Famous Original A's

The Medicine Wheel consists of “house-made organic tomato sauce, whole-milk mozzarella, Blythedale Farm Cooksville Grana, Grana Padano,
and fresh herbs.”

American Flatbread TriBeCa Hearth is a Vermont mini-chain making its first inroads into NYC. Slice has detailed this particular location here and its loosely affiliated clones here, here, and here.

Lunch today was a small “Medicine Wheel” pie, which is just a hippied-out name for “plain pie” or “cheese pizza”—ie, sauce and cheese. It tasted like what I imagine a chain pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven and made with good ingredients would. That’s because there was ample, gooey cheese on this thing but mostly because the crust was a little doughy, softer than what a typical New York–style pizza would be, even though visually it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a New York–style pizza—or maybe a New Haven pie. The minor squishiness was not a deal-killer, though—my pizza had good flavor, thanks in part to just a good bit of light charring and from the generous shake of marjoram sprinkled on—a slight though welcome flippathascript.

Heck, I’d go back. In fact, I will, because I want to try the sausage pizza. The sausage is maple-flavored, something people either love or hate. I avoided it today because the Medicine Wheel photo on Slice looked so good.

American Flatbread TriBeCa Hearth

205 Hudson Street, New York NY 10013
212-776-1441 / americanflatbread.com/restaurants/tribeca-nyc / @AFNYCTribeca

I’m combining two Weekly Pizza Lunch outings into one here. That’s because they’re practically the same place. —The Mgmt.

Vezzo’s Meatball Classic pizza: tomato sauce, mozzarella, house-made meatballs, red onion, and basil. Pictured: small, $9.

There’s a pizzeria mini chain in the heart of Manhattan that I think doesn’t get enough attention or praise.* Part of the blame may lie in its unusual naming convention. I mean, did you know that the pizzerias Gruppo, Posto, Spunto, Vezzo, and Tappo are all related and are pretty much the same thing? I know! You’d think they would have settled on one name and stuck with it. (Think of the efficiencies gained by maintaining one single website!)

Then again, avoiding the appearance of a chain has a certain advantage as well. (more…)

Nicoletta’s Calabrese pizza, here in the personal-size lunch special, is topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, thick-cut pepperoni, fennel sausage, and red onions.

I’ve been thinking a lot about bar pies since last week’s pizza lunch. Bar pizza, and its close cousin, Chicago thin crust,* to me are primally satisfying pizzas. Despite the thin base, these styles are often LOADED with cheese and toppings. Now, that kind of imbalance would typically raise alarm bells for my elevated pizza snob persona, but go and tell me what’s wrong with a bunch of gooey cheese and salty, greasy pepperoni or sausage.

That’s why I wanted to try Nicoletta again. Chef-owner Michael White is originally from Wisconsin, where he first started working in a pizzeria serving quintessentially Midwestern-style pizza.

*Note: I often use the terms “Chicago thin-crust” and “Midwestern thin-crust” interchangeably. Chicago thin-crust is easily more recognizable as a style, but I feel that this type of pizza is served all over the Upper Midwest, not just the Windy City. (more…)

Totonno’s serves one of the better coal-oven pizzas in NYC. A plain pizza from just after the joint’s triumphant post-Sandy reopening.

You know, you’re not going to go wrong adding toppings to a Totonno’s pizza, but when the joint is firing on all cylinders, like it was when I visited yesterday, you only need a plain pie for a satisfying meal.

Of course that didn’t stop me and my dining companion from getting another pizza topped with sausage. (more…)

Two of Motorino’s signature pies, from top: the brussels sprout and pancetta pizza and the hot soppressata and garlic.

Did you know you can get some of the best pizza in NYC (and therefore THE WORLD) for a mere twelve bucks? Oh, and it comes with a salad, too. (more…)

A plain slice from Best Pizza.

Almost all the pizza here is great (I mean, look at how beautiful a plain slice here is!), but the grandma slice and grandma slice with pickled vegetables are KILLER. Also? BEST MEATBALL SUB in the city. (more…)

Large pepperoni pizza from Grimaldi’s Coney Island, $16.

Grimaldi’s, on an expansion jag as of late, has opened a branch in Coney Island. For the longest time I’ve thought the one under the Brooklyn Bridge was a tourist trap, but a recent visit to its new digs and a visit to the Coney outpost have me reconsidering. (more…)

Though damaged by fire in March 2009, Totonno’s reopened in February 2010 looking much the same as it always had.

Don’t ask for a menu. Totonno’s infamously gruff manager and waitress, Louise “Cookie” Ciminieri, will roll her eyes and point to the menu above the pizza oven. It’s a short menu. Pizza only, large and small sizes. A handful of unsurprising toppings. Totonno’s does not mess around.

It’s a coal-oven pizzeria, one of only a handful in New York City, and it traces its lineage back to the city’s first official pizzeria, Lombardi’s. That’s where Anthony “Totonno” Pero worked in the early 1900s before striking out on his own in 1924, opening his pizzeria on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where it has always been.

http://blog.silive.com/inside_out_column/2011/07/island_tie_to_pizza_history_called_totonnos.html

Fire: http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2009/03/breaking-coney-island-totonnos-burns-down.html
Reopened: http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/02/photo-of-the-day-lawrence-ciminieri-of-totonnos.html