This great comic arrived in the Slice inbox thanks to Slice'r TXCraig1. Damn those pizza piranhas! Don't be too alarmed, though, pizza piranhas do not exist. I googled it just to be sure. BUT, this exists!
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
[YouTube: SiriusEntertainment]
The Pizzapartment is real: "Tidy living quarters for your leftover slices."
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
So I've got to admit: sometimes when I write a Hangover Helper entry, I sorta stretch the truth a bit. I'm not always hungover when I'm seeking out the Sunday morning grease-and-chili-and-pickle bombs I'm drawn to after a night of drinking.
This, however, is not one of those times. Waiting for a table at Motorino at the ungodly hour of 11 a.m. on a Sunday, I could feel the last drops of two-too-many Sazeracs sloshing around in the empty chamber where my brain used to be. (After some minor pleading with my body that threatened to turn physical, my brain had made the wise decision to go sleep at a friends place and work things out the morning after.)
Motorino's Pizza Al'Uovo ($14), served only on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., arrives at the table like an angry force, jets of steam shooting from the poofy, leopard-spotted rim, the layer of melted homemade fior di latte bubbling under a slick of dark red chili oil. Their pizzas are never a demure affair, but this guy is about at wild as they come.
If the fat from the mozzarella and chili oil aren't enough for you, you always have the option of breaking the soft yolks of the eggs baked into the top of it, letting their golden yolks ooze and meld with the cheese below. Hunks of smoky pancetta dot the pie, while a dusting of fresh grated Pecorino Romano brings some bite to the party.
A couple of slices of this pie along with a Mexican Coke or two saw my brain meekly knocking at the back door asking if it could please be let back in. Another hangover averted.
349 East 12th Street, New York, NY 10003 (Between 1st and 2nd map); 212-777-2644; motorinopizza.com
About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
http://imgur.com/Oitg6">Neil Armstrong making pizza. Update: More info on this photo. [Life]
Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.
Ever since I've started writing about Philadelphia tomato pie (which is different from New Haven and Trenton tomato pie) here on Slice, there's been a lot of controversy about whether it's a Philly thing. I assumed it was since no one outside of Philly I'd ever met had ever heard of eating cold, cheese-less squares of pizza from a bakery.
Just like all the folks from Utica, Rhode Island, Northeastern Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts who probably think bakery pizza originated in their corner of the world, it turns out this old-school, bakery style, no-cheese pizza thing exists in little pockets all over the country, with slight variations, different names, and loyal fans convinced their spot is the best and/or the original. And while I was busy googling Scachatta—a cold square pizza style that's been in Tampa since at least 1912—I missed one that's practically right under my nose, half an hour away in Wilmington, where they call it "Delaware Tomato Pie".
Serpe's is an old-school Italian Bakery all the way, with a line of locals waiting at the door for them to open at 7am for coffee and donuts. They do all sorts of pastries and cakes, along with bread that I'm assuming ends up at some of the awesome looking old steak and sub shops we drove past on the way there, making it hard to stay on task with the tomato pie.
Serpe's tomato pie is the real deal, as good as or maybe even better than your average Philly bakery. The dough color and soft texture are identical to the Philly-style, and slices are medium thick with a nice, fresh tasting red sauce that's sweet but not ridiculously so. The big difference is the lack of and Parm or Romano shaken on top, and the inclusion of garlic slivers in the sauce. Neither pungent and raw, nor roasted, they were most likely sauteed beforehand or cooked in the sauce. Either way an awesome twist on something familiar.
It's definitely a little bit pricier than Philly at $24.00 for a full sheet—but totally worth it, up there with some of the best I've had so far. Black Lab Breads is another tomato pie spot in Wilmington that I'll have to check out next time, along with a few of Serpe's stuffed breads, one of those sub shops, and whatever hidden tomato pie spots I missed.
1411 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington, DE
(map)
302-994-1868 ; serpesbakery.com
About the author: Hawk Krall is a Philadelphia-based illustrator who has a serious thing for hot dogs. Dig his dog drawings? Many of the illustrations he has created for Hot Dog of the Week are available for sale: hawkkrall.net/prints/.
[Photograph: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
I've balked at the price of a slice before, for sure. But I also know that I am just itching to give Dom Demarco a $5 bill for a slice of his pie when I am next in Brooklyn (though the $4 to $5 rise in price caused quite the stir in 2009, with Mayor Bloomberg weighing in— and of course Adam too). Of course, the amount of money I spend annually on gas in search of great pizza makes 5 bucks looks like a steal. We calculate that the average slice in NYC (where slice culture has its deepest roots) is $2.75. Based on that, how much is too much for a large cheese slice?
