Pizza Style: NY Neapolitan
Venue Style: Midscale dining with mostly pizza offerings
Food Orders: Classic Cheese, Eggplant Marino, Paul & Young Ron
Beverage Orders: Cocktails & Beers
Lg Cheese Pizza: $22.00 (16″)
Attendees: Bobli, Ellios & Celeste
Guests: None

“Pizza well done.” This playful double meaning phrase is prominently displayed on the walls and on the menu.  The reasoning for it has to do with the consistency of cooking the dough throughout in a super-heated oven fired by – you guessed it – coal.  Coal allows an oven to reach temperatures in the 1000 degree range, which means that the pizzas cook more quickly and don’t have a chance to dry out.  This process provides the eater with a chewier crust, but the byproduct is that the pizzas seem to be cooked “well done.”  Many people find that the char on the crust adds to the depth of flavor in the pizza, and when mixed with classic fresh ingredients, the taste is unmistakable.  Anthony’s uses fresh dough, made daily, along with an assortment of other fresh ingredients that certainly come through in the taste.  However, while there are some bright spots to Anthony’s – there appear to be some holes as well.

Here is what we ordered:

Classic Cheese:

Grande Mozzarella, Italian Plum Tomatoes, Romano Cheese, Basil and Olive Oil.

• This pizza represented the classic style NY, coal fired pizza that you would expect from fresh ingredients, and super-heated coal fired ovens. Chewy crust, salty cheese, incredibly tasty tomato sauce – the only downside to us seemed to be slight under flavored crust – perhaps a dash more salt.

Eggplant Marino:

Thinly Sliced Eggplant layered with Fresh Tomato Sauce then topped with Grated Romano Cheese and Fresh Basil.

• This was a welcomed pizza; different from typical pizza joint pie, the eggplant had a nice rich sauce, and well developed flavors. No cheese was a wise option for this flavor profile – there was nothing to mask the taste of the eggplant and tomatoes.

Paul & Young Ron:

Meatballs, Sausage, Hot or Sweet Peppers & Ricotta Cheese.

• The Guys opted for ½ sweet and ½ hot peppers for this pizza. It came heaped with fresh ingredients and long hot peppers – roasted to perfection. The size of the hot peppers was a little ridiculous for the size of pizza, but if you removed them and cut them up it was more balanced – which was how it was presented on the other half of the pizza with the sweet peppers. The meatballs were above average (small bite size) and the sausage was delicious, but scares – one the Guys didn’t have a single piece of sausage on his slice, which for a sausage pizza seems unforgiveable.

Let’s look at the stats:

Overall, the atmosphere was great – fun energetic staff, full bar, great beers on tap, wonderful service and The Holy Trinity of accouterments was present on every table. The ingredients were top notch, all pies were cooked the same way, so consistency and execution were on point, and the cooking vessel of coal fire also added to the flavors. So why do I feel so blah?  After careful consideration the missing link in this pizza profile is the thickness of the crust.  The thickness of the crust is paramount when dealing if quick cook times – the crust cooks throughout, the char is present, but it leaves the eater with a somewhat stiff crust, less malleable, or foldable – if you will.  If this is the result that Anthony is going for – then he has hit his mark.  We found that a slightly thinner crust would lower the cook time even more, cut down on the amount of char overall, and allow for a more delicate crust.  We liked the char, and the concept of Well Done has been a preference of the Guys for a long time, but in this case – Well Done, didn’t translate for us.  Much like one of Anthony’s NFL QB partner Dan Marino, after which the Eggplant Marino was names, while the stats seemed impressive, the final result is that neither one has won a super bowl.

Slice-o-meter: 5.5 out of 8

Tagged: NY Neapolitan