nycultureblog.com

The Homeland
Lately, Saturdays have been Jersey days for me. For all that the city has to offer, sometimes I long for the hills and trees, and hell, even the endless stretches of tangled highway that mark my suburban homeland. Sometimes I just can’t resist the urge to hop on one of those rust-bucket NJ Transit lines or the PATH and return to those familiar places right across the river. So yesterday, that’s just exactly what I did.

Pizza Across the Water
Anyone reading this probably already knows that pizza is high on my list of things to do where ever I go, and no where is that more true than when I come home to NJ. In fact, I’d dare say I find NJ pizza to be of generally higher quality than it’s NYC cousins. So to start off my day in Jersey, of course, I had to get a pie or three.

Star’s Tavern
Star’s is something of a fixture in Orange, a town not far from Newark. I’ve been going there off and on for maybe about eight years now, and surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly!) nothing has changed. The same waitress has been serving up pies here for as long as I can remember, and the pizza itself is a paragon of continuity.

This pizza defies much of my traditional logic on the subject. It’s a thin crust pie, and when I say thin, I mean THIIIIIIN. It’s so thin that most people can put down at least a whole pie, no problem, and not feel sickeningly full after. I don’t usually go in for thin, because it tends to be flimsy, floppy and poorly proportioned, but these pies are nothing of the sort.

Well crisped, they hold together nicely, and the flavor is full and robust. The sauce actually seems to simmer out over the cheese, which is used just sparingly enough to balance everything out. It’s really the perfect fusion of pizza basics, as you’ll quickly learn if you order any kind of topping or deviation from the standard recipe. Go ahead, just try it. I’ve had 8 different kinds of pies at this place, and never one that even compared to the original. It seems that adding even the slightest variable ruins the delicate pizza math that makes these pies so magical. Simply put, if the basic recipe can be improved upon, I haven’t experienced it.

The Holistic New York City
It’s been about two years since I moved to New York City, and in that time I’ve seen a lot. Sometimes more than I’d have liked in fact! But one thing I’d never seen was a little ol’ place called STATEN *EFFIN* ISLAND! Actually, the much more surprising thing is that I’m not even close to alone in this. It seems that virtually none of my contemporaries who live and/or work in the city have been to this “Forgotten Borough.” With that in mind, I’ll start with a (very) brief history lesson compliments of Wikipedia.

Fast Facts About the Fifth Borough
- There are nearly half a million people on this island. That’s about the size of Wyoming for you trivia buffs.
- Staten Island is also known as Richmond County
- But it used to be called Aquehonga Manacknong and Eghquaons by it’s 16th century Lenape inhabitants.
- The island became a part of our fair city in 1898

Island Hopping
One of the major reasons most New Yorkers haven’t bothered with Staten Island is it’s relative inaccessibility. Yes, you can drive there, or take the bus, or walk if you’re really brave or are stranded around the southwestern edge of Brooklyn, but given the average New Yorker’s utter reliance on the subway system, this is by far the hardest borough to reach for most. The only reasonably efficient way to get there is via the Staten Island ferry, which is a trip in itself!

The ferry runs from Battery Park about every half hour, but not necessarily on the half hour as promised. We went on Sunday and with the flood of foreigner tourists staring out in awe at the Statue of Liberty, speaking anything but English, it reminded me of what I imagine the immigrant experience might’ve been like. Except less smelly and arguably more annoying.

Is This New Jersey?
When we disembarked from the ferry we immediately were aware that the 90,000 people on there with us had somehow disappeared. We got turned around a bit trying to overcome my fear of city buses, but once we got on and started into this enigmatic and impenetrable island, we learned that it was actually…basically like New Jersey. There were trees, and grass, and roads that twist and curve over rolling hills instead of going in straight lines! And those roads, do you know what they did? They took us directly to pizza.

