Clicking in to the Slice inbox today, we've got a version of stump the band. Can any of you folks out there help Rene?
I have told my story to dozens of pizza owners and have received no comment, not even a blank stare.
In 1939 or 1940, I was introduced to pizza and became an ardent adherant. For years I traveled extensively and always tasted pizzas everywhere. I must admit that in the last ten years pizza has improved greatly. But my story never aroused a hrumph. Please help me.
About 1960, I visited Louigino's on 49th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues in Manhattan. After tasting the pizza I called over the owner and told him that after hundreds of pizzas all over the States and Italy, I hadn't tasted one like his since 1939 or '40. He asked me where I had it. I told him on 50th street just off Ninth Avenue. He told me that that was his brother's place. I understand they went back to Italy. I have always hoped someone could tell me about them.
While pizzas have improved greatly, I don't think anyone can beat theirs. Please, please, comment.
All I can say is I'm jealous that you were alive back then to experience pizza in 1940's NY. My life started in 1975, and I still remember 75 cent slices and pizza parlors on every block. The same way we now have a drug store or a bank or a starbucks on every block. I hope you find someone who can share those memories with you, sounds like it must have been damn good if almost 70 years later you are still thinking about it.
Luigino's was featured in a September 1944 NYT piece on the novel food sensation that was "pizza" ... good stuff:
News of Food, NYT, 9/20/1944
Pizza, a Pie Popular in Southern Italy, Is Offered Here for Home Consumption
By Jane Holt
One of the most popular dishes in southern Italy, especially in the vicinity of Naples, is pizza—a pie made from a yeast dough and filled with any number of different centers, each one containing tomatoes. Cheese, mushrooms, anchovies, capers, onions and so on may be used. At 147 West Forty-eighth Street, a restaurant called Luigino’s Pizzeria Alla Napoletana prepares authentic pizza, which may be ordered to take home. They are packed, piping hot, in special boxes for that purpose.
The dish is prepared in one corner of the restaurant, where customers may watch as each large round ball of dough is first pressed down to a thickness of about an inch and a width of perhaps six inches. Then, with the dexterity of a drum major wielding a baton, the baker picks one up and twirls it around, first in one hand and then in the other. As he spins it about, the circle of dough grows wider and wider and thinner and thinner. When it has reached the desired size—about a foot or more in diameter—it is put down on a flowered board to be topped with whatever filling is desired.
Yesterday when we watched the orders being made up, pizza with mozzarella proved the most in demand, and Luigino Milone, proprietor of the establishment told us that this is usually the case. Good sized pieces of mozzarella—Italian goats’ milk cheese—are placed on the dough and over that is poured fresh tomato sauce. Then the top is sprinkled with the grated cheese and covered with olive oil. The pie is slid off the board into the huge oven, without benefit of pie tin.
After five to seven minutes of baking (the oven is kept at an extraordinarily high temperature) it is read to serve, the whole operation having taken no more than ten or twelve minutes. Although pie tins do not figure in the procedure, the finished product has a full, rounded edge which is achieved, we were told, by thinning out the center of the uncooked dough to a greater degree then the outsides. The latter rise, much as a biscuit would, in baking.
One of the variations on the pizza is calzone a la napoletana., the filling for which consists of a mixture of hot cheeses, eggs, Italian ham and parsley. Unlike the other kinds, this is not an open pie, for the filling is placed only on one half of the circle of dough. The other half is folded over the filling so that the resulting pizza has the shape of a half moon. This required fifteen to twenty minutes to bake.
The pizze are usually served with wine or beer and may be accompanied by a green salad, or, as is often the case at Luigino’s by an order of tripe. Orders to be taken out will keep hot for ten or fifteen minutes, and they may be reheated briefly in a moderate oven if the trip home takes longer than that. Prices range from 50 cents to $2 depending on the type desired. Each one will make four portions, although many people can do away with a whole pie single-handed.
Though I can't read Italian, Google's translation algorithms tell us it says this:
The conference - which will take place this morning at the historic Palazzo Vanvitelliano - ripercorrerà so the vicissitudes of some fellow citizens who have made fortune abroad, from Luigino brothers and Gaetano Milone, emigrated from Mercato San Severino and become owners of a restaurant most popular in New York in the early decades of the twentieth century, meeting point of famous artists, men of culture, American politicians and Italian including Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Guglielmo Marconi.
Its also amazing that the description of every ingredient and method is foreign. I can't imagine living in a time when mozzeralla had to be described and the inane aspects of making a pizza, no pie tin!, are detailed like that.
wow, a side order of tripe? That's pretty wild. Imagine that... And I have been lamenting th loss of zeppole, which used to be ubiquitous. *sigh* what I would give for a time machine. sampat, thank you for that.
Barbara, nice memory. 25 cent slices were a bit before my time I think, but yeah, those were the good old days for sure.
15¢ a slice
Year-- 1966
This was Salerno's on Union Turnpike
I assure there was char and charred bubbles
The doughier slices were called Neapolitan.
I never bought them.
They also were 15¢ a square slice
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I have told my story to dozens of pizza owners and have received no comment, not even a blank stare.
