Not having the foresight to book a table in the dining room well enough in advance, we hoped that eating at the bar would be an available option.  Initially, it looked like all the bar seats were already taken.  But through some sort of miracle that only super-professional and generous staffs can manage, we soon found ourselves seated and looking at menus.  We chose the five course chef’s tasting menu.  The fullest experience would have been the eight course dinner.  But in a foreign land as we were and concerned about return train times and babysitter attitude we decided that the five course dinner would allow us to experience most of the restaurant’s offerings without being rushed.  The big decision taken care of we settled in for dinner.  Having eaten several times at Blue Hill Restaurant in Manhattan (and the immense pleasure of working in its kitchen a couple times) we knew we were in for a treat.  Chef Dan Barber has become very well know for his sensitive use of seasonal vegetables, herbs and fruits.  So we were excited by the prospect of chef Barber having all of the farm’s varied and carefully grown produce right there at his fingertips.

Very quickly we found ourselves embarking on the unfolding culinary showcase of what the Stone Barns farm had to offer.  Our dinner began with raw baby vegetables, some lightly glazed in a brief brine, skewered on tines set into a block of wood, something of a trademark for Blue Hill.  We then got roasted cantaloupe shots to accompany slices of house cured ham and amazingly flavorful bresaola.  No need for forks with this course, the saline fat of the ham and beef tasting great on my fingers.  Next came a roasted veal bone split open to give access to the deliciously melted marrow and topped with American sturgeon caviar.  A minimalist take on the familiar surf and turf.  At London’s St. John their famous roasted bone marrow is served with a lemony parsley salad and sea salt to cut the fattyness of the marrow.  Here the salty caviar doesn’t so much cut the taste of the marrow as it does accent it, opening up the taste of it in your mouth as if blown in on an ocean wind.

Things really picked up with the next course, a salad of garden vegetables served with dollops of yogurt.  The varied amalgamation of vegetables was amazing, the several beans lightly cooked and tasting nicely ‘beany’, the different tomatoes sweet and juicy orbs of acid zing.  The yogurt was light as a cloud, more of a foam than a cream, it’s soured tang marrying wonderfully with what we were told was a cantaloupe vinaigrette.  Also delicious.

My memory is failing me at the moment as to the exact order but I am pretty sure the next course we were served was Blue Hill’s current ‘farm egg’ dish.  A breaded egg, still soft in the center served on a delicious pool of multi-colored curried beans.  Sort-of a twist on two traditional British dishes, Scotch eggs and Indian congee.  That was our guess anyway.

We were next presented with a dish of poached lobster in a dairy-less corn chowder.  The lobster was amazing.  Cooked perfectly.  And the corn, for having no dairy, tasted profoundly of sweet butter.  Olive oil we were told.  Bathing the lobster pieces in the broth tasted like Summer by the sea in a bowl.  But why go dairy-less in the middle of a cow-filled farm?  Was this just a show of technique and execution?  Whatever it was it was delicious.

The course following might have been my favorite.  Duck breast and beets.  A very pretty composition on the plate, the duck was two slices cut from the breast, seasoned beautifully, the skin seared to crackling perfection.  This was presented with beets two ways, small roasted beets with leaves still on and long twisting slivers of raw beet, all marinated in a raspberry vinaigrette.  The dressing accentuated the inherent sweetness of the beets and all combined with the duck in a wonderful salty-sweet richness.

If the duck was my favorite of the evening, the final savory course was a very close second.  Presented as grass-fed beef with ‘milk and carrots’, this dish was a cow-lovers dream come true.  Three slices of beautiful beautiful beef, prepared sous vide to a soft rosey done-ness, seasoned and then quickly seared to give the edges a slight tooth of salty carmelization.  This was served with a sauce made of tender chunks of carrots simmered in milk.  The sauce made slightly sweet by the carrots, it was a simply delicious adornment to an almost flawless piece of beef.

The dessert course was roasted corn ice cream which I really enjoyed.  It was served with a rectangle of cake… was it a corn cake of some sort?  Not sure.  But it was very good.

