'Off the Broiler' Visits A Mano in Ridgewood, New Jersey

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 14, 2007 at 12:35 AM

This place sounds—and looks—amazing. Jason Perlow (Off the Broiler) visits A Mano pizzeria in Ridgewood, New Jersey:

To call A Mano (which means “by hand”) “Authentic Italian Pizza” would be a huge understatement. The best way to describe it would be as if one of those alien motherships took one of those Star Trek tractor beams, hovered over Naples, ripped a pizzeria right off its foundation and out of the ground, and plopped it right down in the middle of Ridgewood.
The attention to detail that Caporuscio has made is approaching either insanity or genius. Everything, right down to the silverware and furniture, is from Naples or other parts of Italy. The pizza is baked in wood-burning ovens that were made from bricks and tile from Italy and assembled on site piece by piece by Italian artisans, he’s using imported Italian slow ground “00″ low-protein pizza flour, Italian mozzarella di bufala cheese, San Marzano tomatoes, and he’s even using the same Pietroroberto electric mixers that they use in Naples. To learn how to make the pizzas, Caporuscio studied at the famous Antonio Starita pizza school in Naples, where many of the best Neapolitan pizzaiuolo are trained.

Here's Jason's video of his visit:

5 Comments

5 Comments:

field trip!

raphael at 4:11PM on 10/14/07

I pass by there a lot. It's close to the Whole Foods my mum and I shop at every week. (Yeah it's evil, whatever.)

I'm all for a field trip! Or revisiting the restaurant myself. I remember liking it muchly, but not being blown away the first time. Also, they gave me the tiniest portion of gelato known to man. Kinda put a damper on the meal, even if it wasn't pizza related. :(

roboppy at 5:27PM on 10/14/07

field trip to roboppy's house!

raphael at 7:27PM on 10/14/07

Adam- Roberto is amazing. Check out this article from last month's PMQ. You should know that he is also going to be teaching classes too :P

Philip

Prairie at 11:17PM on 10/14/07

My lady friend and I visited A Mano on Friday after reading this article... the pizza really was fantastic. Had the Regina Margherita with buffalo mozzarella and it was just delicious. Great crust, great cheese, etc. My only possible gripe was with the dispersion of basil; it seemed like my pie had very little and it was all clumped into one spot, whereas her basil was better distributed.

Keith W. at 12:50PM on 10/23/07

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