Related: Why Di Fara Costs $5 a Slice »
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
VIEW SLIDESHOW: My Pie Monday: Garbage Pizza, Pistuccia, Chopped Onions, and More!
Welcome back to My Pie Monday! In this week's homemade pizza gallery you'll find a very local "SoCal pie" from Tdough, Bierebeer's three cheese, scallion, garlic, and arugula, a four cheese pizza with some added heat from Imwalkin, a spicy but simple cappicola topped pie from BKMatt, and a sausage and ricotta pizza from Joshcalvi. Dhorst goes back to the basics with a Margherita, Norma returns to Sicilian pie making, and TXCraig1 gives his mushrooms a little pre-roast before adding them to this week's pizza. Taking inspiration from Monte's in Lynn, MA, atmast experiments with using chopped onions instead of sliced, MattSmith finds that emptying out the fridge on his dough produces a surprisingly pleasant result, and amusebouche1 takes a chance on combining figs, goat cheese, and a pistachio "Nutella".
If you're making pizza this week, send us a shot for next week's My Pie Monday!
Just take one snapshot of your homemade pizza, describe your cooking method (briefly!), and follow these instructions to get it to Slice HQ by 8pm EST on Thursday night. Be sure to let us know your Slice/Serious Eats screen name!
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
NOTE: This article contains images from the US patent archive. Links to the complete patents are linked in the caption following each photo.
A clear ancestor of the modern pizza slicer, patent was submitted in 1897 for use in trimming cigar wrappers. [Courtesy of US Patent Office—click for full patent]
In the world of food gadgetry, no piece of gear is more iconic than the pizza slicer. The mere sight of a circular blade cradled in a handle holds no mystery as to its use, however the story of its evolution is far more layered. The concept of serving pizza by the slice is fairly new (post-WWII) but the genetic material for the contemporary circular pizza blade can be found scattered across the past three centuries.
Our journey begins with the invention of the mezzaluna (half moon) by Silvio Pacitti in 1708. There's not much information floating around about this fellow, but we can safely assume he was born and lived on the Italian peninsula, the southern region of which birthed our beloved pizza. He was the Ron Popeil of his time, having invented something extremely simple to make food preparation easier. While most standard knives cut by dragging across their subject, the mezzaluna has a rounded blade that impacts its target with a downward motion as it rolls across. This creates a clean incision without disrupting the material being cut.
This pizza knife is a modern version of the mezzaluna, aka rocker, aka machete, in use at Pequod's in Chicago.[Photo: Jon Porter / Chicago Pizza Tours]
Originally available in small sizes with either a single or double blade, the mezzaluna was initially intended for vegetable and herb chopping. Pizzerias in the Midwest now employ larger versions to cut both thick and cracker-thin pizzas quickly and evenly. While it may not be as popular as its wheeled counterpart, the mezzaluna certainly predates it. The image above shows a modern version of the mezzaluna used for cutting deep dish pizza, a style which didn't emerge until the 1940s. The task of splitting such a thick product is obviously a job smaller tools aren't cut out for.
The development of the pizza wheel is much more schizophrenic than its larger counterpart, but the principle is identical. The wheel uses the same perpendicular impact method to puncture its prey but does so with a circular blade rather than the more cumbersome long blade of the mezzaluna. As previously mentioned, there was no need to quickly dice up a pizza into even units until slice culture rolled around in the middle of the 20th century. At that time, simple table knives were used to divide pies (ie Delorenzo's Tomato Pies in Trenton) but powerful alternatives lurked within unrelated industries. In the case of the pizza wheel, it all starts with wallpaper.
This wallpaper trimmer is a dead ringer for the modern pizza wheel.[Courtesy of US Patent Office—click for full patent]
Look familiar? It's essentially the modern pizza wheel at a time when pizza was barely a blip on the country's culinary radar. The inventor, David S. Morgan of Asheville, North Carolina, probably never saw a pizza in his life. But that's irrelevant because he invented a "roller-knife for trimming wall-paper," not a pizza slicer. Prior to this patent, wallpaper trimmers were bulky two-handed affairs. While they did contain a rotary blade, Morgan's improvement allowed for easier use with a single hand and that factor lends the device perfectly to the use by pizzerias.
The rotary blade's introduction to the culinary scene happens by the mid-1920s, as we can see with this "cake cutter."[Courtesy of US Patent Office—click for full patent]
As with most pizza-related paraphernalia (ie the pizza box), slicing technology has its most direct crossover from the baking industry. It emerges in the form of a "cake cutter," registered by Carl A. Frahm of Canton, Ohio in 1922, to introduce a durable, inexpensive and easy to clean tool for dividing dough before baking. It's just another variation of the handheld cutter, this time with a culinary application.
