Pizza is Wonderful

From the beginning I was excited by the prospect of finding the best Neopolitan pizza in New York. I got blindly caught up in the quest, spurred on by our friend, the uber-Neopolitan Francesco, with input from Food Maven Arthur Schwartz, who has made the Southern province of Campania his second home.  Then I remembered I’d never found a pizza in Naples that I loved.  But the dreary Naples pizza run-around didn’t smother my enthusiasm. Surely the pizza of Naples had evolved in the new world to suit American pizza tastes, to actually create the American pizza taste and I would love it when I tasted the best in New York.

Francesco, Prince of Naples (ask his mother) had done molto reconnaissance since arriving in America. His list was long and chauvinist.  He leaped in to organize our quest, ordaining that we should visit the three or four most touted Neopolitan style pizza spots in each borough. Some would be his favorites. Some would be brand new for him. In Queens he chose what he reported was a Batali hangout. In Brooklyn, we called on Arthur Schwartz to narrow the quest.. At each stop we would order a marinara, a margarita and a house specialty or two if we couldn’t agree, or a half and half if that were offered. 

I scribbled down Franceso’s rant as we drove.  “It must be Italian flour, it must be a wood-burning oven, it should cook in less than a minute.” As he tasted the nicely blistered frame of a pie at Una Pizza Napoletana, attacking it for bringing raw inside its perfect ballooning blisters, I felt a truth dawning…It’s all about the crust.

For me the crust has always been just a carrier for what counted. I liked it toasted, crusty, stiff, the opposite of soggy, raw and bland.  But a pizza fan since college, I focused on the toppings: Impressed by a really good tomato sauce, admiring a balance of sauce and cheese, intrigued by the nuttiness of parmesan around the rim. In all those years of leaving big hunks of crust behind to save myself from empty carbs, I didn’t think it was because something was wrong with the crust, I thought it was because crust was crust, who needs it?

What did I know?  What did any of us know when I wrote my first pizza roundup, The Joy Of Pizza, in a July 1,1985 double issue of New York. Not so long ago I made the pilgrimage to Di Faro and waited and waited till I was properly humble, and when the pizza came it was good but it did not curl my toes. When tiny Celeste arrived on Amsterdam, somewhat Neopolitan in its soul, somewhat Emilio-Romagnian, walking distance from our pad with elegantly topped crisp thin crust pies that rarely drooped, I felt I’d found my pizza for the 21st Century. Still if there was a better pizza, I was eager to discover it.

We began our quest at Una Pizza Napoletana early to beat the line. It was empty at 5:30. I suppose there’s no point attacking the meglomaniacal Anthony Mangieri for the flaws of that evening or the off-putting rigidity of his character now that he has packed up to explore a new life on the West Coast and sold his lease to Motorino, taking the carved statue of Christ with him. The dough was raw, the basil was burned, the sauce was too pink and the waiter had never heard of pepperocino. “Go Anthony, go in good health.”

Francesco’s favorite Luzzo was just around the corner. Luzzo was then riding a high with pizza savants of the blogosphere. “Salvatore just bought a Lamborghini,” Francesco tells us.  The Road Food Warrior and I had been to Luzzo’s once recently with a passionate gullet.  The place was packed that night and the pizza was definitely off. Too much traffic for the oven, I thought.  What a surprise tonight. We bump into Salvatore Luzzo in the vestibule. Had our guru alerted him?

But our early bird pies supervised by Salvatore have the fiery oven to themselves.  We’re tasting the classics, and the Campagna with garlic and cherry tomatoes. The crust is blistered, properly scorched and cooked through. “See that basil,” says Francesco.  “It’s green.” Salvatore sends out the Tartufata also known as The Martha after guess who. It’s layered with proscuitto, buffalo mozzarella and perfumed with black truffle oil.  “I told her ‘It’s light like you Martha,’ says Salvatore, ‘And sweet like you and powerful like you’ and she jumped up and kissed me. Francesco has a sentimental pleasure in the fizzy wineTKTK Andrew Weil is sitting at a table by himself as we head toward the door. (211-13 First Avenue near 13th Street 212-473-7447 closed Monday).

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“I am not Italian, I am Neopolitan,” announces TK, the owner of Sezz Medi in Harlem. “I have a Neopolitan passport” He holds up a tear sheet of an article from the Times: “36 hours in Naples.”New Yorkj pizza is very good but nothing close to th Neopolitan. I opened this place because I wanted pizza. I could eat three pizzas a day but they weren’t making pizzas – Mezzaluna, they were making Frisbees.  When I found this location I think so near to Columbia, how can I lose?  But my partner dropped out. I had everything sent from Naples. Marble, wood, oven. “This is it,” he says taking a pie from the pizzaiola. You can’t get anything better.  55 seconds to cook. Tomato, cheese, basil.”  Italians come here from everywhere to eat this pizzas.   The pizza maker doesn’t look Italian,” I say.  I’ve had a brazilian, an Argentine and two Mexicans. “You can teach a man to be a pizzaiola,” he assures us. Most of the tables tonight are here for dinnr, pizza being just the starter…The size and uneven shape is right, the margin could be wider. one pie is not just dark it’’s scorched.