Adrienne’s Pizzabar on Slice
5 Mar
For this week’s Slice review I went to Adrienne’s Pizzabar in the Financial District. Quoting myself:
What I love just as much as the confluence of great ingredients, though, is the riot of textures on this pizza. The airy, puffy parts of the dough are crisp yet soft and pillowy. The thinner parts that didn’t rise as much are crisper and dense and get a little more oily and almost fried in the pan. The regular “aged” mozzarella in spots chars a bit and takes on that crunchy texture that I love in Detroit-style pan pizzas. And the fresh mozzarella remains creamy throughout.
This is the second full review I’ve done on Slice after taking suggestions from the Slice community via Facebook and Twitter. Both Yvo “Feisty Foodie” and Anthony “Tony Calzone” Falco nudged me here.
For this review, the wife and I went on Wednesday night, but it was too dark and crowded to take photos and not look like a tool. I went back solo on Thursday afternoon around 4:30. It was interesting to see how the pizza changed from day to day. As co-owner and head pizzaman Nick Angelis said, it really depends on the hour you’re eating it, because the pizza proofs in the pan — and because they make two batches of dough a day, one for lunch and another for dinner. Get a pizza made from a tray of dough that’s been sitting a long time, and you’re going to get a puffier pizza, which might explain why my Thursday afternoon pie was much more airy — it was likely lunchtime dough that had been rising for a while.
Adrienne’s Pizzabar
54 Stone Street, New York NY 10005 (map); 212-248-3838; adriennespizzabar.com
When I went, the puff turned me off a bit. I did like the crisp, but the dough reminded me too much of pizza from elementary school I guess. I should go back at an early lunch hour for a mostly unleavened bread maybe.
I’m not gonna lie. I really am a believer in the Pizza Cognition Theory (I know a lot of people think it’s BS.) So maybe the school cafeteria thing is what I liked about it. Though, if my school had pan pizza like this, that would have been a miracle.