Joe and Pat’s Pizzeria
Right off the the 61 bus is a Pizzeria call Joe and Pat’s, which was honestly well worth the trip. In fact, it was one of the best pies I’ve had in the city! Fresh, simple, crispy but not crackery, I was really impressed by this unassumingly appointed Italian restaurant. It had all the standard fair, and some specialty pies, and all were excellent. Service was good, and the atmosphere was quiet and inviting. I’d go back, maybe not any time, but eventually.

Satisfying a Craving
On Monday, myself and several friends from work decided to try out a restaurant that I’ve been hoping to visit for quite some time now. L’Ecole is attached to the French Culinary Institute, a highly respected cooking school here in the city. Chefs training at the school spend time at the restaurant, learning on the job, but make no mistake, their skills are already quite formidable. In fact, I was told that a student chef by the name of Patrick Farrell was the person responsible for creating the entire prefix menu that we were served from

The Prefix
Dinner at L’Ecole was served from a four-course prefix menu with an appetizer, main course, sorbet and dessert, all for $40. I’d heard the portions were sizeable, so we all ordered different courses hoping to try a little of everything. I’m pleased to say, we weren’t disappointed.

Among the delicious creations we tried, the soup that was served as an appetizer was by far the most amazing dish. Complex, smooth, rich and delicious, the soup set off an explosion of flavor on my pallet that I won’t soon forget. The downside was that given how rich it was, the portion was perhaps a little too generous. Though we all shared, the people who ordered it has some trouble finish. This was actually true of many of the dishes, though I always say that its better to have too much than too little.

The other highlight in my mind was the duck, which was served in two parts: dark meat on the bone, and light meat breaded and filleted. Both were incredibly tender, and each portion had a distinct flavor which perfectly complimented the dish as a whole.

After the main course, a pallet cleansing sorbet of pomegranate and apple-cider was offered before dessert. By the time the creme broule, cheesecakes and fruit tarts came out, we delightfully full but just to taste the sweet things in front of us was well worth the effort.

The Atmosphere
The decor was simple but elegant, and the service was spectacular. We spent nearly two hours eating, drinking, laughing and never felt rushed or bored. This would be a perfect destination, methinks, for a nice but not totally over-the-top dinner date.

The Bottom Line
L’ecole was exceptional in all respects. I really can’t sing their praises enough. The service was impeccable and the food was five-star quality, while the price was quite modest considering the dining experience. I’ll definitely be back here again when they rotate the menu, which I’m told happens about once every six weeks as new chefs rotate in the kitchen. I suggest everyone give this place a try. I promise you’ll leave with a smile!

I Bleed Marinara
My love of Italian food came in large part from my mother’s cooking, which would seem only natural, IF my mother weren’t 100% Irish… But if you think that ever stopped her from making some world-class meatballs, sausage and pepper sandwiches, or chicken parm, you’d be sadly mistaken mister!

Anyway, since moving to New York City, I can’t get my mom’s amazing cooking too often, but a man still has needs! In my two years of city-dwelling, I have managed to find a few places that satisfy me, but since I live so close to Little Italy now, I decided that this weekend I would explore that neighborhood a bit further.

Just to add some background, Little Italy used to be a significant residential neighborhood for ethnic Italians, but it has lately been encroached upon by Chinatown to the point where it exists along only a few city blocks between Canal and Broome (according to gonyc.about.com).

Il Piccolo Bufalo
Despite the area’s diminishing size, there are still some gems worth visiting. In my humble opinion, Il Piccolo Buffalo is real diamond in the rough. Unlike several other Little Italy restaurants, the staff here is exceptionally friendly and helpful, and the food is excellent. I went there with a lady friend of mine on Saturday, and in this instance, I got a pizza called the Piccolo Diavolo, which is basically a good spicy sausage pizza with hot peppers and capicola. Delicious! And considering the portions and service, very reasonably priced!

