My Pizza Travels

So, as recently posted I mentioned that I set out to visit the birthplace of pizza in America in the Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan... Lombardi's Pizzeria.  A normal person would wait until they had a reason to go to NY, and once there would probably go visit the restaurant but normal I am not!  Nope my love for pizza runs a little deeper than most and I don't think sitting down there for an hour to eat pizza would suffice.  I booked a ticket with Scott's Pizza Tours and got the full blown tour of pizzerias that I knew started at Lombardi's!

I have wanted to take Scott's tour for a while now, and since I am setting up Chicago Pizza Tours (coming soon) what better than to take a research trip.  I did the right thing and let Scott know ahead of time, I had to laugh he even asked me to bring a Lou Malnati's for him.  I wasn't able to, but promised to send him Lou's Dough To Go this week.  So here is the story of how the pizza tour went

3/7/10
10:00 AM walking thru Midtown and stopped at a Magnolia Cupcake for breakfast
10:15 AM say bye to wife and kid, have fun shopping I'm going to eat pizza all day
10:45 AM show up at Lombardi's and take lots of pictures, I got the chills and it wasn't just the crisp temps on a March morning
11:00 AM shake hands with Scott after a quick intro and head in before Lombardi's is open to public

Brief review of the history of the restaurant & the different pizzerias throughout NY that have roots starting from Lombardi's, then............

Now that is an oven.  This oven is HUGE!!!  Fits about 18 pizzas in there and I think the temps got up to 1000 degrees at some parts.  They keep it on constantly and in fact only turn it off for maintenance 1 day a year (actually 2 'cause it takes an entire day to cool down).  So far tour is off to a great start, but I'm hungry.

11:30 - Dig on that!  Awesome Margherita Pizza from Lombardi's.  They used fresh mozzarella San Marzano tomatoes for their sauce and shredded basil on top (add that after the pizza is out).  Flavor was outstanding the crust was crispy on the outside but at the same time chewy on the inside.  Coal oven pizza is one of my favorites because the flavor just gets embedded in the crust from the coal, people try to argue that a wood burning can do the same thing but I am here to tell you "NO IT CAN'T".  Ok so first pizzeria down 3 to go and I can check off 1st pizzeria in America right off my list.

To my left we have Luzzo's, 2nd stop on Scott's tour.  Now this is pizza the way Italians intended it and here is why.  Mozzarella made from the milk of water buffalos once again the San Marzano tomatoes which I neglected to mention are grown in the volcanic plains to the south of Mt Vesuvius.  Your super fine 00 flour is used (only the best use this type of flour and Luzzo's is considered one of them by Rachel Ray name dropping...) and the oven used to cook these pies is a wood burning oven.  It was wood burning but the oven as Scott pointed out was really a hybrid coal/wood burning oven that was only burning wood on that day for our true Neapolitan Margherita.  The pizza once again was outstanding, the sauce was a little soupy and full of natural tomato flavor.  The cheese was very mild in comparison to cow made mozzarella, it really takes a back seat to the tomato sauce and I am quite certain that is what they are going for.  Don't just grab this slice and guide it in all nonchalant NO you had better do the fold or my technique the 1/2 fold to get this bad boy in and don't be afraid to make a mess.  Remember this started out as a peasant food and as such is eaten with your hands.  See below

12:20 - Bathroom break, next up the Bensonhurst neighborhood in Brooklyn.

1:00 - Made it over the Manhattan bridge, learned plenty about Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana and all their rules for making real Italian Pizza and we mostly came to the conclusion that it s just the Italians way of marketing to ensure that their economy profits when pizza is involved.  Pizza can be made just about any way, and if it tastes good, then go for it you don't need certifications and what not to make something that tastes awesome!  Where was I, oh yeah it is 1:00 and this is what I am greeted with in Bensonhurst.

 J&V's home of the Jo Jo sandwich and an oven I will tell you more about.  Feeling right at home in Brooklyn with this Grandma Style (Sicilian Style) slice.  What we are dealing with is a crispy yellow crust with a good amount of grease on it, some great sticky cheese on top of that crispy crust, and a layer of sweet pizza sauce on top that made me think of a heartier Aurelio's sauce.  Needless to say, I did not savor this slice one bit... I demolished it in about a minute and had the pleasure of talking to the owner while the rest of the tourists enjoyed.  The owner told me no pictures of him, and I got my first official fughettaboutit in the first sentence (actually I got 3 in the first sentence).  This is the kind of place I would frequent quite often if I lived in Brooklyn, loved the wood paneling/mirrored, counter & booths atmosphere coupled with the NY style of friendliness "You like the slice?  Good, go on Yelp and review us fughettaboutit!"  Now the oven, this slice doesn't just magically come out looking like that.  It looks like a normal pizza oven, but when you open the door it is not.  There are trays inside of the oven that rotate and cook the pizza in a rotisserie style.  Different heat is applied at different parts of the rotation, and that credits the way that sauce is simmered perfectly on top of the pizza.  At this point in the tour I have had a NY coal fired slice, a true Italian Neapolitan slice, and now a Sicilian Grandma styled slice and I am starting to feel a little sleepy and full... but we get back on the big yellow pizza bus because we have 1 more stop in Brooklyn to try.

2:00 - Sam's Restaurant, I think they just added that little pizzeria to the sign recently.  You would never know that this is an establishment serving up great NY Style Pizza from passing by on the sidewalk.

I really enjoyed this place, the pizza was good mind you I am stuffed at this point but the stories were even better.  Lou the son of Sam (hence Sam's Rest) no disrespect of course... wowed us with his many stories of his cop buddies up in Long Island, and people that tell him to put Wifi in his restaurant.  "What so people can take their shoes off and sit in here browsing the internet all day ordering 1 cup of coffee!"  I feel at this point I am rambling one of the longest blog posts in the history of blogs but I will tell you what stuck out for me on this slice was the crust.  I could have eaten nothing but crusts... Brooklyn tap water I hear is the secret.  I appreciated getting a chance to see a place like this because in my mind it was definitely a local gem with great stories/history.

3:00 - back on the pizza bus and headed to Lombardi's our starting point.  The tour is over but at this point we discussed on the bus what we liked about each place, maybe what we weren't so much a fan of, and all this traffic to get back to Manhattan.

3:45 - Back at Lombardi's and I gotta say I am wiped out.  Well not totally, still had enough time to grab a beer with Scott and talk pizza biz at Gatsby's a bar down the street which just so happened to be the original location of Lombardi's back in 1905 (that story is another blog post).  Then later on that night I took my wife and son out to Max Brenner's Restaurant in midtown where the dessert was none other than... you guessed it Chocolate Pizza.  I am serious about pizza, if you think you love pizza more than I do I am happy for you, but chances are you are probably wrong... but hey why not enjoy some slices together if you're up for it.