The Daily News on Artisanal Pizza

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 13, 2004 at 1:12 AM

The Daily News had this story on artisinal pizza over the weekend. We were too busy out in Elmhurst, Queens, eating Pakistani pizza to catch it. Here's an excerpt:

Who makes New York City's best pizza? Simple. Just ask the city's most passionate pizza fans - and then get all 8 million of them to agree.

This city, with its 3,000-odd pizzerias, has whole Web sites devoted to the topic, with camps clustered resolutely behind the same perennial names - Lombardi's, John's, Grimaldi's, and so forth.

But the imminent opening - skedded for Oct. 19 - of Fornino in Williamsburg has got us thinking about New York's favorite food in a whole new way. We'll call it artisanal pizza, and it's an entirely different pie.

To be an artisan, of course, is to craft something by hand, using methods more labor-intensive than expected in our rapid-transit, short-order society. In the context of pizza, this might mean a super-thin crust, a sauce of fresh-ground tomatoes, house-made cheese, house-grown toppings, and an oven that burns fresh-cut fuel for the most ideal bake. We've investigated some new spots where hand-made means well-made. And delicious. ...

Mentioned are L'Asso, Posto, Vento Trattoria, and Fornino, of course, where

Michael Ayoub is taking the artisanal concept to an extreme: The 30-year chef-owner (Cucina, Mike & Tony's) is an accomplished gardener with a desire to pay homage to his Neapolitan heritage, and will soon launch this shrine to pizza and antipasto. He'll be making his own mozzarella and organic sausage, and cultivating his toppings - far-out products like Sicilian oregano, peppery wild arugula, and three types of eggplant - in a rooftop, on-premises greenhouse that will operate year-round. He'll then forge the pies in a three-tiered brick oven with temperatures reaching 1,000 degrees.

This sounds amazing and reminds us of the amazing work that Chris Bianco does at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. Needless to say, Slice has a busy week ahead. We'll be at Fornino as soon as we can and at Una Pizza Napoletano, too. Oh my.

[Thanks to Youngna for alerting us to Fornino's upcoming opening.]

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Tags: Brooklyn, Fornino, New York, NYC, openings, U.S., Williamsburg