THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER25, 2019 19
PHOTOGRAPH BY COLE WILSON FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
The Slice Renaissance
Pizza Joints Around the City
Until fairly recently, nostalgia was con-
sidered a disorder. It was conceptualized
by a seventeenth-century Swiss doctor
to diagnose the mental and physical
pain of soldiers; they suffered, he the-
orized, because they longed for home.
Now it’s widely recognized as quite the
opposite: a powerful coping mechanism
during difficult times. These are difficult
times. Can it be a coincidence that pizza
parlors gauzy with nostalgia’s glow seem
to be multiplying in New York City?
At Paulie Gee’s Slice Shop (110
Franklin St., Brooklyn, $3.50-$5), in
Greenpoint, which opened in 2018,
there are laminate booths, glittery lime-
green vinyl stools, and orange plastic
trays. You can buy an ice-cold bottle of
Coke from a vintage vending machine.
Eating there makes me feel like a Car-
ter-era teen-ager who’s saved up her
allowance to buy a snack after a spin
around the roller rink.
At Scarr’s Pizza (22 Orchard St.,
$3.50-$5.25), which opened in 2016,
on the Lower East Side, there are
wood-panelled walls, Tiffany-esque
light fixtures that look as if they came
from the original T.G.I. Friday’s, and a
framed Mets pennant. Earlier this year,
the brothers behind 2 Bros., a dollar-slice
chain, opened a couple of more ambi-
tious and slightly pricier places—Up-
side Pizza (598 Eighth Ave., $3-$5), in
midtown, and Norm’s Pizza (345 Adams
St., Brooklyn, $3-$5), in downtown
Brooklyn—with interiors that subtly
evoke the eighties and nineties (a touch
of Memphis) and pizza that comes on
red-and-white checked wax paper.
All of these shops are counter service
and focus on New York-style slices. All
are in homage to long-running icons,
such as Di Fara and Joe’s, and stand in
stark contrast to the full-service piz-
zerias specializing in Neapolitan-style
pies that proliferated the decade prior.
All make very good to excellent pizza. Is
there a reason that you should patronize
them instead of their forebears?
Their proprietors would probably
point to the fulfillment of modern stan-
dards. Paulie Gee’s offers Mike’s Hot
Honey, a very of-the-moment pizza top-
ping, as well as imitation cheese, sausage,
and pepperoni. There are vegan options
at Scarr’s, too, and flour for the dough
is milled in-house, a practice both an-
cient and au courant—as is using natural
leavening and allowing the dough to
ferment, which they do at Upside and
Norm’s (admirable choices that, in this
case, make the crust a bit too one-di-
mensionally tangy). At Upside, they
boast of “responsibly sourced produce”
and make their own fresh mozzarella.
But only one of the newcomers truly
stands apart. F&F Pizzeria (459 Court
St., Brooklyn, $4-$6), which opened last
month, in Carroll Gardens, is a collab-
oration between a duo known as the
Franks (Castronovo and Falcinelli), of
Frankies Spuntino, next door; Chad
Robertson, of San Francisco’s Tartine
Bakery; and Chris Bianco, of Pizzeria
Bianco, in Phoenix. The shop is bright
but bare bones. The menu is, for now,
extremely streamlined.
The classic cheese slice is flawless:
crust of optimal thickness (just floppy
enough to fold easily); scant dollops of
fruity but not too sweet sauce, made
with Bianco’s line of organic Rustic
Crush canned tomatoes, grown in
California; extra stretchy, non-artisanal
shredded mozzarella that goes brown
and crackly at the edges; fresh basil.
Better still is the Sicilian, which
is square, and which some will argue
would be more accurately categorized
as bread than pizza. (The input of
Robertson, a wizard of sourdough, is
unmistakable.) The other day, a man
finishing a slice sighed in pleasure. “I
could eat eight of these,” he said. I felt
the same way. Is it pizza? Is it focaccia?
Who cares? It’s exceptionally complex,
light yet satisfyingly substantial, chewy
and stretchy, shiny and moist, with a
crumb so pocked with air bubbles that
it looks like a system of caves, and a lacy
pattern of oiled char on its underside.
It’s timeless, it’s nostalgic, it makes me
glad to be here now.
—Hannah Goldfield
