recently what that meant to him, Goldsmith’s eyes filled with tears.
“No matter what, that was my goal, to make it,” he said. “So to be able to do that was just a big thing, just to know that I was well enough.”
In recent months, he and Sykes have also been able to travel to New York and California. Post-wrecking ball, they are reveling in a semblance of normalcy. And, they’re looking forward to visiting Mexico in the new year and spending more time together.
“I’m hoping to find a little more ease in 2026 and just take the pace down a couple of notches,” Sykes said.
But, owning a restaurant is a notoriously tough gig and this year, the industry has been met with more challenges as immigrant workers — including those in kitchens — have been targeted and imported goods have been tariffed. For a restaurant like Spacca Napoli, which relies heavily on international ingredients, the tariff volatility is a big stressor.
“We’re just trying to keep this beautiful business running and serve the community, and it’s really frustrating to have to address this on top of it,” Sykes said. “We’re doing our best to try to stay level-headed and make the adjustments that we need to, but to come back from his cancer treatment, and then have a whole new slew of issues that demand extra thought and time and analysis, it’s heavy. It’s really heavy.”
Goldsmith said, for now, he’s trying to have conversations with other restaurant owners and understand the shifting policies, both federally and locally, that have been a financial strain.
“I really still don’t have an understanding of where this will go. I really, really don’t,” he said. But for now, he and Sykes are committed to figuring it out. “With the meaning we have to our community, I don’t like the idea of saying, ‘OK, I’m just going to call it because it would be easier for me.’ I don’t feel comfortable with that.”
And, despite all the challenges, the restaurant is still Goldsmith’s happy place, his second home. “Or first home, maybe,” his wife gently joked.
Goldsmith said this year gave him a chance to reflect and feel “appreciative of how much we’ve done and how much value we’ve created and to feel really good about that.”