This 1958 magazine advertisement from Hardware Magazine boasts a "New Way to Cut Pizza" for the curious home chef. [Photo: Scott Wiener]
So now we have rotary blades in the food world, but steamy-hot pizza is a different animal than the raw dough targeted by Carl Frahm's cake cutter. The first circular blade slicers used for pizza were designed with small blades. But as time passed, increasing proportions of cheese and other toppings led to the increase of blade size. Not only was the larger blade better able to divide a pizza without dislodging toppings, it also kept the user's hand further from the hot cheese. Both sizes are currently in use and their selection is usually based on the product they are intended to cut. Al Santillo of Santillo's in Elizabeth, NJ uses the small wheel to fit into the corners of his rectangular Sicilian pizza pans while he prefers the larger wheel for round pies.
Vinnie's Pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn has a serious novelty pizza slicer collection. [Photo: Scott Wiener]
While the functional engineering of the pizza slicer has more or less met its peak, we've seen plenty of novelty cutters on the market over the past few years. Of course there's the Pizza Boss, which looks like a circular saw. Plenty of shark-shaped slicers have become available. And who among us hasn't seen, purchased or been gifted a USS Enterprise pizza slicer?
Two wheels are better than one? [Photo: Scott Wiener]
But of course there are those who see fault in the basic pizza wheel design. One double-bladed unit claims to save the user multiple passes with a slicer by aligning a second wheel behind the first. And who could forget the Pizza Scissors, for those who prefer to combine their cutting device and spatula. One that actually gets used in high-volume pizza operations promises even slices by stamping a pizza with a series of center-oriented blades. Believe it or not, this one actually has its base in a food cutter patented in the 1920s!
Just look how much fun it is to cut perfectly even slices (or at least to demonstrate it at a trade show)! [Photo: Scott Wiener]
Fad gadgets have their place, but longevity usually hitches a ride with simplicity. The elegance of a curved blade, whether it be loose or cradled by an extension of a handle, will likely remain steadfast in the hands and in the hearts of those who require their pizza to be sliced. In the meantime, I'm sure we'll all be looking forward to the latest pizza slicer variations, even if they are identical to a 120 year old wallpaper trimmer.
About the author: Scott Wiener runs tours of significant NYC pizzerias with an emphasis on the history, science, technology, economics and deliciousness. You can sign up for a tour at scottspizzatours.com or follow his pizza explorations on Twitter via @scottspizzatour
Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.
[Photographs: Casey Barber]
If you've ever been stuck in the rage-inducing stop-and-go traffic along northern Jersey's Route 22, I feel for you. I've been there, stuck with the glorious scenery of big box stores and chain fast food. But there's an oasis beyond the Raymours, Flanigans, and Paneras: Springfield's Saporito Pizza.
Behind the spotlessly clean counter, a display case of pies straight from the ovens showcases more options than the new Barneys shoe department. And despite the worthy contenders—portobello! chicken pesto! bruschetta!—I'm making a strong case for the cheeseless Campagnola.
It's really a pizzeria version of pan con tomate, the tapas menu standard that translates to "bread with tomato" and truly consists of nothing more than a slice of toasted or grilled bread that's rubbed with a fresh garlic clove, then with the cut side of a tomato so the fleshy juiciness smears itself onto the crust. Drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, pan con tomato is a paean to the simplicity of good ingredients.
Saporito knows good ingredients. The tomatoes, though clearly from a can and not from some hydroponic roof garden soaring over the neighboring Chipotle and TGI Friday's, are fresh-packed, chunky, and gloriously red instead of over-simmered into a sticky burgundy puree. Hints of fresh garlic and just enough salt mean you don't have to bring any shakers of powder to the table. (Well... I did reach for one shaker. Yes, the slice benefited from a healthy dusting of Parmesan. I couldn't leave well enough alone.)
The pan-baked crust has a healthy rise, walking the fine line between a slick upper layer of nearly uncooked doughiness—those of you who like to sneak bites of raw pie dough when rolling out your holiday crusts know what I'm talking about, eh?—and a crispy-edged exterior.
The Campagnola satisfied for a lunch slice, though every pizza in the case looked temptingly well-made, leaving Saporito ripe with opportunities for future Daily Slices. And since the joint is "conveniently located in the center isle of Route 22," as its website states, I won't have to endure too much road rage getting in or out of the parking lot. I really hate New Jersey traffic, but I'll put up with it for good pizza.