The one other thing to note is that we were drinking wine from Blue Hill’s ‘By the Glass’ list.  The first rose on the list was a nice beginning in that it was crisp, dry and not very sweet.  I find many roses to be way too sweet for me to enjoy.  So this was a nice wine to start with.  But the big standout for us turned out to be the Hirsch Vineyard’s Blue Hill label pinot noir.  I had been disappointed with pinots a lot recently, most too thin and one-dimensional, but this wine changed my mind.  A really great aroma, the way wine should smell.  And a taste that opened up in the mouth.  And just for the record, we did not know that the Obamas has a bottle of Hirsch when dining at Blue Hill last year.  ’Great minds’ evidently.

The entire Blue Hill staff was delightful.  Not only accommodating our spur-of-the-moment arrival but also very generous with their time, making us feel immediately welcome.  Everyone was knowledgeable about the food and wine, easy to talk to and readily available to answer our questions.  One of the captains even escorted us to a quick peek into the spacious and beautiful Blue Hill at Stone Barns kitchen where chef Barber was overseeing everything.  One of the nicest spaces to cook in I have seen in a long time.

Overall our evening at Stone Barns was simply terrific.  The farm compound itself is gorgeous. It made me -briefly- desire to live in the country and grow beautiful vegetables.  If a farmer’s life looked as rustically modern as this I think I could enjoy it, regardless of the distance from good pizza.  And the food… well, the food was wonderful.  Chef Barber and his Stone Barns team are crafting some seriously good food out there.  Our dinner was spectacular and one which we will remember as among the best we have had.  The little extra effort needed to get to Stone Barns is definitely worth it and a trip that we will surely make again.  Soon.

The next morning I sent a letter to Nick Valenti, head of Patina with a suggestion for a name I thought would be fitting for the new restaurant.  I did not receive a response.  I wasn’t really expecting one.  I knew it was a long shot anyway.  I just came up with the idea and thought it wouldn’t hurt to present it to Mr. Valenti.

Well, today I just read on Grub Street that the name ‘Lincoln’ has been selected for the restaurant.  Fairly straightforward choice I guess.  Not too surprising given some of the other names on Patina’s roster.  But now that the die has been cast I guess I can share with you the name that I had suggested for the restaurant.  Here it is along with my explanation for it that I sent to Mr. Valenti:

Crescere

Crescere is the Italian verb meaning ‘to grow, to increase, to expand’.

The musical term ‘crescendo’ comes from ‘crescere’.

‘Crescendo’ means ‘a gradual increase of anything, especially to a dramatic climax’.

The growth and expansion implied in the name ‘Crescere’ could also reference the architectural ‘expansion’ of the site.

The word ‘crescere’ can also mean ‘to cultivate’.

‘Crescere’, when pronounced correctly, has an unmistakable Italian sound to it, thereby reinforcing the Italian concept of chef Benno’s menu.

Another reason that I think ‘Crescere’ is a perfect name for the restaurant is that the word itself is visually pleasing.

more depth to the referential exploration between the restaurant and it’s context.  ’Crescere’

This negative incentive for chefs to shovel uninspired food to the deal-seeking eaters I find to be a real bummer of a product of the Restaurant Week formula.  I am not sure if these offending chefs of which I speak realize – maybe they do but just don’t care – is that some of us Restaurant Week diners are avid food enthusiasts and are taking the opportunity to try two or three different restaurants instead of just one (hey, not all of us have unlimited budgets) with the thought of returning at a later date for the full-ticket meal if we are wow-ed by what we ate.  But more often than not I leave a Restaurant Week meal disappointed and with more questions than answers.  ”Do they serve that to normal diners?”  ”Does that (insert menu item here) typically taste under salted and gummy?”  I end up wondering if it would be better that I just stay away from Restaurant Week dinners in hopes of staving off negative reviews of restaurants that I have not tried before and, after that lack-luster meal, will probably not ever try again.

So these are the thoughts that were running through my head when the boss said, “hey, Restaurant Week is starting.  Why don’t you look through the list and pick one or two.”  I started to sweat.  Not to mention that the start of the promotion coincided with my birthday.  I love birthdays in that they (mine or hers) are a great excuse to splash out on an amazing dinner at a seriously good restaurant.  No no, she assured me.  We have plans to go to Blue Hill Stone Barns next week so that will count for birthday splurge.  She just wanted something nice on the actual day.  Bless her.  Not to mention that she quickly pointed out that Dovetail was on the Restaurant Week list.  I started to sweat more.  We had been to Dovetail when it first opened a couple years ago and really enjoyed it.  I was worried that a Restaurant Week visit might ruin my estimation of it.  But… what if…  I couldn’t resist. We made a reservation and went.

