At Denino's, the pizza box says it all: "In Crust We Trust."
They should trust their crust, because it is light and crisp and pliant.
Denino's is a classic red-brick tavern pizzeria (with a separate dining room), but it is just as welcoming to kids after a little league game as it is to middle-aged softball players coming in for a pie and a brew after a game.
I'm crazy about Denino's sausage pie, which features fine sweet Italian sausage made fresh every day by a local butcher. If you want to go vegetarian, try the white pie, made with mozzarella, onions, fresh garlic, and a splash of olive oil.
After 53 years, you might think the Denino family has gotten bored with making pizza. Not so, according to third-generation co-owner Michael Denino: "We still put our heart and soul into every pie."
Denino's
Address: 524 Richmond Avenue, Staten Island NY 10302 (at Hooker Place; map) Phone: 718-442-9401 Related: All Denino's entries on Slice
Bar (or tavern) pizza is an entity unto itself within the pizza realm. It's been around at least since Prohibition ended in 1933, but who knows, maybe there was a speakeasy serving pizza. It is served all over the country, although I have found a preponderance of bar pizza in New Jersey; Staten Island, New York; Chicago; and Connecticut.
What defines a bar pizzeria? They're usually family-run businesses that have been passed down from generation to generation. It's pizza served in a bar (of course), which means minors are not let in unaccompanied by adults. At Vito & Nick's on Chicago's far South Side, a sign on the door greets all perspective customers with that very message. Bar pizza is served by waiters, waitresses, and bartenders who, let's just say, have been around the pizza oven more than a few times. They may make you feel welcome, but only after sizing you up for a full minute. They usually have a twinkle in their eye that's not immediately discernible, and more than a little bit of attitude. A bar pizzeria likely has plastic tablecloths if it has any tablecloths at all. There's a good chance that the choicest tables are booths.
What is bar pizza like? It's usually very thin-crusted to (I'm guessing) leave plenty of room in the eater's stomach for beer. It's baked in a gas oven that may have replaced a coal oven if the bar is old enough. Bar pizza is made with decent, commercial, aged mozzarella and comes topped with canned mushrooms, standard pepperoni and, if you're lucky, house-made sausage. You will not find any fancy-pants ingredients or toppings in or on a bar pizza, although at the Brü Rm. at Bar in New Haven, Connecticut, they have created a yuppie, postmodern bar pizzeria that serves things like mashed-potato pizza and blonde ale. It's actually good pizza and good beer, but somehow it seems antithetical to the original idea of bar pizza.
This is another week-old one that we neglected to post about during our renovation. The Daily News did a roundup of New York City's best pizzerias last week. As we told Eater, the new foodblog from the folks who brought you Curbed:
A nice roundup, I think. A lot of it is old hat to me, but there were some nice surprises in there, particularly a couple Brooklyn places (Graziella's, Laura's) that have been lurking one or two neighborhoods over from Slice HQ.
Irene Sax knows her stuff, and I agree with most of her assessments, although I don't know why she rated a chain Patsy's on the Upper West Side instead of the original in East Harlem. What's nice here is that they've really done a comprehensive roundup of the best places in each borough instead of picking, say, a top-five or top-ten list. It's a nice piece that's actually useful to anyone in any of the five boroughs.
You really should click through to the article and have a look at Ms. Sax's quick rundowns. For as long as we've been publishing Slice (and probably long before), Sax has been the News's pizza expert.
Here, we'll list Sax's picks and link to our reviews, when possible. When not possible, I, uh, well, I just offer up comments and such willy-nilly. Read on after the jump....
Posted by Adam Kuban, September 4, 2004 at 10:20 AM
Hungry patrons await a Denino's pie. | PHOTOGRAPH: ROBERT STOLARIK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Frank Bruni turns his meal into an adventure, sailing the seas to Staten Island's Denino's. He comes away with this review.
Allow me to posit something perverse: it is too easy to find the food of your choice in this city. Mexican? Two blocks away. Sushi? Half a block in the other direction. Don't want to leave home? Leaf through the towering stack of delivery menus in the cupboard. Almost anything is within reach. Almost nothing requires real effort. Sort of dims the excitement of it all. So recently, when I had a hankering for that most easily acquired food of all, pizza, I elected a different, more difficult course. I did not go to any of the many pizzerias, including an outpost of Patsy's, in my neighborhood. I did not go to John's on Bleecker Street, which would have required only a subway ride. Along with three sporting, seafaring companions, I boarded the ferry for Staten Island late one Sunday afternoon. The beacon of Denino's Pizzeria Tavern flickered faintly in the distance, or at least in our minds' eyes. Denino's has been operating in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island for more than five decades. Its name and legend pop up from time to time in the more comprehensive journalistic surveys of pizza throughout the five boroughs. Food cognoscenti occasionally mention it, just to show how all-encompassing their awareness is. ... The pizza: great and merely good, depending on how many toppings it had. The plain cheese-and-tomato pizza wore its skin tightly, with a sheen that was slightly oily without being remotely greasy. Pepperoni slices had the same formidable virtues. But Denino's trademark meatball, onions and ricotta pizza was gloppy and chaotic, and the tomato-less pizza with mozzarella, onions and garlic needed more onions, garlic and seasoning than it had. All of those pizzas, from a brick oven, had terrific crusts, slender and sturdy, that lived up to the aphorism printed on Denino's takeout boxes: "In crust we trust."
In crust we trust. Heh. We'll have to pick up one of those take-out boxes to add to our growing library of pizza memorabilia.
Nice review. It makes me want to hop the ferry myself.
SAY NUMBER 13: Dom DeMarco, Slice's "Italian hero," makes the cover of this week's Village Voice. The alt-weekly's Robert Sietsema tallies his top 100 Italian restaurants, DeMarco of Di Fara fame clocking in at lucky thirteen.
Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice runs down his top 100 Italian restaurants. Seeing as how pizza is Italian or Italian American (depending on style), there are more than a few pizzerias in the mix.
The usual suspects appear throughout as well as a few surprises and what might be hidden gems. Following, we've digested the list, ignoring any nonpizza establishments. For the full list, click here.
We were delirious yet dismayed to see Dom DeMarco of Di Fara Pizza on the cover—heartened that Mr. DeMarco is once again getting the recognition he deserves but upset that the crowds at his pizzeria will inevitably grow larger (and also perplexed that he ranked no higher than thirteen while less-deserving places sit in the top ten).
Well, without further ado, here is the list, parsed for pizza entries...
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At Denino's, the pizza box says it all: "In Crust We Trust."
