The Worlds Best Pizza is in NY NewYork

 

 

JOHN'S PIZZERIA

aka JOHN'S of BLEECKER STREET

My FAVORITE PIZZERIA OVERALL

TOTONNO'S PIZZERIA NAPOLITANO

NEPTUNE AVENUE

CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN

NEW YORK

"LOVE IT"

Pizzaiolo Michael

TOTONNO'S

Coney Island

The MASTER

Dom DeMarco

DiFARA PIZZA

Avenue "J"

BROOKLYN, NY

The Great Mark Iacono

At LUCALI'S

Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

The OVEN at LOMBARDI'S

"This is where it all Started"

AMERICA'S 1st PIZZERIA

Opened in 1905 by Genaro Lombardi

Genaro Lombardi with pizzaiolo Totonno Pero

1905

SPRING STREET

NEW YORK NY

Inside LOMBARDI'S

JOE'S PIZZA

Carmine Street

New York NY

NEW YORK'S BEST LOVED SLICE

The Soho Square

From PRINCE STREET PIZZA

Now my FAVORITE PIECE of PIZZA in New York

But when it comes to a so-called Plain Slice ?

Nobody Beats Dom DeMarco and his awesomely tasty PIZZA

at DiFARA PIZZA Brooklyn, New York, and the World's Single Best PIZZA

"SERIOUSLY" !!!

The GREAT DOM DeMARCO

ANd The WORLD'S BEST PIZZA ?

"DOM'S"

DiFARA PIZZERIA

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

PATSY'S PIZZERIA

East Harlem , New York

"FRANK SINATRA'S FAVORITE"

SUNDAY SAUCE

alla BELLINO alla PACINO

RECIPES

AMAZON.com

SAL & CARMINE'S PIZZA

Since 1957

Upper West Side of Manhattan

2671 BROADWAY, NY NY

As The Signs says, "CRISPY PIZZA" !!!

One of NEW YORK'S BEST

FAMOUS BEN'S PIZZA

SPRING STREET

Soho

SFINCIONE

"REAL SICILIAN PIZZA" !!!

BEN'S is one of The Few Places in NEW YORK 

to Get REAL AUTHENTIC SICILIAN PIZZA, "SFINCIONE"

aka PIZZA PALERMITANA

Of PALERMO

RECIPES From MY SICILIAN NONNA

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Sunday Sauce Sneaker Bellino Pacino

 

SUNDAY SAUCE The SNEAKER

by BELLINO

LIMITED EDITION

GET a PAIR TODAY

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New York SLICE Pizza History NYC

 

NEW YORK PIZZA

SLICE JOINTS

Pizza can be a great divider in New York. In fact, one of the easiest ways to get into argument (without end) is to name a “Best Pizza in the City.” But at the same time, pizza — specifically the reheated, foldable, portable slice — is one of the city’s great uniters. There is no culinary experience that New Yorkers share more widely and more unanimously than the slice joint. Like catching a sunset over the skyline or stepping in an icy curbside puddle, the slice joint has, since its beginnings more than 50 years ago, become common currency.  

 New York pizza starts with large waves of Italian immigrants settling in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, roughly a quarter of the 1.6 million Italian immigrants in the United States were living in New York, establishing enclaves in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Such neighborhoods were home to the first pizzerias, like Lombardi’s in Little Italy, which opened on Spring Street in 1905. The namesake of the Neapolitan immigrant Gennaro Lombardi, the restaurant used a coal-fired oven to create pizzas with puffy, charred crusts and a bubbling layer of tomato sauce and cheese that made it one of the most popular restaurants in Little Italy. As if in biblical succession, as apprentices left to start their own pizza operations, Lombardi’s begat Totonno’s in Coney Island, John’s in Greenwich Village and Patsy’s in what is now Spanish Harlem. These are the four acknowledged prewar pizza pillars in the city. (Though none of them was a slice joint in the current sense.)

