With this year's Meatball Madness just around the corner, and the team from Donatella set to defend their title, we stopped by to see how these heralded meatballs were being put to use on Donatella's current menu. More

[Photographs: Nick Solares] Donatella's 184 Eighth Avenue, New York NY 10011 ; map); 212-493-5150 Pizza Style: Neapolitan The skinny: Straight-up fine pizza. A hearty "Recommend!" Oven Type: Wood-fired Price: Individual pies, $12 to $20 By Nick Solares and Adam Kuban | In opening a Neapolitan pizzeria in the U.S. these days, it's become de rigueur to import an oven from Naples, make a lot of noise about said oven, and enumerate your bona fides to the press. Perhaps no one in recent memory has gone as far as restaurateur Donatella Arpaia. If you've been following Slice, you know that she... More

[Photographs: Adam Kuban] This has got to be the shiniest pizza oven in NYC — maybe the world. Slice got a sneak peek at the oven and some of the pizza to come out of it last night at Donatella's, Donatella Arpaia's soon-to-open pizzeria on 19th and Eighth in Chelsea. We'll bring you pizza pics later today, but here are a few shots of the fire-breathing beauty for those of you obsessed with such things. Earlier ... Donatella's PIzza Oven: The Build-Out » Donatella's: The Oven Is Being Cured » Video: Neapolitans Talk Pizza (While Ed Levine Antagonizes Them!) »... More

[Photograph: Adam Kuban] I spent the first part of my morning fumbling around in the dark with Donatella Arpaia in the presence of a glorious pizza oven. How's that to set a pizza-loving guy's heart a flutterin'?... More

Last week we mentioned that Donatella Arpaia was having a wood-fired pizza oven installed in her upcoming pizzeria, Donatella's. Yesterday, Slice was lucky enough to peep a part of the oven-building process. More

Donatella Arpaia outside her upcoming restaurant, Donatella, with a ton (or more) of bricks for her oven. [Photograph: Joshua Bright/Diner's Journal] Looks like restaurateur and frequent Iron Chef America judge Donatella Arpaia is getting into the Neapolitan pizza game. According to this story on the New York Times's Diner's Journal blog, she's having bricks, sand, and cement all imported from Naples to build her oven and is bringing in the requisite Neapolitan oven-builders to construct it. But probably what's most interesting is that she's going to be studying pizza-making under Enzo Coccia of Pizzeria La Notizia in Naples for... More