100 State Route 22, Springfield NJ 07081 [map]
973-379-7191; saporito-pizza.com
About the author: Casey Barber is the editor of Good. Food. Stories., a freelance food writer, and a transplanted Pittsburgher making the most of the Garden State. Find her on Twitter: @GoodFoodStories
Click to enlarge flowchart
[Via Design Taxi]
We've all been there. I'm talking about the last slice standoff. How do you decide who gets it fair and square? Pizza Hut is here to solve the dilemma with this handy dandy flowchart. It's pretty solid, except for the velociraptor leg of the flowchart journey. If you answer "no" to are you near a velociraptor, you get the last slice—so that's gonna be pretty much everyone. Otherwise there are great social cues to determine if you get to snag the last piece of the pie depending on whether you're on a date, in school, or at work. So get ready to weave your way to a "Back off buddy" or "Chomp away!"
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
[Images via YouTube: PizzaMyHut]
Whoa. The Malaysian Super Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut is one pizza to behold. And if the suggestive power of advertising has any sway over the pizza eating clientele of the East, then lots of Malaysian ladies may just find themselves betrothed.
The gist of this thing is that the garlic Napoli sauce (what is that anyway?) and cheese stuffed crust will ooze with each bite. Ew. This just looks like a disaster. Here's a closer look at the crust part...
Now, watch this video:
Apparently you have to eat the thing sideways. And watch that you don't scald yourself in front of your date when cheese and sauce eject out of the crust in a leaky mess. Hot!
[Via The Consumerist]
See also: The $10,010 Pizza Hut Proposal Package »
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
When Adam briefly mentioned the Baking Steel a couple weeks ago, it sparked an interesting discussion over the relative merits of stone vs. steel. Discussion is all well and good, but we're in the business of testing here, not speculating, so that's just what we did.
The Baking Steel is a 1/4-inch steel plate designed to replace your baking stone. I spent all last night putting it through its paces, baking a couple dozen pies of different styles. You can expect a full report on how it fared compared to a traditional baking stone in various applications—New York-style pizza and Neapolitan pizza, amongst others—but I wanted to get a quick word in before the Baking Steel's Kickstarter campaign ends this week. They've already got well past their $3,000 goal, but you can still pledge to get your limited edition steels and other goodies.
I'll cut to the chase: This thing works, stunningly well. In nearly every test and by every measure I could think of, it handily surpasses my well-used, well-loved stone, producing supremely crisp crusts and wonderfully spotty browning in record times.
Like I said, more pics and a full-on review to come soon, but here's a quick snapshot of a New York-style pie I made using our basic New York-style Pizza Dough, some New York-style Pizza Sauce, and some grated dry mozzarella.
The pie baked in just under 4 minutes (a good 2 to 3 minutes faster than my typical stone-and-broiler bake for a NY pie), and had one of the finest crusts and hole structures I've seen come out of my crappy home oven.
Bonus: I found that the steel fit perfectly over two of my burners, and after seasoning, makes a great brunch griddle for frying eggs or making french toast. Just look out for drips.
If you're willing to spend $50 on a stone (and yadda yadda yadda cheap-o quarry stone blah blah), then I'd take the plunge and get a steel. It's even convinced me to revise the pizza chapter of my book.
About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
[Image via Gizmodo]
There's a new design in pizza cutters making the internet gadget rounds. This butterfly-style handle rotary cutter by Progressive is available at Amazon for $7 (plus about that much more in shipping). Turns out that's about the average price for pizza slicers. The purpose of the t-shaped extended handle is to give the slicer some added leverage for thicker crusts. I don't know what it could really offer beyond what you already get with the classic cutter (about which you can read much much more in Scott Wiener's Brief History of the Pizza Slicer). In fact, I think trying to apply equal pressure on either sides of the handle would make slicing more challenging. And the results of not being able to maintain equal pressure seem potentially hazardous in a way straight handled rotary pizza cutters aren't. Maybe it's just how close those knuckles are to the blade in that photo.
My own kitchen isn't even stocked with a pizza cutter. I'll stick with old faithful:
My preferred pizza cutter, the Chinese cleaver. [Photograph: Meredith Smith]
Thanks to Lance Roberts for sending over the Gizmodo story.
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
VIEW SLIDESHOW: Top This: Prosciutto and Fig Pizza (à la Rubirosa)
At the beginning of fig season, Chef Al Di Meglio debuted his salty-sweet prosciutto and fig pie as a special at Soho's Rubirosa. Customers were so smitten with the pizza, they wouldn't let Al take it off the menu.