The price has changed over the decades, but the scene and staging remain much the same. Look at the crowd of New Yorkers and tourists alike bundled in winter coats on a recent Wednesday night at Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street. The pies at Joe’s, which opened in 1975, are considered among the city’s best. See how the customers rotate in a perfect line through the door and up to the glass case, their orders ready and their money in hand. “Three dollars,” the pizza man says briskly, after he has placed the requested slice into a decked oven. Out come the hot, bubbling triangles of cheese and sauce on thin, pliable crust. Once their slices are ready, the diners — if so formal a word even applies — grab a place at the counter in the window or push out the door, slice in hand, on to wherever the evening may take them. This is the “New York style.” 

The origin story of New York pizza starts with large waves of Italian immigrants settling in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, roughly a quarter of the 1.6 million Italian immigrants in the United States were living in New York, establishing enclaves in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Such neighborhoods were home to the first pizzerias, like Lombardi’s in Little Italy, which opened on Spring Street in 1905. The namesake of the Neapolitan immigrant Gennaro Lombardi, the restaurant used a coal-fired oven to create pizzas with puffy, charred crusts and a bubbling layer of tomato sauce and cheese that made it one of the most popular restaurants in Little Italy. As if in biblical succession, as apprentices left to start their own pizza operations, Lombardi’s begat Totonno’s in Coney Island, John’s in Greenwich Village and Patsy’s in what is now Spanish Harlem. These are the four acknowledged prewar pizza pillars in the city. 

Hot, filling and eaten with the hands, pizza elicited breathless coverage from The Times fairly early on, as food writers marveled at the appealing combination of ingredients and convenience. By 1947, the paper was fully sold. “A round of dough is baked with tomatoes and anchovies and cheese atop, cut into wedges, then eaten with the fingers between gulps of wine,” the food editor Jane Nickerson enthused. “The pizza could be as popular a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew more about it.” 

Nine years later, The Times’s Herbert Mitgang contemplated the reasons for pizza’s popularity, writing, “The guess is that a number of Americans of Italian origin, aided by advertising and refrigeration, have made pizza as delectable as such other postwar imports as Lollobrigida” — referring to Gina, the saucy Roman film star. The Neapolitan-style pie became a chic dinner-party staple that could also be supplemented with a salad for a filling, family meal. But one innovation would change how New Yorkers enjoyed pizza forever. 

RAY'S PIZZA

6th Avenue, GREENWICH VILLAGE, NEW YORK

1984

Frank Mastro, an Italian immigrant and businessman, saw the potential for pizza to be as popular in America as the hot dog. He just had to figure out a way to make it quicker and cheaper for both restaurant owners and diners. So in the mid-1930s, he devised a gas pizza oven that maintained optimal temperatures even as the door was opened over and over. 

Although it is hard to pinpoint when pizza was first sold by the slice, the introduction of the gas oven with multiple decks gave New Yorkers the option of enjoying a crisp-bottomed slice either as a full meal or a substantial snack between meals as they moved around the city. Pizza shop owners no longer needed to learn how to operate a coal-fired oven, meaning pizza could be made quicker and with less training. By the 1960s, the slice joint boom was on. And it is the slice joint that really turned pizza from an Italian Food in New York City into a New York City food — a meal shared across neighborhoods, ethnicities and age groups, equally at home in the Bay Ridge of “Saturday Night Fever” as in the Bedford-Stuyvesant of “Do the Right Thing.” 

This proliferation was also helped along by the same thing that brought pizza to this country in the first place: immigration. In the ’60s and ’70s, waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America began joining the work force and landing in food service roles, where the barrier to entry was much lower than in other fields.