And I am happy to say that I am glad that we did.  In one fell swoop Dovetail and chef John Fraser’s food have restored in me the hope that good food can be found in the jungle that is Restaurant Week.  Our meal at Dovetail was very very good.  The squid and melon salad was a sea-tinged mix of sweet and savory.  The gnocchi were comforting yet light, bathed in a delicious corn veloute. The braised veal had been coaxed to a superbly tender finish.  Evidence that traditional cooking methods, when done correctly, can yield food just as good as anything to come out of a sous vide bath.  And the hake dish was a deftly handled play on subtlety, the fish light and well cooked, the tomato ’stew’ adding a touch of acidity and the delicious shrimp giving a briny highlight to the ensemble.  Very nice.

A quick side note…  The dining room at Dovetail, designed by architect Richard Bloch, is nice.  Though a little stiff and hard edged.  Not quite as ‘luxurious’, maybe, as the food that it is meant to showcase.  Details such as the stainless cables the curtains are hung on feel more ‘architecty’ than fully thought out in terms of the bigger picture.  And the Dovetail logo, as nice as it is,  has always given me pause.  The ‘V’ looking a little more mutated and ‘grabby’ than visually expressing the concepts of craftsmanship, precision and expert pairing that I feel the name ‘Dovetail’ might be trying to express.  But, overall, Dovetail is a warm and handsome restaurant and a nice backdrop for its food.  To which we shall now return…

Sure the Restaurant Week menu was less extravagant than Dovetail’s typical tasting menus.  No duck or dungeness crab.  But the food that chef Fraser conceived for the promotion I think was a fitting representation of what Dovetail can do.  Our dinner showed a thoughtfulness of conception and an expert execution that I remember from our last full tasting meal there.  This, I think, was a great example of how the Restaurant Week promotion should be handled by the chefs involved in it.  Taking a long view, being creative with the dishes that are served to the price incentivized diners now, with the hope that they will enjoy their meal enough to tell others about it and to come back for all the fireworks the kitchen is capable of in the future.  If the chefs succumb to their incentive to not put any effort into what they serve for Restaurant Week, they risk loosing possible customers forever.  I know there are a couple such places that I do not feel the need to return to…

Chef John Fraser is to be commended for taking the time and the care to conceive of a great Restaurant Week menu.  We had a lovely time and really enjoyed the food.  Not to mention the added bonus of being able to chat with the chef himself as he walked through the dining room.  Imagine that – a chef that cooks in his own kitchen.  And during Restaurant Week no less.  We will definitely be back to Dovetail in the near future.

All jokes aside, it was raining so we hurried into this renowned pizza shrine as we were downright reverent.  And hungry.  Inside there were easily twenty people standing in relative silence patiently waiting for their pizza.  It turns out that a stroller works pretty well as a people plough so we managed to ‘excuse me’ our way up to the counter without too much trouble.  My first welcome surprise was that the woman that took my order was pleasant and smiling.  Much  different than the ‘Pizza Nazi’ attitude I was fully prepared to endure.  I quickly placed our order for one regular pie.  That’s right… a regular pie.  No messing around with fussy toppings and risk upsetting the delicate ingredient proportion equilibrium.  I wanted to let the pizza master be the pizza master and just do a pizza the way he does it best. 

We then proceeded to wait

And wait.

But all this waiting is a typical experience.  Dom makes each pie by hand so the production output is a little on the slow side.  But you can tell by watching him that he cares about each pizza and about each ingredient that goes into it.  It was so refreshingly surprising to see how nice Dom and the two daughters that were working with him that day were to all of the customers.  They really didn’t have to be.  Us people will still line up for this superb pizza regardless of the staff’s mood.  But the women were kind and pleasant to everyone.  Even those that checked on their order’s status multiple times.  And Dom, as he snipped fresh basil and sprinkled a handful of shredded grana padano onto each finished pie, made a point of asking, “Is this yours?” to the customer standing at the counter.  Even that little gesture of the master looking the person in the eye, connecting his pizza to the person and then passing his creation on to them I thought was a very nice touch.  It is obvious that Dom cares about his pizza.  And he cares about his customers. 

