Michael Bauer, food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, continues his Pizza Friday series on his blog Between Meals with a trip to Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant in San Francisco. Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant makes a Neapolitan-style pizza:
Link: Pizza Friday: Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant [SFGate.com]
Last week on Serious Eats, community member HeartofGlass asked: "How many different kinds of regional varations of pizza exist?"
I figured I'd compile a list of all the styles I've eaten or heard or read about. Sorry it took so long, HeartofGlass. It's a long list, and it appears after the jump.
Michael Bauer, food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, continues his Pizza Friday series on his blog Between Meals with a trip to Pizzeria Picco in Larkspur, California. Pizzeria Picco makes a Neapolitan-style pie in a wood-burning oven:
Bauer says:
Thin with crisp, blistered edges. The Margherita, drizzled with De Padova extra virgin olive oil sets the standards for this ubiquitous combination. The Marin features roasted garlic, young potatoes that crisp at the edges, mozzarella, Parmesan and a slight drizzle of rosemary oil. The Cannondale is my favorite: house-made sausage, roasted peppers, onions, basil, and mozzarella.
Address: 320 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur CA 94939 (at King Street; map)
Phone: 415-945-8900
Website: pizzeriapicco.com
View Slice's Bronx Pizza Map »
Food maven Arthur Schwarz reports on Zero Otto Nove, a newish Neapolitan joint on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx that has somehow managed to fly under the Slice radar:
Roberto’s has been a destination restaurant for years. Now Zero Otto Nove has become one. It is already, after only a few months in business, drawing customers from the hinterlands, and for several good reasons. Top among them, I am sure, is the Neapolitan-style pizza that may be the best you’ve ever had in the U.S., and better than many in Naples, as I just described. I know I am going out on a limb with that remark, but I know what I am doing. Well, I hope I am not setting anyone up for a disappointment.
Zero Otto Nove’s pizzaiolo, its pizza maker, Ricardo, who indeed has enough charisma to be called by only one name, like Garbo or Cher, is originally from Naples. But he last worked in downtown Salerno. He was making such good pizza in Salerno that my Salernitani friends suggested that the place he worked at, Pizza Margherita, would be a good substitute for Pizzeria Vicolo della Neve, my usual haunt, but which, in the summer, is way too hot and airless to be enjoyable.
As Schwarz explains, the joint's name is Italian for zero eight nine, Salerno's area code.
Address: 2357 Arthur Avenue, Bronx NY 10458 (Belmont; map)
Phone: 718-220-1027
The first time I tried to have a pizza at Forno Italia, the place had been reduced to rubble by a complete renovation. I worried that the wood-burning pizza oven I had heard so much about would not be part of the new restaurant. I needn't have worried. What makes Forno ltalia's pizza so good is the gorgeous oven, a skilled pizzaiolo, and the house-made mozzarella, which is so good that the proprietors wholesale it to other Italian restaurants and pizzerias in the know. The pies are individual Neapolitan-style beauties, with a chewy, puffy crust that is pretty swell. I usually have the Margherita here, but I've always been tempted to order the Southern pizza, topped with spicy sausage and American and Swiss cheeses. It ain't exactly authentic, but I bet it's tasty.
Address: 43-19 Ditmars Boulevard, Astoria NY 11105 (b/n 43rd and 45th Streets; map)
Phone: 718-267-1068
This entry is an excerpt from my book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven. To read more, visit the Slice of Heaven archives here on Slice or buy the book from Amazon
At his friend Maurizio DeRosa's urging, Celeste chef Giancarlo Quadalti set out to make authentic Neapolitan pizza in the gorgeous wood-burning oven installed in the corner of his restaurant. A year later, DeRosa concluded that New Yorkers didn't want the real thing. "It was too wet for people. People would take napkins and blot the pizza to absorb moisture. We were devastated. We would look and suffer in silence."