As one of the standard-bearers of the current slice-joint renaissance, Scarr Pimentel remembers his spot on 138th Street and Broadway. “Kids like me pretty much grew up in pizza shops,” said Mr. Pimentel, whose family moved to New York from the Dominican Republic. “If you had five bucks you could have a slice, a soda and some ice cream. It was a full meal and sometimes the owner would slip us an extra slice or something.” Mr. Pimentel opened his own pizza shop in 2016, the sleek and retro Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side. His slices and pies are made with organic flour, high-quality tomatoes and cheese and carefully sourced (often organic) toppings, but the slice-joint spirit holds true. “Who would’ve thought a kid like me from the Dominican Republic would own a pizza shop in New York City one day?” he added. 

JOE'S PIZZA

BLEECKER & CARMINE STREETS

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY

John Kambouris immigrated to Washington Heights in 1965 from a small Greek island about 200 miles east of Athens. “I had $10 in my pocket,” he said from behind the counter of Pizza Palace on Dyckman Street, which he has owned since 1979, when he bought the business from an Italian couple he knew from the neighborhood. “They say the Italians bring the pizza here, but we put our culture on it.” In the 1960s this area was Irish and Jewish, he explained. Today, the neighborhood is home to a large Caribbean population, including a large concentration of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. “I love what I’m doing … we’re making pizza that people want and I don’t have to be Italian to make good pizza,” Mr. Kambouris said, before noting, “I’ve put three kids through college off of this shop.” 

It’s in hundreds of shops like his around the city, many no bigger than subway cars, where you’ll find New Yorkers shoulder to shoulder, eating slices in near silence. “Teens, Wall Street guys, guys camped out with a shopping cart, a pizza place is the most diverse space in the city,” said Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, author of “Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza” and host of the Radio Harvester podcast. “Inside a pizzeria that dream of diverse New York City is a reality. I think that’s such a beautiful thing. 

Basta !

SUNDAY SAUCE

MACCHERONI

SPAGHETTI MEATBALLS

SOUP

And More ..

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Focacceria Vasteddi Arancini Sfincione Sicilian Pizza recipes

 

 

That's VINNY on The Left

with One of His Many FANS

La Foccaceria? Oh where have you gone? Well, I do know actually. After more than 90 years in business, it was time to close the doors. And a sad day it was for thousands, including me. I first moved into the East Village in November 1982 .. I was working in another famed old New York Italian institution in The East Village, in John's (Since 1908) on East 12th Street right around the block from La Foccaceria. La Foccaceria was a great little Sicilian Specialties restaurant on 1st Avenue between East 11th and East 12th Streets on the east side of First Avenue .. That was  the first spot where Vinny's father opened the doors in 1914 ... I'm sorry to say, I never went to that one but to it's (La Foccaceria) 2nd location a couple blocks south on 1st Avenue between East 7th Street and St.  Marks Place (E. 8th Street) on the east side of the avenue. The new La Foccaceria, run by one Vinny Bondi was just one block from my apartment at the corner of Avenue A and St. Marks Place. In 1982 the East Village was on an up-swing in popularity and improvement from a sort of sub-ghetto of The Lower East Side. the neighborhood which was strongly Eastern European; Ukranian and Polish, mixed with Hispanics, Italians, and people of Jewish persuasion. When Mr. Bondi opened the doors almost 100 years before when the neighborhood was largely made up of Sicilian immigrants which included one Charles "Luck" Luciano whose parents moved to East 10th Street when Luciano was just 9 years old. In the early 80s when i first moved into East Village it was a low-rent neighborhood with apartments that were relatively cheap for the city, thus attracting artists, so-called wannabe actors and musicians and young people who wanted to live in Manhattan. In the East Village they could find an apartment (though not the best physically) at reasonable rates for the time, I did. Through a friend I was able to procure a 2 bedroom apartment for a mere $400 a month. Quite a bargain. I shared the apartment with my good friend jay F. for the first year in that apartment. Once he moved out, I kept the apartment for myself.

   Hey, I'm getting off the beaten track. Yes back in 82 the East Village was an exciting and changing neighborhood, perfect for me and other young people just starting out in this great city of ours.