It's not hard to see why—the saltiness of the prosciutto is complemented by fresh figs, which get jam-like when cooked. Because balsamic makes a whole lot of sense with both figs and prosciutto, the pizza gets a drizzle of the reduced vinegar when it comes out of the oven.
Click on the slideshow above to add a super simple and downright delicious pie to your pizza making repertoire.
*Reduce the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan, slow and low until thickened and syrupy. Cook the vinegar to 1/4 of its original volume. Pro tip: You can improve the taste of supermarket vinegar by reducing it with equal parts of sugar and port. For 1/3 cup of vinegar use about 1 tablespoon of each.
235 Mulberry Street, New York NY 10012 (map)
212-965-0500 rubirosanyc.com
About the author: Originally from Los Angeles, Erin Mosbaugh writes Je Blague, where she chronicles her food adventures in NYC and beyond. Erin also writes dining and nightlife features for Robb Report's New York City.
Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.
The intensely expanding restaurant scene in Downtown Los Angeles has offered little to the pizza lover. Soleto Trattoria & Pizza Bar—with an approachable "non-chef driven" menu —has been loudly serving generous happy hour tapas while quietly serving a well-crafted, very chef-driven, pizza.
Executive Chef Sascha Lyon plays it coy. But he knows his pizzas are superior to most Italian restaurants—made evident when I discovered Peter Reinhart's American Pie is essentially mandatory reading in his kitchen.
The Skinny Pie ($11) is billed as the 'healthy' choice. Perhaps it skimps in fatty content, but there is no dearth of flavor. With a rich layer of ultra pulpy sauce, sweet roasted tomatoes, dollops of ricotta and a haphazard scribble of pesto, it's my favorite of the menu. Oddly, my bartender commented "it's amazing how great that pizza is, even without cheese." I stared at him blankly, because as you can see, it has plenty. But he's right about one thing, this is a great pie, no thick blanket of mozzarella necessary. Each bite is punctuated by the concentrated tang of the roasted tomatoes; their tart caramelized edges beckon you back for another slice. The ricotta tempers the bold tomatoes slightly, and the pesto does absolutely nothing except look funny.
The dough is mild, with only the faintest hint of fermentation, but the texture is outstanding. The shell shatters, revealing a pale chewy core, reminding me of the pies at Ragazza. The bulbous crust is covered with millions of tiny crisp bubbles—often the sign of a rich olive oil wash—yet this pizza doesn't create greasy fingertips.
The massive gas powered Wood Stone oven—inherited from the previous tenet, Zucca—anchors the rear interior of the dining room. The oven's temperature hovers in the mid 600s and the pizzas bake for approximately 5 minutes. I've yet to see anyone eating at the pizza bar, so the best seat in the house is always open.
[Photograph: Scott Wiener]
We're excited to let you know that Scott Wiener of Scott's Pizza Tours is once again putting together the annual Slice Out Hunger charity event. Proceeds go to City Harvest. Tokens are sold at the door and cost $1, each one redeemable for any one of a slice of pizza, a Fizzy Lizzy soda, or a raffle ticket. And we're equally excited to let you know that Serious Eats will be a part of the event this year —we'll be there volunteering, donating items for the raffle, and eating a few slices, of course!
SOH RC3 from Brooks Jones on Vimeo.
Check out this video of last year's pizza madness
What's so exciting about this event is that some of New York's very best pizzerias donate pies for the occasion—so you can get a slice of Di Fara next to a sliver of a Neapolitan pie from Keste, next to Luzzo's and Lombardi's and John's and many more. $5 could get you quite a pizza tour of the city for a single dinner. And don't worry if you can't finish every last bite because GreenBox pizza boxes, the nifty ones that double as a plate, will be donating boxes for the event. And since all proceeds go directly to the charity, and Scott's Pizza Tours matches all donations dollar-for-dollar, it's a big fundraiser for City Harvest.
Slice Out Hunger will happen Wednesday, October 10, 2012 (plenty of time to get it on your calendar!) in the lower room of St. Anthony's Church on the corner of Sullivan and Houston. Last year, more than 200 pizzas disappeared in two hours —and this year, Scott's anticipating even more pizzas and an even bigger turnout. Check out the website here.
If you're a pizzeria or someone who just wants to help, Scott's looking for more pizza donations, as well as raffle prizes, matching donors, pizza servers, etc. Interested in volunteering to help the event come together? Email Scott Wiener to get involved.
[Photographs: Meredith Smith]
The last From the Freezer post dealt with the California Pizza Kitchen Margherita. The BBQ Chicken variety got a vote or two in the comments section, so with the Margherita still fresh in my mind, I decided to see how the CPK "best recipe yet"claim fared under close Slice inspection.