The Di Fara customers, speaking of, are the wild card of the whole experience.  Waiting for a Di Fara pizza is serious business.  People travel long distances to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this tattered little shop.  And the combination of aching feet, politeness fatigue, and ravenous hunger can put nerves on edge.  For the most part everyone on the afternoon we went was great.  Civil, polite and obedient in observing the social contract.  But there were a couple mumblers in the bunch.  “I can’t believe it is taking this long.”  “I was here before that guy, why is he getting a pizza?”  Etc.  Etc.  All to be expected for waits this long on an empty stomach.  It only becomes awkward when the mumblers turn to you and try to drag you into their low-decibel monologue.  Best to be prepared to smile and nod sympathetically to whoever looks at you.  And then pretend to be distracted by something else.

The wait for our pizza ended up being an hour and twenty minutes.  After an hour on the train.  And then an hour on the train to get home.  A total of three hours and twenty minutes of pilgrimage operational process.  All for a pizza eating experience that lasted maybe fifteen minutes.  Sound crazy?  Definitely.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

The Di Fara pizza is most certainly deserving of its reputation for being one of the very best in New York City.  So simple yet so transcendent.  The multidimensional crust the perfect base to a compilation of top-notch ingredients.  The center dough thin and chewy with hints of crispiness while the outer crust billows into pillowy sections of crispy crunch giving way to a chewy bread-like interior.  With bits of char scattered about as flinty taste counter-point.  And the three-cheese combination is perfectly balanced in composition and proportion.  The pizza’s melted base of both fresh and aged mozzarella gives the pie a good depth of character to build upon.  And the addition of a handful of grated grana padano scattered when the pie comes out of the oven is pure genius.  As the pizza is eaten, the diner is able to experience the grana padano as it struggles through its transition between two states.  From its raw state of unadulterated sharp saltiness to the oozy comfort of the cheese in melted form, each bite has the potential to capture not three but four cheese taste characteristics.  For the price of three! 

All of the cheeses and the sublime dough are accompanied by taste accents from top-notch ingredients.  The tomato sauce is San Marzano.  The olive oil is good Italian stuff which Dom drizzles, nay… douses, the pie with both before and after the oven.  Again expanding on the potential of taste character from both fresh to cooked.  And the addition of fresh cut basil at the end caps the whole taste experience off with a lovely herbaceous high note and aroma that would be otherwise muted and largely lost if the herb was allowed to bake with the pie.  All of these high quality ingredients expertly composed and transformed to form a delicious pizza whose taste is greater than the sum of its parts.  That’s Di Fara pizza magic.  And totally worth the trip.

But, after personally witnessing Dom DeMarco’s sublime pizza operation for myself I think that I have figured out the secret to the whole Di Fara’s experience.  Wanna know the secret?  Here it is:

There is no secret.

There is no ancient coal oven imparting mystical smokey-charred taste.  There is no secret recipe.  Sure the dough is great but there are other pizza places in town that make great dough.  And, really, dough ingredients are so simple that there is not much room for adjustment.  There is no secret ingredient added behind the scenes.  Heck, you can stand there and watch the guy make every single pizza.  No, there is nothing that Dom DeMarco knows that you don’t have access to yourself. 

But that is just it.  The thing that makes Di Fara so good is that they use only great ingredients to make their pizzas.  Great tomatoes, great cheeses, good olive oil and fresh basil.  And they don’t skimp.  Anyone could use these same ingredients.  On the long train ride home I was thinking that any crummy pizza place in the city could change up their operation and make killer pizzas very similar to Di Fara’s.  But they don’t.  Why not?  That is what is so maddening about it.  If you have a good pizza oven and some basic business insight, great pizza that people will clamour for is within your reach.  But very few pizza makers understand this.  So people like me have to travel from all over the place out to sleepy Midwood, Brooklyn for some of the very best pizza in the city.  In the country possibly.

Dom DeMarco’s genius is a straight forward one.  Just use great ingredients to make great pizza and the rest of the business equation will fall into place.  That is what he does every day that Di Fara’s is open.  Pizza is Dom DeMarco’s soul focus.  His passion.  His meditation.  And maybe, now that I think about it, that is the actual secret behind Di Fara’s.  Hidden in plain sight for everyone to see.  The tiny details that make up the process.  How the dough is treated, the careful proportion of sauce and cheese, the length of time a pizza spends in the oven.  How often it is turned while baking.  The right sized handful of grana padano and just the right motion to scatter it.  These sorts of little motions and details that have a cumulative effect on the final product.  All of which can, of course, be learned and recreated.  But it is more than just learned behavior that Mr. DeMarco uses in making his pizzas.   He actually cares about each and every pie that moves across his counter is and shaped by his hands.  And he cares about the people eating his pizzas.  His taking the time to speak to each person that he hands a pizza over to is a subtle, yet very powerful part of the experience.  It is obvious to any attentive observer that he loves what he does.  And it is evident in his pizzas.  Maybe that is the real secret behind Di Fara’s Pizza.  A pilgrimage worth taking.