    I was only paying $400 rent and had money to spend eating out. I used to eat at a Ukrainian Diner Odessa on Avenue A and Lesko's as well, two doors down from Odessa. There I could get plates of home-made Perogis, fresh Keilbasi and other solid food for cheap. In the East Village there were a few old-school Italian holdovers like; John's were I was working as a waiter & bartender at the time, Lanza's (now over 100 Years old), De Roberta's Italian Pastry (over 100 years old) Brunetta a great little Italian restaurant I used to go to which was on the same block as the original La Foccaceria and there was the current La Foccaceria on 1st Ave near Saint Marks Place .. I went in to La Foccaceria one  day, I met Vinny and I loved it from the very start. Vinny's father and mother had started the place way back in 1914 ... Vinny, I never asked his age, but he must have been in his late 60's at the time (1983). La Foccaceria served an array of wonderful dishes; all the usual pastas like; Lasagna, Spaghetti & Meatballs, Spaghetti Vongole (Clam Sauce), and Sicilian Maccheroni, like Pasta con Sardi and Lasagna Coccati, broken pieces of lasagna pasta baked with sausage,peas, tomato, and mozzarella. Vinny had great soups like Pasta Fagioli and the best Lentil & Escarole Soup around. He sold sandwiches like Chicken Parmigiano, Meatball Parm, Sausage & Peppers, and his most famous dish of all, the famed Vastedda Sandwich of Palermo. A Vastedda (Vastedde) Sandwich as we've said is a very famous sandwich that is a specialty in Palermo, is made with Beef Spleen (or Veal) with Ricotta and Cacciocavallo Cheese on a small Sesame Seeded Bun. It is quite wonderful and was a specialty of the house at Vinny's La Foccaceria. I just loved it, and at $1.60 per, even in 1982 it was one of New York's great prepared food bargains. The average price of most sandwiches  back then was about $5.00 around town, so  a Vasteddeat $1.60 per? Wow, what a Bargain?

I had tried most of the dishes at La Foccaceria in my first year eating there, but there was one that I loved by far most of all. Yes, the Vastedde. Most times I would have a Vastedde and a bowl of Vinny's wonderful Lentil & Escarole Soup, the best I have ever had. If it was Thursday or Saturday, the days that Vinny made Arancini (Sicilian Rice Balls) and Sfingione (True Sicilian Pizza), I might get a piece of Sfingione and Lentil & Escarole Soup, or Sfingione, a Vastedde, and Soup. Yeah! 

I often ate at Vinny's on Thursdays and Saturdays, as they were the two days in the week when Vinny made Sfingione, which is real Sicilian Pizza, that comes from Palermo. This type of pizza is made in a pan and is thick just like what is know as Sicilian Pizza all over America, and has tomato and Mozzarella Cheese baked on top. Sfingione on the other had doesn't have tomato or mozzarella, but minced Anchovies that are suteed with onions and breadcrumbs. This breadcrumb mixture covers the dough and then is backed in the oven, and "Voila," you've got the true Sicilian Pizza known to Sicilians and Sicilian-Americans alike as Sfingione. 

Very made a great version of Sfingione, and I'd get a piece of it every week for the 11 years before I moved over to the west side in Greenwich Village. Saturdays was a very special day at La Focacceria as that the day that all the old guys who grew up in this neighborhood, but later bought homes outside of Manhattan, Saturday was the day many of these guys would take a ride into the hood to get a Vastedde, see Vinny and habg out with old friends, one coming from Staten Island, one from Brooklyn, one from Jersey, etc., etc., and they'd all meat up at Vinny's for a nice lunch together and remember their old times in this old Sicilian Neighborhood.