But after an appropriate mourning period, Quadalti made the necessary adjustments. Now Quadalti drains the tomatoes just the way many American pizzaioli do. As a result, Celeste's pizza is probably not authentically Neapolitan, but it is quite delicious and Italian in conception. That means they use double-zero Italian flour, imported canned tomatoes (drained), and excellent cow's-milk mozzarella, imported from Maspeth, Queens. The crust is a little crisper than any I found in Naples, but trust me, Giancarlo, that's the way we like it. I usually have either the Margherita or a marinara (made with tomato sauce and anchovies here), but sometimes I get crazy and order the one with prosciutto and arugula. It doesn't matter what pizza you eat at Celeste. They're all delicious. After devouring your pie, it is imperative that you have gelato for dessert at Celeste. They're all made by the mad-genius gelato maker, Gino Cammarata, from the tragically shuttered restaurant Bussola. If you're with a group, have the "porcini mushroom" ice cream, made with hazelnut ice cream and chocolate sauce in the shape of, yes, a porcini mushroom.
CELESTE
Location: 502 Amsterdam Ave. (84th/85th), New York NY
Phone: 212-874-4559
Ed's Rating: 3 pies (out of a possible 4)
Ed Levine is a regular contributor to the New York Times Dining section and is author of New York Eats and New York Eats More. He also maintains a blog: Ed Levine Eats. This entry is an excerpt from his book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven
With reports of homemade-mozzarella-topped pies and a pizza pedigree that comes in part from working with the Nick's empire, it's not surprising that Anthony's is turning out a great Neapolitan pie.
I went yesterday for a late lunch and opted for a margherita, a benchmark I use when trying a new place. With the exception of some tip sag, the pie was excellent. The remarkably light and airy crust exhibited a decent amount of charring and a very nice amount of oven spring, especially evident in the cornichone, the rim of the pizza (above left). It had some chewiness to it, but was softer and more forgiving on the jaw than many other Neapolitan pies I've had lately.
The sauce was noticeably fresh and mildly zesty and the mozzarella was creamy and pleasantly stringy. The overall cheese-sauce ratio was good, but there was some bunching of cheese on one of the slices (which sogged the crust and prevented a nice char on the underside) and only a couple bites' worth on another. But that's not a dealbreaker on the first visit.
Providing a nice finish to each slice was the cornichone, or "end crust," which had a dusting of Parmesan cheese baked into it. Not in a gimmicky way, though. Anthony's might take offense to this, but it tasted like a really good version of Pizza Pretz, a Japanese pizza-flavored snack.
A recent New York magazine blurb on Anthony's opening explains the origin of the name: "[Owner Sal Buglione built the kind of pizzeria he] always imagined surprising his dad with. “We’d pull up, I’d say, ‘Hey, look, Anthony’s, let’s get a pizza,’ then I’d say, ‘This is for you.’ ” ...
We think Anthony Buglione would have been proud of what his sons built.
ANTHONY'S
Location: 426A Seventh Ave. (Park Slope; b/n 14th and 15th), Brooklyn NY 11215
Phone: 718-369-8315
Cost: Plain margherita, $11; marinara, $10; white pie, $11
Payment: Paper and plastic
The Skinny: Light, airy crust with homemade mozzarella and a fresh, zesty sauce. The 10-inch Neapolitan-style pies taste like small versions of New York's coal-oven heavyweights.
One of Slice's favorite local food writers, Josh Ozersky, checks in with a story on Anthony Mangieri of über-traditional pizzeria Una Pizza Napoletana. Ozersky likens Mr. Mangieri to a young Dom DeMarco, oh he of Di Fara fame.
In his way, this young guy with tattoos covering both arms is a soul brother to the city's greatest and most single-minded pizza maker, Dominic DeMarco of Di Fara pizza in Brooklyn. Neither man seems to have any interest in the world beyond the loving, lingering task of making perfect pizzas one at a time.
Mr. Ozersky describes a UPN pie: "Pliable and elastic, the crust supports tomatoes that pop like a garden salad, and a thin layer of buffalo mozzarella which, thanks to Mangieri's practice of not over-refrigerating the stuff, keeps its extraordinary milky sharpness. Extra-virgin olive oil and oregano round out this concerto of rarefied tastes."
