Alejandro Rivas has been the pizzaiolo at New York City's La Pizza Fresca since it opened in 1997 and fired up its wood-burning oven. He has made tens of thousands of pizzas since, working lunch and dinner six days a week. He gets Saturdays off, when his boss takes over the oven, but I bet the pies are not quite as good on those days. I asked Rivas if he ever eats pizza on his day off. He looked at me like I was nuts. More

The blog Always Hungry visited La Pizza Fresca, the first New York City pizzeria to really stress its Neapolitan bone fides (it was the first joint in the city to receive certification from the Vera Pizza Napoletana association) to see how it held up after all the high-profile Naples-stilo openings as of late. After doing a pie-by-pie tasting, the folks there didn't like it: Of course, the real draw of a Neapolitan style pizza is the thin crust, and La Pizza Fresca’s limp, chewy base was dangerously close to that of Franny’s, a problem with every pie. Ooh, and... More