Just to be up front about everything, my biases were not stacked in favor of the "bbq chicken recipe". For one, I'm in the chicken-doesn't-belong-on-pizza camp. Also, I don't think barbecue sauce has any business gettin' all cozy between the cheese and crust. And speaking of cheese, this frozen pie has my least favorite one: smoked gouda. (To me, the smoke usually tastes overwrought and the dairy leans metallic.) The remaining components of the pie are red onions and cilantro, neither of which I take issue with in general. However, since making crazy California pizza combos is the Pizza Kitchen's thing, and they proved they could actually make an edible product with the Margherita, I endeavored to approach this variety with an open mind and a really empty belly.
Despite all the strikes against this pizza, it wasn't actually as bad as I feared. The barbecue sauce—that sticky sweet version that fills the dunking cup served alongside a box of chicken nuggets—was the dominating flavor. And despite my misgivings, the cubes of "grilled" white meat chicken weren't dried out or bland (thanks to an enhanced solution, as evidenced by the ingredient list). The familiarity of fast food barbecue sauce paired with pumped up chicken meat turned what I anticipated to be a loathsome pie, into something more akin to a McDonald's-esque guilty pleasure frozen pizza experience.
Now that's not to say that this is the best frozen pizza ever. The "crispy thin crust" is like a stack of compressed flour tortillas until you reach the satisfying crunch of the pizza's lip. Though flawed as crust, it's not an offender in terms of taste, serving instead as a palette for combining more flavorful things than itself upon. But beyond the crust, over which I had no control, I saw room for improvement.
Take the cilantro, for starters. The tiny little specks of the dried herb didn't have a prayer of imparting any real cilantro flavor. But it was easy enough to chop up some fresh cilantro and sprinkle it on top.
A marked improvement. Lucky for me the smoked gouda on this pizza didn't have that smoked cheese flavor I had dreaded. It was actually indistinguishable from mozzarella. But a little smokiness, just not the kind that's in gouda, didn't sound like a terrible idea. I realized that with some help from the spice cabinet, I could add smokiness and a little heat as well. Enter the aleppo and smoked paprika:
This is when things really started looking up. For those not reading My Pie Monday every week (um, why not?!), Aleppo pepper is a thing (introduced to Slice by dhorst) and it's getting more and more converts every week. Get into it! The smoked paprika added a smokiness that isn't fake-y or off-putting, and added the flavor dimension this pizza was missing.
Because I like it spicy (and because I have more serrano peppers in the pizza garden than I know what to do with), I tossed some sliced chilis on as well. Now, I'm not claiming to have made a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but the dressed up version of the CPK BBQ Chicken was a huge improvement.
Here's a before and after slice shot:
To be honest, this had somewhat of a surprise ending. I started off not even liking the idea of this frozen pizza. But in the end, through enhancing the intended elements, I wound up making a better version and thereby convincing myself that it wasn't such a terrible pizza after all. So, maybe if this Slice thing doesn't work out I could land a job at the California Pizza Kitchen food labs?!
About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.
VIEW SLIDESHOW: Nicoletta: What Michael White is Really After
[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]
Some regular Slice-reading New Yorkers might be wondering why a national pizza blog with a strong New York bent has been completely mum on the pies at Nicoletta, the new pizza venture from über-Chef Michael White who happens to be one of the greatest (not to mention one of our favorite) Italian chefs in the city. And you'd be right to wonder. Other than a brief First Look, we've been silent on the subject.
Honestly, it was the initial negative press culiminating in Pete Wells' zero-star review in the New York Times that made us give pause and consider the matter. I mean, what is Michael White doing serving heavy, midwestern pizza with a sauce made with dried herbs and low moisture Wisconsin mozzarella?
At Slice we're a pretty democratic, knowledgable bunch of pizza lovers. We New York reviewers (that'd be Slice founder Adam, Overlord Ed, and Chief Creative Officer Kenji) like most kinds of pizza if it's made with love and care and passion and knowledge. (Well, deep dish might be the exception.)
As a pizza blog, rendering our opinion on whether the pizza is "good" or not is simple. Getting to the bottom of exactly why the pizza is the way it is and understanding it took a few more visits, some lengthy conversations both amongst ourselves and with chef White, and a lot of thought. We've tasted his pizza in all stages of development, so nobody can accuse us of not being thorough.
After a few initial visits, we all ended up coming back with the same reaction, which was largely, "I don't get it." I mean, the pizza is not bad, in the same way that any sauce and cheese-covered bread-like-object is going to be innately tasty to some degree, but in the end it's a style of pizza—moderately thick, very crunchy, extremely heavy handed with the admittedly high quality toppings—without time or place. Chef White refers to it as "midwestern pizza," a taste memory of his Wisconsin childhood, but honestly, it's a style of pizza you'll find in college towns, truck stops, and ski lodges anywhere in the country.