14 Comments:
All I can say is I'm jealous that you were alive back then to experience pizza in 1940's NY. My life started in 1975, and I still remember 75 cent slices and pizza parlors on every block. The same way we now have a drug store or a bank or a starbucks on every block. I hope you find someone who can share those memories with you, sounds like it must have been damn good if almost 70 years later you are still thinking about it.
simon at 12:17PM on 08/06/08
Luigino's was featured in a September 1944 NYT piece on the novel food sensation that was "pizza" ... good stuff:
News of Food, NYT, 9/20/1944
Pizza, a Pie Popular in Southern Italy, Is Offered Here for Home Consumption
By Jane Holt
One of the most popular dishes in southern Italy, especially in the vicinity of Naples, is pizza—a pie made from a yeast dough and filled with any number of different centers, each one containing tomatoes. Cheese, mushrooms, anchovies, capers, onions and so on may be used. At 147 West Forty-eighth Street, a restaurant called Luigino’s Pizzeria Alla Napoletana prepares authentic pizza, which may be ordered to take home. They are packed, piping hot, in special boxes for that purpose.
The dish is prepared in one corner of the restaurant, where customers may watch as each large round ball of dough is first pressed down to a thickness of about an inch and a width of perhaps six inches. Then, with the dexterity of a drum major wielding a baton, the baker picks one up and twirls it around, first in one hand and then in the other. As he spins it about, the circle of dough grows wider and wider and thinner and thinner. When it has reached the desired size—about a foot or more in diameter—it is put down on a flowered board to be topped with whatever filling is desired.
Yesterday when we watched the orders being made up, pizza with mozzarella proved the most in demand, and Luigino Milone, proprietor of the establishment told us that this is usually the case. Good sized pieces of mozzarella—Italian goats’ milk cheese—are placed on the dough and over that is poured fresh tomato sauce. Then the top is sprinkled with the grated cheese and covered with olive oil. The pie is slid off the board into the huge oven, without benefit of pie tin.
After five to seven minutes of baking (the oven is kept at an extraordinarily high temperature) it is read to serve, the whole operation having taken no more than ten or twelve minutes. Although pie tins do not figure in the procedure, the finished product has a full, rounded edge which is achieved, we were told, by thinning out the center of the uncooked dough to a greater degree then the outsides. The latter rise, much as a biscuit would, in baking.
One of the variations on the pizza is calzone a la napoletana., the filling for which consists of a mixture of hot cheeses, eggs, Italian ham and parsley. Unlike the other kinds, this is not an open pie, for the filling is placed only on one half of the circle of dough. The other half is folded over the filling so that the resulting pizza has the shape of a half moon. This required fifteen to twenty minutes to bake.
The pizze are usually served with wine or beer and may be accompanied by a green salad, or, as is often the case at Luigino’s by an order of tripe. Orders to be taken out will keep hot for ten or fifteen minutes, and they may be reheated briefly in a moderate oven if the trip home takes longer than that. Prices range from 50 cents to $2 depending on the type desired. Each one will make four portions, although many people can do away with a whole pie single-handed.
bhavensampat at 2:04PM on 08/06/08
The Milone brothers also appear to have been featured in an recent exhibition on emigrants from Salerno:
http://www.ilgrappolo.it/NewsRead.asp?IDnews=366
Though I can't read Italian, Google's translation algorithms tell us it says this:
The conference - which will take place this morning at the historic Palazzo Vanvitelliano - ripercorrerà so the vicissitudes of some fellow citizens who have made fortune abroad, from Luigino brothers and Gaetano Milone, emigrated from Mercato San Severino and become owners of a restaurant most popular in New York in the early decades of the twentieth century, meeting point of famous artists, men of culture, American politicians and Italian including Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Guglielmo Marconi.
bhavensampat at 2:07PM on 08/06/08
And a bit more on the brothers Milone from ancestry.com:
http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.milone/12/mb.ashx
bhavensampat at 2:15PM on 08/06/08
Sampat
Stellar research. Lexis Nexus?
Pizza sure was exotic back then
My old pizzeria was Salerno's in Queens. I'll bet there are still plenty in NY with that name
gaffer at 2:27PM on 08/06/08
wow, thats some amazing research.
Its also amazing that the description of every ingredient and method is foreign. I can't imagine living in a time when mozzeralla had to be described and the inane aspects of making a pizza, no pie tin!, are detailed like that.
ESNY1077 at 2:34PM on 08/06/08
@bhavensampat: You rule! Eight gold slices for you. Thank you.
Adam Kuban at 2:46PM on 08/06/08
@simon: I remember an afterschool special at a pizzeria on Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn that offered a grape drink and a slice for 25 cents!
Barbara Hanson at 3:00PM on 08/06/08
wow, a side order of tripe? That's pretty wild. Imagine that... And I have been lamenting th loss of zeppole, which used to be ubiquitous. *sigh* what I would give for a time machine. sampat, thank you for that.
Barbara, nice memory. 25 cent slices were a bit before my time I think, but yeah, those were the good old days for sure.
simon at 3:11PM on 08/06/08
@simon: I was a skinny child, so every day after my mom and I went to the playground, I got a bag of fresh zeppole to eat on the way home.
Barbara Hanson at 3:36PM on 08/06/08
I like that, in the article, the dough was placed on a "flowered board."
Barbara Hanson at 4:54PM on 08/06/08
Barbara, lucky you! I had to beg and plead to get zeppole and when I did, my Dad would usually end up eating most of them.
simon at 5:51PM on 08/06/08
15¢ a slice
Year-- 1966
This was Salerno's on Union Turnpike
I assure there was char and charred bubbles
The doughier slices were called Neapolitan.
I never bought them.
They also were 15¢ a square slice
I kept playing "Over under sideways down" by the Yardbirds - was on the juke box
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLv7viCMGo8
gaffer at 6:23PM on 08/06/08
Great history - I had my own in Brooklyn. And old enough to remember .15 a slice (extra nickel for Sicilian..and I always asked for the corner piece.)
Did my own reminiscence here:
http://lazarusdodge.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/pizza/
I'll be looking for a slice today!
JeffsInTheKitchen at 6:44AM on 08/07/08