Pizza in New York City

I'll be heading back to Manhattan on another weekend trip later this month, and will be looking to try at least one or two of the best pizza places in the city. I've tried a few good ones, including Vinnie's, Da Nico, and Grimaldi's (which is in Brooklyn, actually), but I want to try a place I haven't been to.

Any suggestions? I've heard great things about Lombardi's, Patsy's, Joe's, and John's. Has anyone tried these in NYC? Any others that are worth trying?

Here are two excellent threads on the subject:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4700
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5165

Best,
Michael

Difara's at 1424 Ave J in Brooklyn is AMAZING pizza! Nothing else like it! I was thinking of having a shirt made with that address on it because I will never forget it even though I've only been there a few times. I think about that place often.

Totonno's in Coney Island is really good too. They have the same style as Grimaldi's and some other places but the flavor is better there.

At the risk of being redundant....

If you’re talking pizza in Manhattan, there’s only one question you need to ask: Do I want the slightly weightier-style of a New York Neapolitan pizza or do I want an authentic, traditional Neapolitan pie?
My selections would be Nick’s Pizzeria for New York style and Una Pizza Napoletana for traditional.

If you choose UPN, it’ll make you heart sing.



Nick’s Restaurant & Pizzeria
1814 2nd Avenue (between 93rd & 94th Sts.)
(212) 987-5700

Una Pizza Napoletana
349 E 12th St (just off 1st Avenue)
(212) 477-9950

To be further redundant, I'd say all of the OP's suggestions are worth trying. Lombardi's clam pie is something special. Also, there's a Totonnos in Midtown/UWSide, if you want to stick to Manhattan.

There's a Totonnos near the Upper West Side? Excellent! I'll be staying near 72nd Street and Broadway, so that might be the place to go.

Sorry, I meant Upper East, but still.

http://www.totonnos.com/NYC.html

Perhaps this is blasphemous, but I find the pizza to be a smidge better at the Upper East Side Totonno's, but the vibe at the Coney Island location can't be beat.

Johns in Midtown serves a nice brick oven pie and its located in a really cool renovated church. I'm a fan of a simple pie there. The Margharita is excellent.

This is an offshoot of John's in Greenwich Village. Whole pies only.

http://www.greatrestaurantsmag.com/NYC/ ... _view/190/

I recently hit a bunch of the top ones in a row. In order, this is how I'd rank them with qualifications:

DiFara's: Great overall flavor with fresh basil, nicely charred crust, handmade by one guy. Terrible waits and some inconsistencies. Most types of amount of cheese. NOT a coal oven.

Grimaldi's: Good balance with nice consistent crust that's salty, bready, and tangy. Nice fresh tomato sauce and good toppings, though fresh mozz is only okay. Great pepperoni. Don't ask to take a picture, just take one and let them get mad.

Patsy's: Must get the fresh mozz. Crust can be way too flimsy, though, otherwise possibly the second best.

Lombardi's: Good balanced pie, but just not quite the zing of flavor of some of the others. Smoky crust, though.

I know what you mean about picture-taking at Grimaldi's. I took a couple in there and I could sense all eyes upon me! I did the same at Pepe's in New Haven and had no problem (for a picture of their amazing pizza, check out the link below:)

http://www.hiddenboston.com/blogphotopages/FrankPepesPizzeriaPhoto.html

I have a great pic of the guy essentially saying, "No pictures for you!"

Di Fara doesn't have a coal oven? Darn. I'd prefer a coal-fired pizza. I probably won't have a chance to get that far into Brooklyn, anyways.

Maybe I'll hit Patsy's. I'm pretty sure the one in Harlem has a coal oven...

extramsg wrote:DiFara's: Great overall flavor with fresh basil,
nicely charred crust, handmade by one guy. Terrible waits and some
inconsistencies. Most types of amount of cheese. NOT a coal
oven.

extra,

I'm curious as to why you noted that DiFara's is not a coal burner?