Ferrara Bakery and Cafe
Afterwards, we decided to get some coffee, so we headed over to a fairly well-known Italian bakery nearby, called Ferrara. This place is pretty upscale as far as bakeries go. Marble floors, hardwood facades, and suited waiters and waitresses that could easily go serve a high society ball or wedding without a wardrobe change, all come together to make this place a very classy experience. The prices are reflective of this, of course, but once you get a table you can sit and enjoy coffee, dessert or a nightcap in peace and comfort. One thing they most definitely don’t do at Ferrara is rush you, so take your time and relax!

The Bottom Line
The bottom line for Little Italy, in my experience, is this: choose your battles. A lot of the shops and restaurants here have degenerated into tourist traps that get you in the door with sweet promises of authenticity and deliciousity that ultimately don’t hold up under even the most casual expectations. With a little trial and error, however, you’ll find that there are a few places worth visiting, and may find yourself coming back again and again!

Koronet pizza isn’t the most famous, or even the best prepared pizza in the city, but it sure is the biggest! As anyone familiar with this unassuming pizzeria will attest, the major selling point for Koronet is it’s massive single slice. These things are enormous, easily equal to two slices of any lesser pie. whereas I can easily polish off half a pie from most of the other pizza places in NYC, one Koronet slice did the job for me. I really can’t stress this enough: Koronet slices are big!

The other important draw is the price. Where many places in the city charge upwards of $2 for a normal size slice these days, the doublesize Koronet slices are only $3. In my opinion, this makes them without question one of the best values to be had in the sprawling pizza community of New York.

Unfortunately, Koronet is not without its issues. Chief among them, from my perspective, is location. All the way up around 110th street, Koronet is a bit of a hike for many New Yorkers, especially if you’re from another borough. If you happen to be a student at Columbia, its just a short walk to Koronet’s pizza, but everyone else will just have to pile on to the 1 train and make the journey one stop at a time.

Koronet pizza is good, but not necessarily great. While it doesn’t pack the same complex, classic flavors of the city’s more iconic pizzerias, it does offer pizza by the oh so large slice making it perfect for the budget minded. The bottom line is this: if you’re looking for a lot of food at budget prices, make the trip. If you don’t live near 110th street and you aren’t necessarily in the mood for mind-bogglingly large pies, then Koronet is probably too far out of your way to be worth it. Instead, try a slice at Joe’s in the Village (review coming soon!) and give Koronet a shot next time you’re up in the 100’s.

Last weekend my brother was in town with his car, so of course I wanted to show him some of New York’s finest pizza’s, but I also wanted to catch a ride to a pizzeria that is otherwise a pain to get to by subway. We chose Di Fara Pizza at 1424 Avenue J here in Brooklyn, which has topped a good number of pizza rankings in the last several years, as anyone who’s seen their walls of collected magazine and paper articles can attest.

The critical thing to remember about this place is that it’s a little pizzeria that suddenly got big press coverage starting sometime in the last ten years or so, despite having been around for closer to forty. This had significant impact on our pizza eating experience, as I’ll explain below.

The Pizza: 8
If I’m not mistaken, this is one of the few top pizzeria’s in the city that doesn’t use a brick oven to make its pies. Trust me when I say that this is in no way a bad thing. The pizza was delicious and perhaps the best part is that you can see the chef, who’s been making pies here for decades, ply his craft. Every ingredient and topping is sliced fresh right in front of you, and added with care before the pie gets put in the oven. The result is a pie with a delicious thin layer of mozzarella baked evenly over hand-made sauce with a slight drizzling of olive oil and topped with a flavorful and aesthetically pleasing portion of basil. The one thing that detracted from this pizza slightly is actually the exact same problem that Lombardi’s pizza had: the crust was soggy in the middle despite being thin and expertly charred everywhere else. As before, I’m forced to dock a point from an otherwise incredible pie.

The Toppings: 7
The toppings were tasty and we could see that they were fresh, as they were added literally right in front of us, but they weren’t as ubiquitous as many that I’ve had recently, and just aren’t particularly transcendent enough to get past simply being “very good” in my book. Really nothing special if you’ve had some of the city’s top pies before.