Boy did I love Vinny's. There was nothing like those Vastedde and Vinny making them. Vinny had a special stattion at a counter up front of the place where he cut the cooked Beef Spleen, fry it in lard, cut the bun, cut some Cacciocavallo, he'd lay the spleen on the bun, add some Ricotta, and sprinkle the cut Cacciocavallo Cheese over the top. Yumm! And I'd have a little chat with Vinny as he made my Vastedde right before my eyes. When i ordered it, all I had to say to Vinny, was, "One with everything." That meant everything; the spleen, Ricotta and Cacciocavallo. Some people would order them minus the spleen. Why? Amateurs.

Sadly, Vinny closed his Foccaceria a few years ago. it was a sad day for me, no more Vinny, no more La Foccaceria, no more Vastedde.

Ode to La Foccaceria Ode to My Pal Vinny Ode to My Beloved Vasteddi I Will Miss You All So   Daniel Bellino-Zwicke  

NOTE : In Palermo where the Vastedde Sandwich comes from, it is mostly known as Pane Milza (Muesa), which translates to "Bread and Spleen." The spleen is first simmer to cook in gently boiling water until cooked through. The spleen is cooled down and refrigerated to cook later. When someone orders a sandwich, Vinny would take the large piece of Spleen, cut thin slices of it and fry them in lard that was in a pan at the counter of the focacceria. Vinny would then place the cooked spleen on a sesame seed bun that was split in half. He'd place a dollop of fresh Ricotta on top of the spleen, then grated Caciocavalo Cheese over the ricotta, and then top with the top piece of bread and place the Vastedde Sandwich on a plate and hand it to the lucky recipient, like me, just like they make it in Palermo.

NOTE II : You may have noticed different spellings for the same sandwich, Vastedde and Vastedda are both singular, while Vasteddi is the plural for more than 1 Vastedde.  

The FAMED VASTEDDA

"I ate these at Vinny's twice a week. La Focacceria was just 1 block from my apartment in the East Village. Sadly Vinny closed about 8 years ago. Now I have to go all the way to Ferdinando's in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to get one. Either there are all the way to Palermo to Antica Focacceria S. Francesco, which I don't mind at all, but I sure do miss going to La Focacceria on 1st Avenue, seeing my old buddy Vinny, eating a Vasteddi, an Arancini or some Sfincione which Vinny made on Thursdays and Saturday. The BEst Vasteddi in New York.

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SFINGCIONE

This is real SICILIAN PIZZA. Vinny made it on Thursdays and Saturdays and all the guys that used to live in the neighborhood but bought homes in Brooklyn, Staten Island or where ever, they'd come in to La Focacceria every Saturday for a VASTEDDA and some SFINCIONE and ARANCINI. It was quite a place.

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ARANCINI

Like any good Focacceria, Vinny made great ARANCINI too. You can find incredible tasty ARANCIN (Rice Balls) where ever you go in SICILY, stuffed with meat or cheese, they're as tasty as can be, and at just about $1.50 a piece, a nice inexpensive treat and the perfect thing to eat between meals, or even a meal in themselves, two will do the trick.

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ARANCINI RECIPE

GRANDMA BELLINO'S COOKBOOK

RECIPES FROM MY SICILIAN NONNA

Ferdninado's In Brooklyn.

You Can Still get a good Vastedda There ...

Sadly, the only place left in New York

Read About VINNY'S La FOCCACERIA

in Daniel Bellin o's "La TAVOLA" ITALIAN-AMERICAN    NEW YORK .....

 

Antica Focacceria San Francesco

PALERMO

The Antica Focacceria San Francesco is without question the most famous focacceria as well as the single most famous and popular place to eat in all of Palermo, and all of Sicily for that matter. This may very well be the place where Mr. Bondi (Vinny's Father) modeled his place La Focacceria 1st Avenue after. We can't really be sure, but it's our guest bet. And for certain there must have been many different focaccerias all over Palermo when Mr. Bondi was a young man, that no longer exist, so he may have modeled his establishment in New York after one of those that no longer iexist, and yes, then-again, it may have been Focacceria San Francesco.