As one who has actively sought out coal burning pizzerias in NY, I can only guess
that you are also intrigued with these rare establishments; either for
their historic significance or quite possibly some unique tasting
profile, such as the smokey element that coal often imparts.
The traditional selling point about coal-burning ovens is that they
burn at a higher temperature than most (if not all) wood burners and
hence, the pizza dough will cook more evenly, top and bottom.
Some claim that coal ovens burn too high
and that the pizza has a tendency to dry out.
However, a number of other factors seem to be more
important to a great pie than strictly super-high oven temperatures.
Of the several coal-burning pizzerias in NY that I have tried, only
one falls in my personal top 5 pizzerias in NY, that being Totonno's.
This isn't to suggest by a long shot that MOST of the others aren't
making absolutely wonderful pizza in their own right but I do believe
that cooking techiniques by the pizzaioli as well as the quality of
the ingredients used (flour, tomatoes, fresh cheeses, fresh herbs,
etc.) far outweigh the potential advantage of using coal over wood or,
in some cases, the best high-temperature gas ovens (i.e Nick's).
I believe the allure with coal has more to do with the fact that the
earliest Italian pizza makers in this country (Gennaro Lombardi, Patsy
Lancieri, Anthony (Totonno) Pero, etc.) were initally breadmakers.
The configuration of their coal ovens was ideal for making bread; a
much different creature than what they would ultimately have
wanted to use to cook a neapolitan-style pizza.

For me, it's really more for the historical significance than anything else. Perhaps the best pizza place in Boston--Regina's--has a gas-fired oven, so yes, it's not always the oven itself that makes the pizza so good. But I love all the history that you find in Manhattan and the boroughs, and those old-fashioned pizza places are of great interest to me.

In Manhattan, both Lombardi's and Arturo's on Houston Street are coal burners.

I mentioned it because it's important to some people and all the others I mentioned use coal. I believe DiFara's is a gas burner. However, note that Apizza Scholls here in Portland uses electric and gets it above 800 degrees and does a pizza that I think is comparable (dare I say superior?) to anything I've had in NY while still producing something of a similar ilk.

I do think the coal imparts some flavor. That may or may not be a good thing to you. But the pizzas seemed to have some smokiness to them like happens with real wood ovens. (We have two places here in Portland using real wood ovens, Ken's Artisan Pizza -- from the same guy as the bakery -- and Nostrana. Both make very good pizzas, though not really the same kind of pizza as you get in NY.)

I agree that the pizza maker is king along with plenty of other things. We all know that good equipment can never top good skills, although I think the right equipment can be a necessary condition for producing a certain product. In this case, you need an oven -- whatever the method of heating -- that can get over 800 degrees.

My favorite pie was not a coal oven pie. But I don't think that had anything to do with it. I just liked his stuff more. I liked the cheeses he used, that he put the basil on after the pie was cooked, the flavor of the sauce, etc. The only thing I didn't like was the wait and his daughter's very NY attitude.

I'm pretty sure all of the older places mentioned are coal burners, even the new branches of the old places. (Manhattan Totonno's has two, as is obvious in the pic at the linked site.)

I should mention, right down from Carnegie Hall is a perfectly serviceable, newish, coal oven place, Angelo's.

I taste a distinct flavor from coal ovens in the crust in NYC, and the bread at D'Amato's that is different from the also tasty fireplacey flavor of wood burners, such as the many proliferating around Chicago. I'll need to taste that electric pie to believe it.

You're certainly welcome to. Come to PDX and I'll buy you one:



The coal does give some distinctiveness, just like true wood ovens (ie, not the things that have gas in the back and say they're wood ovens, but places that actually have a pile of wood they're stuffing into them). But what it gives is nothing compared to the quality of the bread itself. And what is gained with coal is exchanged for consistency, I think, from electric heat.

http://www.apizzascholls.com/ApizzaPizza.htm

extramsg wrote:

Now that's a good looking pizza!!!!