Other: 2
I regret this, but the truth is that Di Fara Pizza is another instance of an excellent pizza marred by a frustrating eating experience. As I said earlier, the chef makes each pie fresh, right in front of you, which is great. The downside is, he makes everyone else’s pies fresh right in front of you too, and the novelty wears off quickly when you’ve got a dozen orders ahead of yours. The fact that the pizza oven itself can only hold 2 pies at a time doesn’t help move things along either. We went at lunch time, about 1pm, and all told, we waited about a half hour in the congested line that was jutting out the door when we got there, and perhaps another half hour after that to get our pie.

I’d been warned by several pizza critics that it might take a while to get the food at Di Fara, and that they don’t necessarily serve the pies in the order you arrived, but even knowing this, the reality is frustrating and tedious. The place is small and cramped, your standard hole-in-the-wall with seating for maybe 15 people at a stretch, which ordinarily would be okay for a pizzeria if you didn’t have to spend an hour there waiting before you even get your food. This singular annoyance detracted considerably from the experience.

The Bottom Line
Don’t go out of your way. The pizza is good, yes, but the location is remote to most NYC commuters unless you have a car, and even if you can get there easily, you may be having second thoughts after the long wait for your food. I think that if you arrive on a really off-time, like 11:30 in the morning or something, you might not have to wait, but even a few orders ahead of you can back up the entire line by maybe 10 minutes a piece, so budget your time accordingly.

Hard to imagine New York City without a pizza place on every block, isn’t it? But believe it or not, NYC was not always the bustling pizza metropolis we know and love today. In fact, it is widely believed that pizza surfaced on the streets of the big apple in the early 1900s, and if the legends are true, we have one pioneering pizzeria to thank for it: Lombardi’s.

Most New York Pizza enthusiasts will have heard the name Lombardi’s before, perhaps owing as much to it’s reputation for serving top quality pizza to this very day, as to its broad acknowledgment as being the first pie in the city. A few weeks ago, I decided that it was time to step beyond the vale at 32 Spring Street in Manhattan and find out what this famous slice of New York was really made of.

The Pizza: 8
The pizza at Lombardi’s was actually quite delicious, in keeping with it’s reputation. While I can’t vouch for what it may have tasted like in the paste, the current incarnation of Lombardi’s pizza was definitely one of the better pies in the city, but perhaps not quite a top tier competitor. The sauce was exceptional with a precise balance of basil working to compliment the tomato base. The cheese was Buffalo Mozzarella, as I’ve come to expect from many of the top pizza joints, but it was sliced thin and spread across the pie liberally, scoring some nice points over the competition. I docked some points for the crust however, because it was soggy and droopy in the middle. Once you eat past this, the crust is foldable, but the fold didn’t help me on those first few bites. Without consistently crunchy and foldable crust, I had to knock this pizza down to an 8 despite its otherwise near perfect design.

The Toppings: 9
The toppings were my usual, pepperoni and mushrooms, which always make a delightful combination. This occasion was no exception, and i was especially pleased with the quality of the mushrooms. If you’re a mushroom lover, you probably dig that slightly pungent flavor, and these mushrooms took their flavor to the next level. Absolutely fantastic! The pepperoni was also good, cooked to a nice crispiness as only the top pizzeria’s in the city can without drying it up.

Other: 6
Not unlike the digs at Patsy’s, this is a full blown restaurant with tables and a waiting staff. What was very different from Patsy’s was how packed it was. We dropped by around 6:15 and had to elbow our way to the hostess where we put our name down for a table with about a forty minute wait. This wasn’t honestly too surprising, given Lombardi’s reputation and the dinner hour rush, so we backtracked and waited in a nearby bar until we thought we could go back and claim the table. Incidentally, there is a bar at Lombardi’s that you can wait at, but it seemed cramped and crowded, so we didn’t make the attempt.

Once seated, the service was like clockwork, but definitely no frills to be had here. The place was far too crowded and the staff far too busy for anyone to fuss too much over any one table, and we were seated in the basement area with the wine along with several other parties, so it we didn’t see our waitress much anyway. Fortunately, we decided to keep it simple, and our pizza came in a timely fashion.