It's the kind of pizza that pizza chains all aspire to produce. (It's no surprise that every last one of them from Pizza Hut to Domino's, from Little Caesar to Papa John's, originated in the midwest).
So when talking about whether Nicoletta's pizza is good or not, there are two angles you could approach the question from: There's the cheffy angle, then there's the pizza chain angle.
The chef angle is where most reviewers seem to be weighing in. This is The Michael White, after all. The man who creates the finest pasta in the city. The genius with 15 New York Times stars pinned to his whites. Who gives him the right to produce anything other than cheffy, artisinal pizza?
Bones
The thing with pizza is that in order to be extraordinary, we expect the pie-man to be in there making dough every night. Running a pizzeria is not like running a normal kitchen, which is why many of the great pizzerias in the world are run by lifetime pizza obsessives, not chefs looking for the next new concept.
One night, as we finished our meal, fighting over the last spoonfuls of soft-serve (which are insanely serious indeed), we had paid our check and were about to leave, when Michael White pulls up a chair to our table. He really wanted to know what we thought of his pizza. "Don't worry, he said, 'I have a thick skin. But it's not kevlar, so I do bleed."
After we expressed our genuine confusion at what he was trying to do; the mental split we found between the Michael White we knew and the Michael White of Nicoletta, he responded: "I don't want to compete with Motorino, Kesté, any of those guys. Are you kidding me? I'd have to be back in that kitchen every single night making the dough and baking the pies myself if I wanted to be in the same league as them. That's not for me, and that's not what we're trying to do here."
You heard it, folks, White himself admitting that his pizza is not at the level of the greats in the city. What he did say, however, was this: "I'm not reinventing the wheel here, I'm just trying to introduce the pizza of my youth, the pizza I love and the pizza many midwesterners love, to New Yorkers. It's literally carbon-copy. Yeah, we're doing things like using a biga and a three day ferment on our dough, we're using the best ingredients you can buy, but the pizza itself is straight up midwestern pizza."
Hole structure
What about that sauce? That dry-herb, cooked tomato sauce? "I make that sauce with straight up commodity crushed tomatoes from a can and a dried herbs, about 30 grams per half dozen 40 ounce cans. It's not for everyone, but that's the way the sauce is, so that's the way I kept it." If there was one element we would have changed on the pizza, it would have been that sauce, yet if the filled tables around us were any indication, most folks didn't mind it.
White's goal is to expand the operation into at least 40 locations; he's already talking about a second location in Jersey. Nicoletta is not a high-end cheffy pizzeria, it's the starting point for a chain of pizzerias. From the perspective of someone who sees him as a great chef whose obligation is to advance the craft and strive for perfection, that seems like an odd choice. But from the perspective of a man who already has 15 New York Times and 9 Michelin stars under his belt, he's got nothing to prove, why not try to design a franchisable concept?
Underbelly
From this perspective, it makes a lot of sense. The pies themselves take no great skill to make—indeed, up until recently the dough was being rolled out by a sheeter, though White has recently switched to hand-shaping. The thick, dense dough doesn't require a gentle touch, the knock-you-over-the-head ingredients are about getting punched in the tongue more than any sort of refinement or delicacy. The pies are crazy filling (we never managed to finish more than half a pie during any one meal), and the prices are reasonable. With a large group, you could be in and out all-in for around $20 to $30 per person, drinks and appetizers included.
And that's what this is all about. Really, the question we should be asking is not "how does this compare to high end New York pizzerias?" but "how does this compare to chain pizzerias and is there room for it in the market?"
The answer is extremely favorably. I can imagine a world in which rather than stopping for a fast food burger I could pull into one of the Little Nicolettas (Nicolettettas?) that dot highway-sides and rest areas across the East Coast. Rather than Domino's being the best option for suburban delivery, I'd call in for one of the tasty Calabrese pies with thick-cut curls of crisp pepperoni and homemade sausage. Instead of an overdressed, limp-leafed Caesar salad, I'd get a bowl of bitter greens and crisp green beans with goat cheese toast. Not a bad trade off, I'd say.
Pepperoni cups
In the end, the answer to "Is it great pizza?" is definitely no, but the thing is that Michael White would be the first to admit it. He wasn't after great, he's was after filling, fun, and above all, easily reproducible. At these goals, he succeeded.
Click through the slideshow for details on some of the dishes.