Delicious. It's only 9:30 a.m., and I'm hungry already.
Una Pizza Napoleana
Location: 349 East 12th Street, Manhattan NY
Cost: $16.95 per pie
photograph by Willie Davis for Newsday
Dr. Pepper: Peperoncino ("little pepper") recently opened in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Saint Marks Place (above). Owner Nino Gagliardi (top right) makes Neapolitan-style pies in his beehive-shaped wood-fired oven (above left).
Shortly before 2 p.m. we entered the tasteful wood-clad dining room and easily grabbed a table for five. One bottle of San Pellegrino later, we had decided upon our menu for the afternoon. To start, two salads: the gran fiore rucola (arugola dressed with balsamic vinaigrette and peppered with goat-cheese-enclosed grapes rolled in chopped pistachios) and the insalata dello chef (fennel, corn, celery, tomatoes, and hearts of palm in a lemon dressing). In general, I like to cut to the chase, eschewing salads, soups, and starters in favor of pizza, but I can see one of these salads working its way onto my tab on all subsequent visits to Peperoncino—the gran fiore. Its sweet-and-savory cheese-and-pistachio-covered grapes were absolutely addictive.
For pizza, we decided the five of us could handle six pies. Chef-owner Nino Gagliardi, a native of Naples, produces, no surprise, Neapolitan-style pies. That means small, thin, 10-inch pizzas, which in turn means six of them were by no means in excess. Our pies (below, clockwise from upper left): the Napoletana (tomato sauce, capers, and anchovies), the Margherita (tomato sauce, fior di latte, and basil), the diavola (tomato sauce, fior di latte, and spicy sausage), la bella Italia (a sauceless pie topped with cherry tomatoes, fior di latte, and pesto), the a'ciorta (again, sauceless, topped with smoked fior di latte, eggplant, roasted red peppers, and onions), and the salsiccia e friarielli (fior di latte, sausage, and broccoli rabe).
The five of us were impressed with the crust. While a bit thicker than nearby Franny's, it's still thin by most standards, and our pies all exhibited a perfect crispness while remaining pliable. There were nicely charred bits here and there along the bottom, with little puffy bubbles here and there on top. It's clear that proprietor Nino Gagliardi, who trained in his family's restaurant back in Naples, knows his stuff. Consensus was that la bella Italia was our favorite, with its zippy pesto topping. The Napoletana, the cheeseless anchovy-and-caper pie was the least favorite, judging by the fact that, at meal's end, the only thing left on the table was one lonely slice of this pizza.
This trip was the second of three I've made to Peperoncino in the last two weeks, the latest being this past Friday. The diavola was my favorite on my first visit but was later eclipsed by la bella Italia, the quattro formaggi (four cheese: fior di latte, fontina, Gorgonzola, and Parmigiano), and the pizza do' mare (tomato sauce, calamari, mussels, clams, and shrimp) of subsequent visits. This was primarily because I found the diavola's spicy sausage a little too tame—nowhere near my idea of spicy. The quattro formaggi, on the other hand, uses high-grade cheeses, and the pungent Gorgonzola was creamy and savory. The pizza do' mare (from my Friday visit) was packed with seafood and flavor, with a nice brininess that made up for the mildness of the sauce.
Yes: the sauce was on the mild side. It's fresh, no doubt, but could stand some more seasoning, which might explain our love of the pesto-topped pie. The cheese, though, left me with nothing to complain about. Excellent fior di latte ("flower of the milk") starred on most of our pies, with a few exceptions.
While I thought there could be a few improvements made, Peperoncino's pizzas represent some of the best Neapolitan–style pies I've had lately.