Price wasn’t any more of an obstacle than it is at any of the top pizza places, and the food is definitely worth the indulgence, but they aren’t cutting you any breaks, especially when payment is cash only. Overall I’m only giving this place a rating of 6 for the “other” category because of the combination of hectic dining and no credit cards.

The Bottom Line
Try it during off-hours and bring cash. While everything was good, it could have been so much better if we’d been able to sit at ground level without a wait. Take away the slightly hectic atmosphere and I’m sure that you’ll have a much better time here.

Since I haven’t posted in a while, here’s a quickie to wet your appetite as I dive into yet another round of pizza exploration. As I may have mentioned in the past, I’ve been using one very comprehensive list of top pizzeria’s in NYC in addition to my own research and questionares. This Pizza Bible, as I’ve come to know it, has led me to some of the best pies in the city, and now that I’ve finally found the online version, it’s time to share its knowledge and wisdom with all of you. So now, compliments of Time Out New York, I give you The Pizza Bible! May it lead you to the promised land as it has me.

We’d worked up quite an appetite laughing in the park for two hours, and knowing that the famous dessert establishment, Serendipity, was in the area, we thought we’d give it a shot. Unfortunately, there was over a two hour wait. Fortunately, there was a Patsy’s right across the street, and having never tried this particularly renowned slice of New York City, I was naturally obliged to go.

I was definitely not disappointed, but I’m not going to go into as great detail for this pizza because in the end, it was the spitting image of the pizza I got at Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. The reason for this, I learned, is that the two famous pizza makers are related! Patsy Lancieri, the man for whom the restaurant is named, is apparently Patsy Grimaldi’s Uncle!

The two are so similar that I’m actually just going to refer you to my review of Grimaldi’s if you want to find out what I think of the pizza. The point on which the two differ is really the presentation. Where Grimaldi’s was completely packed to the point of having a line out the door, Patsy’s was calm and it was easy to get a table that we didn’t have to share, literally rubbing elbows with our neighbors. The service at Patsy’s was more along the lines of a good Italian restaurant than a pizzeria, which can definitely be refreshing, and the price was pretty much the same as it would have been anywhere else, so I’m giving Patsy’s a solid 8 in the other category. Very impressive.

After having had my obligatory pizza fill for the night, I decided to indulge my sweet tooth. Since Serendipity wasn’t happening anytime soon, I crossed the street yet again and explored what can only be described as a Wonderland of Sugar. Dylan’s Candy Bar is a two story candy nirvana owned by Ralph Lauren’s daughter, Dylan Lauren. The first floor encompasses both a multitude of candy dispensers and an ice cream bar. The dispensers are filled with every type of candy imaginable, including my personal favorite, chocolate covered gummy bears. So much chocolatey goodness!

I was elated to have found my chocolate covered gummy bears right away, but there was a whole other level worth exploring. The downstairs is also filled with a wide array of candy dispensers, the most prominent being the M&M display with M&Ms in every color of the visual spectrum. Another amazing find was the Wonka Bar, which I had never tried before. I learned that this store had been the epicenter for the promotion of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and it was obvious why. The candy selection was incredibly diverse and pretty much any treat you could possibly want is available, even schnozberries. Just kidding!

Since I’ve been devoting myself more and more to trying the top pizza’s in the city, I figured it was only right to also mention some great pizza sites, so here they are:
SliceNY.com: An amazing site written by someone who’s tried seemingly hundreds if not thousands of New York pizzas. I use this site from time to time when I’m looking for my next slice or pie, and so should you!

New York Pizza Blog: While not strictly about pizza in New York City, this blog has been reveling in the glory of New York style pizza wherever it is available. If you’re on the go and need a good slice, check out this site.

CitySearch: It’s not a blog, but it is a great way to find delicious NYC Pizza.

That ought to give everyone something to chew on, so enjoy until next week, when I plan to check out Murder at The Met! I can’t wait!