Anyway, the Focacceria San Francesco is without question my absolute favorite place to eat in Palermo, nothing comes close to this place, it's absolutely and positively awesome. The ambiance is spectacular with its balcony, marble and granite counters, floor, and tabletops. And the food? The Food is Wonderful! The worlds best place to get Pane Milza (Beef Spleen Sandwich), Caponata and Arancini (Sicilian Rice Balls).

La Focacceria were made famous by Andrew Zimmer on Bizarre Foods, and even more famous by Anthony Bourdain on "No Reservations, but I started going there way before those two guys.  Yes the food is wonderful, and just as wonderful are the prices, which are cheap to say the least. And the fact that they make a wonderful plate of their Greatest Hits, which includes Caponata, Aracini (Rice Balls) Panelle (Chickpea Fritters), and of course the famous sandwich Pane Milza (Muesa).  

Making a VASTEDDE

aka Pane Muesa

 

My VASTEDDE

 

Inside S. Francesco

FOCACCERIA

PALERMO

 

Read This !

Focacceria San Franceso and the Street Food of Palermo, Sicily #StreetFood

#PalermoStreetFood

   

My CANNOLO

Focacceria S. Franceso

2017

   

Antica Focacceria San Francesco

PALERMO

  .       .        

You bother Me about Fucking Steak

 

"Don't overcook it. You overcook it, it defeats its own purpose."

"ALRIGHT Alright." !!!

The Cheese Grater

(When I was a Child, we always had a hunk of Pecorino and we grated it on a Box Grater over our Maccheroni, as Robert DeNiro Does here in Martin Scorsese s RAGING BULL  RECIPES .  )

"YOU BOTHER ME ABOUT a FUCKING STEAK" ???

From Martin Scorsese 's RAGING BULL

Starring : ROBERT DeNIRO and JOE PESCI

With : FRANK VINCENT

What are you Doing? I said don't Overcook It."

Cooking the Steak and Fuming Inside

"Don't overcook it. You overcook it, it Defeats its own purpose."

"You want your Steak?"

"It's like a piece of Charcoal."

"BRING IT OVERrrrrr!!"

"You WANT Your STEAK?" !!!

"Yeah! Bring it over."

"HERE'S Your STEAK" !

"Hey Salvi!"

"Go FUCK Youself"

"YOU BOTHER ME About a FUCKING STEAK ?" !!!!!

"You Call those CARROTS?" !!!

"You Ate them, Didn't You?"

"I Got No Choice"I GOT NO CHOICE" !!!!

"Who's an Animal?""Your Mothers an Animal, You SON of a BITCH" !!!!

"I'm gonna get that Dog, and I'm gonna Eat it for Breakfast."

You heat me Larry?"

SUNDAY SAUCE

RAGING BULL RECIPES

For Pasta and STEAK alla JAKE

SUNDAY SAUCE is Available on AMAZON.com

Parisi Bakery Deli The Dennis Sandwich

The DENNIS

PARISI BAKERY DELI

NEW YORK NY

The DENNIS

CHICKEN CUTLET with RPSOCIUTTO &  FRISH MOZZARELLA

FroM JOE'S DAIRY, on PARISI ITALIAN BREAD

"FRANK SINATRA'S FAVORITE ITALIAN BREAD"

Parisi Bakery is a NYC instution since 1903 and still making one of the best sandwiches on the planet. Pictured is the infamous "Dennis" with layers of perfectly fried chicken cutlet, proscuitto, mozzarella (mutz), tomatoes, balsmic, and an herb spread on a fantastic piece of Italian bread. Lunchtime will have long lines but worth the wait to try any of the Italian speciality sandwiches. 

SANDWICH MENU

PARISI DELI

COOKING ITALIAN

SECRET CREAMY ITALIAN SALAD DRESSING

And Other GREAT RECIPES

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