After the meal, S.B., an Italian-speaking member of our lunch crew, stopped by the oven to let Mr. Gagliardi know how much we had liked the meal. During their conversation, S.B. learned the origin of Peperoncino's name. There's an old Neapolitan good luck charm shaped like a horn, Mr. Gagliardi said, while moving pies in and out of the oven or rotating them for even cooking. The horn is a talisman against malocchio, the evil eye, and it just so happens to look like the short, red peppers for which the restaurant is named. So, at once, Peperoncino references cooking and good luck, both of which Mr. Gagliardi hoped he'd have plenty of in his new Park Slope venture.
With the excellent crust and the interesting variety of pies he's serving, his good-luck charm must be working.
Dinage And Signage: The dining room (above left) at Peperoncino is woody and warm, almost like an old ship's captain's quarters or a mountain cabin. One member of our party, an art director by profession, pointed out that she liked the typeface chosen for the restaurant's signs, particularly the curves on the Z's. Oh, those art directors!
The pizzas are made one at a time by Anthony Mangieri, a name you might not immediately attach to the tattoo-covered 33-year-old pizzaiolo working the oven. His two clenched fists are immortalized in a photo on the wall that focuses on the words "Hope" and "Fede," Italian for faith, tattooed across his knuckles. Those are two of the three theological virtues of Catholicism; if the third, cited sometimes as charity or sometimes as love, is written on Mr. Mangieri's body, it is not on display when he is making pizza.But other signs of his faith are: a cross set into the tile floor of the small dining room and, nearer the entrance, Jesus looking onto a stretch of East 12th Street lighted blue by the neon sign in a window next door....
The main attraction at Una Pizza is the dough, the crust. The 12-inch pizzas, served whole, are made from a dough unsullied by commercial yeast; a piece of leftover dough, salt, flour, water and 36 hours of rising time are all that go into it....
Mr. Mangieri pounds out balls of dough, flattening them into circles with repeated open-palm slaps. The pizzas are dressed lightly and slid into a wood-fired brick oven.
He constantly fuels the fire with split logs, kindling and an occasional pizza peel full of wood shavings that bump the oven up to nearly 900 degrees, the temperature required to cook a pizza in what he says is the proper amount of time: two minutes.
The pizza is on your marble-topped table a second later, too hot to eat. When you do dig in with the fork and flimsy serrated knife provided, you may notice that the pizza's charred bottom leaves a dusting of soot on the plate. The crust is crisp in spots, tender in others, with an appealing elasticity and a reassuring saltiness. The long fermentation imparts the dough with a subtle sourness that gives the pie a well-rounded, complex flavor.
Una Pizza serves four pizzas, period. They are variations on a theme: crushed San Marzano tomatoes color the marinara; real buffalo mozzarella adorns the bianca, and the classic margherita boasts both of those as well as basil. My hands-down favorite is the filetti, essentially a margherita made with a pinch of garlic and fresh cherry tomatoes standing in for the canned. There is nothing else on the menu except bottled water, Italian sodas and a picture of St. Anthony.
Photograph from the New York Times
It took some convincing to get me out to Una Pizza Napoletana last night. I'd already eaten enough pizza for the week: an entire plain pie at Patsy's on Tuesday, then six slices at Patsy's again on Wednesday night. But when co-worker Honey P. reminded me of my plans to visit the new Neapolitan pizza shop that had just moved from Point Pleasant, New Jersey to the East Village—and offered her pleasant company for the excursion—I knew I couldn't shirk my pizza-eating duties.
And, ladies and gents, I'm glad I didn't. Una Pizza Napoletana was amazing. We arrived shortly before 7 p.m., worried there'd be a line. This wasn't the case, but as we stepped into the small, warmly lit space, we didn't see an open seat in the joint. Lucky for us, though, a couple had just gotten up from a four-topper table, and the friendly waiter told us he could seat us immediately if we didn't mind sharing a table with a gentleman who was on line just ahead of us. Hey, we're friendly folks at Slice, so of course we didn't mind.