That's housemade bianca on there, btw. And the little necks are placed on uncooked and open during cooking releasing their juices to the top of the pie. It really is fantastic. However, I still often get the tartufo, their white pie drizzled with truffle oil straight out of the oven. But even the margherita...... Sorry for the off-topic local pride.

Boy, I wish I had known about that pizza place when I was in Portland.

Tough to get a good white pizza in Boston these days. There used to be a place called Bel Canto that served a killer deep dish torta bianca, but they are long gone...

bnowell724 wrote:Difara's at 1424 Ave J in Brooklyn is AMAZING pizza! Nothing else like it! I was thinking of having a shirt made with that address on it because I will never forget it even though I've only been there a few times. I think about that place often.

Totonno's in Coney Island is really good too. They have the same style as Grimaldi's and some other places but the flavor is better there.

These are my also my two favorite pizzas in the 5 boros, although Patsy's in Harlem is highly competitive. I actually prefer the "regular" pizza to the fresh mozarella variety, although they are both great. Both are wonderful experiences, too, full of atmosphere.

I love coal ovens but I don't think, say, Arturo's or Lombardi's is competitive in taste or texture to the above three.

Dave Feldman wrote:I love coal ovens

Perhaps its not the fact of the coal oven per se, but the interaction of the dough and the oven.

Difara's dough flops in your hands--pick it up once, give it a gentle stretch or two and lay it onto the board. Watching the old man (and with a 45 minute wait there is ample opportunity to observe things closely), his dough is ciabatta like, a mature aged dough that stretches itself as soon as it is picked up.

Ciabatta dough is made with a starter, but little to no added yeast. Its floor proofed for several days, the yeast that's naturally in the air and the starter then producing a very floppy almost soupy dough. Exactly like Difara's.

And even in a 575-600 gas oven rather than a hotter coal oven, it cooks up real quick, especially with fresh mozarella rather than even the best more dense in structure processed pizza cheese, such as Grande Low Moisture. That said, I like Grande cheese pizza's too--neighborhood style is how I think of it.

How good was Difara's? Well, immediately after an ample Sriprahai lunch, four of us knocked back a large pie in nothing flat. Nuff said.

btw--Baker's Pride electric pizza ovens do a fabulous job, but they cost a small fortune to operate!

As for clam pizza...a chef friend of mine is fond of saying 'that Americans will eat sh*t if you cover it in cheese'.

I think DiFara's oven probably gets well above 600 degrees. The typical gas "wood style" ovens around here can get up to 600 degrees. The thing he was using seemed a heck of a lot hotter than those, which usually are running over 500 degrees here. His pizzas didn't cook any slower, from what I saw, than anywhere else.

Oh my that pizza is making me think of making immediate flight reservations to Portland! Thanks for alerting us to this great venue!

Just found this very interesting thread:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index. ... 2#msg11222

It appears that DiFara's uses an oven temp around 700 degrees.

extramsg wrote:Just found this very interesting thread:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index. ... 2#msg11222

It appears that DiFara's uses an oven temp around 700 degrees.

Extraordinary thread. Many thanks. High heat rapid proofing. Very interesting. No wonder that dough is so relaxed.

Over the last few years, Jeff Varazano and others from pizzamaking.com have been educating all of us neophyte pizza enthusiasts with their incredible threads dealing with "reverse engineering" of pizzas from the great New York pizzerias.
I have been following these threads for some time and with great interest since they are loaded with unique information about the science of re-constructing some of the great pizzas of New York pizza world, such as DiFara's and Patsy's.
Varazano has created a buzz lately within the online pizza circles for his incredible work, being noted in the great New York-based online pizza site sliceny.com and recently being interviewed by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC).

http://jvpizza.sliceny.com/JeffOnCanadianRadioOct06.wmv

Well, the ultimate is his tutorial/recipe here:

http://jvpizza.sliceny.com/

Ever since I've read it, the instructions on hydrating and building gluten with low amounts of flour have helped me in all kinds of dough preps.