—Ed Levine and J. Kenji López-Alt
About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
Daily Slice gives a quick snapshot each weekday of a different slice or pie that the folks at the Serious Eats empire have enjoyed lately.
While driving around Newark looking for pizza bread for a recent hot dog tasting dinner, I ended up at Calandra's in Newark—a small chain of Italian bakeries whose pizza bread is so-so, but everything else is fantastic.
There were all sorts of pastries and delicious looking fresh breads, but what really piqued my interest were these room temperature mini-pizzas that sort of reminded me of the mini tomato pies I recently had at Varalli in South Philly.
I'm not sure if room temperature pizza is a "thing" in Newark the same way it is in Philly, but they didn't offer to heat it up either. The dough had that same light, white spongey thing that goes on with tomato pie, confirming my belief that all this stuff comes from a clever way to use leftover sandwich bread dough (or maybe in this case, Pizza Bread dough?)
The broccoli slice was awesome cold and reminded me of the veggie slices from Cacia and Corropolese that I love. But I just can't get behind cold pepperoni (or any meat) slices on anything other than a college hangover level—the cold, congealed meat grease/cheese combo is unappealing and it just doesn't set off the same comfort food receptors in my brain as really good tomato pie or a cold veggie slice. Verdict? Eat the broccoli pizza in the car, then heat the pepperoni one up in the oven when you get home.
204 1st Ave W, Newark, NJ (map)
973-484-5598 ; calandrasbakery.com
About the author: Hawk Krall is a Philadelphia-based illustrator who has a serious thing for hot dogs. Dig his dog drawings? Many of the illustrations he has created for Hot Dog of the Week are available for sale: hawkkrall.net/prints/.
[Photographs: Robyn Lee]
I have just about nothing but good things to say about Perla, Gabe Stulman's Italian restaurant with Michael Toscano running the kitchen. I love the beef tongue and the lamb breast and the garganelli with tripe. I love the audacity of a man who puts foie gras on pancakes and serves a beef cheek sandwich for lunch. I like the cocktails, I like the potato chips all'amitriciana, and the burger makes me see funny and stutter out sentences I don't complete.
So far, there's only one thing I'd call even a little bit inconsistent: the pizza.
Toscano cooks a great deal of the menu in a wood-burning oven: roast rabbit, chicken cacciatore, a bone-in rib eye. (And gets more creative, too. "Sometimes he cooks whole animal heads as specials," a waitress told us in a hushed, delighted breath. "They're amazing, but you walk by the oven and there are just heads staring at you—it's something out of a horror movie.") So if you've got a wood-burning oven in this pizza-crazed city, pizza makes an awful lot of sense. Toscano first served his pies on a late-night bar menu, but recently moved them to their Friday-Saturday-Sunday lunch menu instead. There are five, which span a reasonably typical new-school, whole-pie spectrum: a Margherita, one with soppressata, one with mushrooms, one with sausage and a broccoli rabe pesto.
We've been three times for pizza (and Toscano was there each time), and we found very good pizza twice, somewhat disappointing pizza once. What happened? Let's break it down.
Every time the toppings of the pie worked well; well proportioned tasty ingredients. On one, sautéed brown beech mushrooms with garlic, tons of melty mozzarella and no small pour of olive oil; on another, a salty broccoli rabe pesto, crumbles of sausage, and caciocavallo cheese. On one visit, the crust was the equal of those toppings: well-charred and pliant, it had that satisfying crackle when the slices were pulled apart, the crust airy and steaming-hot with an audible crunch as you bite through with light, bready innards. But on another, the crust suffered a few problems—the underside was quite pale, with no blistering or bubbles to speak of; the flavor was fine, the salting of the dough sufficient, but it didn't have enough rise and lift to it. It was the sort of pie where you leave the crusts on your plate uneaten.
That pie also arrived less than crisp-hot: it was warm enough, sure, but the cheese had set a bit and the crust was barely warm. Even then, it wasn't bad; if we were at a less exciting restaurant, we would've been happy enough. It's just that Perla sets its standards so high that it does come off seeming a bit of a disappointment.
Still, right now, we're batting two for three. While acknowledging the inconsistencies, we're pretty happy with how they average out. Perla is young yet, and we look forward to a day when all the pizzas are as tasty as the better ones we had. Either way, there are still any number of things on this lunch menu that'll make you happy.
24 Minetta Lane, New York NY 10014 (b/n Sixth and Thompson; map)
212-933-1824; perlanyc.com
About the author:
href="http://www.seriouseats.com/user/profile/Carey%20Jones">Carey
Jones is the Senior Managing Editor of Serious Eats. Follow her on
Twitter (@careyjones).