It turned out that this gentleman had been a longtime regular at Una Pizza Napoletana's former New Jersey location. He and several other regulars had made the pilgrimage into the city to get their hands on some of Anthony Mangieri's (left) pies. That they were aching for Mr. Mangieri's pizza after having been deprived of it during the relocation, well, we took that as a very encouraging sign. Our de facto dining companion told us about Mr. Mangieri's exacting standards, about his passion for producing authentic Neapolitan pizza, about his history as a bread baker before turning his attention to pies, and about how Mr. Mangieri often closed up shop for weeks at a time while he traveled to Naples to hone his technique. "His grandfather owned a popular gelato shop in Newark," he informed us. "So the food business is in his blood."
Indeed, Mr. Mangieri is hardcore. From his menu:
Pizza—a word known all over the world, from New York City to Los Angeles, from Paris to Tokyo. It is a word used to describe many products; deep-dish, cracker thin, stuffed crust, etc. However, the meaning of the word "pizza" has been misunderstood and misrepresented over the years. Pizza only means one thing. It is Neapolitan—the word, the definition, the product. The word is a slang Neapolitan pronunciation of the word "pita." The history of pizza possibly can be traced back to the very beginnings of man and fire. Certainly, the pizza eaten today in the backstreets of Napoli is linked directly to the flat bread baked in Pompeii 2,000 years ago. This said, all the square, round, thick, stuffed and over-topped pieces of dough may be to your liking, but don't call it pizza.
Honey P., our dining companion, and I all agreed that this single-minded focus on doing things right and not cutting corners was to be admired and was exactly what's needed in the New York City pizza world, whether you're a pizzaiolo striving for authentic Neapolitan style or for the more common New York–Neopolitan style.
After about about 20 minutes of conversation, I ducked out to grab some beer at a bodega a couple doors down (Una Pizza Napoletana is BYOB for now, pending a license for wine and beer), and shortly after coming back to the table, our pies arrived. We had ordered the Margherita (San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh basil, and sea salt) and the Filetti (fresh cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, fresh garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh basil, and sea salt). A quick pre-consumption examination of the crust revealed areas of careful charring—just the right amount—distributed across an otherwise crisp golden-brown background. The Margherita itself looked perfect, with dots of creamy melted mozzarella floating atop a bright-red layer of sauce. Fresh basil leaves that appeared to be just-wilted from the wood-fired oven's intense heat were scattered across. The Filetti appeared much the same, except for a smattering of halved cherry tomatoes that promised a burst of sweetness upon bite.
As delightful to the eye as the pies were, we were hungry, so, picking up knives and forks, Honey P. and I dug in. Yes, knives and forks: True to the Neapolitan way, Mr. Mangieri serves his 12-inch pies whole, and it's up to the customer to cut them at table.
The pizzas were stupendous. The crust was crisp and chewy with a pronounced but not overpowering woody flavor that complemented the satisfyingly salty dough. Every bite yielded easily discernable flavors: sweet fresh tomatoes, mild creamy buffalo mozz, and an oil of such an unbelievably high quality that it tasted like liquefied olives.
Remember all the Franny's frenzy of a few months ago? We at Slice predict that Una Pizza Napoletana will garner such praise in the weeks and months to come. As Cindy Adams says, "You heard it here first, kids."
Now let's talk about prices. These pies don't come cheap. At $16.95 per pie, Honey P. and I got out of there after dropping $50 (that's with tax and tip and two orange-flavored sodas, not counting our BYOB bottles of Stella Artois). But, as Mr. Mangieri's menu says (click on the images at top for a larger view), "We have no quarrel with the man who sells a cheaper pizza ... he knows how much his is worth!" Whether Una Pizza's pies are worth the price is up to you to decide. We think they are; we just don't think we could afford them as often as we'd like.
And, if you haven't done so, click on the menu images above to enlarge them. They contain a history of pizza and explain Mr. Mangieri's pizza philosophy.
Photos by Bob Bielk, Asbury Park Press.
Slice is part of the Foodblog Ad Network. To advertise on this site or across a network of food-related weblogs, click here.
Slice is also part of the New York City Blogad Network, which allows advertisers to target an audience of smart and savvy Gothamites. To place an ad on Slice or on the NYC Blogad Network, click here.