The vibe I get from reading through Braeburn’s website is that it is a restaurant trying to bridge several genres at once.  A “casual, yet elegant fine dining restaurant,…”.  This, to me, signals a restaurant with an identity crisis.  Restaurants are pretty much either casual or elegant.  It is very hard to be both.  And ‘fine’ dining…?  We’ll see about that.  So what is Braeburn?

For starters, the restaurant space is nice enough.  From the street the interior is glimpsed through window display vitrines full of standing logs.  Birch maybe?  As if secretly peering into a hobbit party in the enchanted forest.  Upon entering one is greeted near the door and then ushered into the bar area. All fairly handsome in dark wood and stone.  So far so good.  But the dining room is just a step to the north, and this is where I see the first clues that there is a discrepancy between what Braeburn says and what Braeburn is. 

Braeburn’s name, taken from the apple variety originating in New Zealand, suggests mental images of warm sunlight on rolling hills patchworked with orchards and farms.  The dining room builds on this reference with reclaimed dark wood on the walls as well as wooden tables and chairs.  And the large painting of a bucolic farm setting on the back wall pushes the reference needle into ‘literal’ territory.  Too bad the painting fell into the ‘almost but not quite there’ category of artistic merit for me.  And also a shame that it is the unabashed focal point of the entire space.  Not a good sign.  But… overall the dining room has a nice ‘casual’ feel to it.  But ‘elegant’?  I don’t think so.  And it only took a glance upward to put the icing on my thinking ‘cake’.  Exposed interior air conditioning units do not exactly say ‘elegant’.  But really, regardless of the level of refinement that Braeburn has labeled itself with, the dining room is a pleasant environment to have a meal in.  Not to mention that we were thrilled to get a table for eleven.  And a spot for a stroller.  Pretty nice!

But in this food town it is food that is king, elegance or not.  And Brian Bistrong, chef and co-owner of Braeburn, has quite the resume.  Most notably his time as saucier at Restaurant Bouleyand chef de cuisine at Bouley Bakery.  The title of ‘executive chef’ is great and all… but heck, I am executive chef in my kitchen.  I think it is being given positions of responsibility by the big names in the business that carries the most weight.  So… eager to sample some of his food we happily dove into a study of the brunch menu.  I immediately zeroed in on the ‘Quail Dog’.  It seems to have gotten a lot of press which can be a good sign.  Also, it sounded inventive… if a bit curious, so I gave it a go.  The boss opted for the ‘Lobster Knuckle Sandwich’.  The friend sitting next to me ordered the burger and other people picked from all over the menu so we were ready for a show.

Unfortunately what showed up at our table was a bit less than what I had hoped for.  The boss’s ‘Lobster Knuckle Sandwich’ was essentially a smallish lobster roll with a pile of coleslaw nearby.  It all tasted fine but I guess that I was hoping for a lobster dish that might have had its roots in tradition, taken the typical lobster roll as it’s inspirational starting point, and then gone further with the dish and blown my mind with flavor.  This did not.  It seemed no marked improvement on other lobster rolls that she or I had had in the past.

Our friend’s burger was pretty straight-forward.  Served with cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato along with a pile of fries    He said it was pretty good.  Hmmm… pretty good.  I am not sure, being only a block away from the Spotted Pig and its legendary burger, that ‘pretty good’ is going to cut it.  His and my fries, both nicely crisped and sprinkled with salt and chopped parsley were exceptionally done.  But still.

The biggest let-down, though, was reserved for my ‘Quail Dog’.  Unlike the version pictured above my ‘Quail Dog’ was served on a brioche roll with ’smoked’ mustard.  Also on the plate was a little dish of diced ‘fall apple relish’ as well as a metal vessel loaded with fries.  Oh and also a little ramekin of ketchup.  My first thought was ‘why did they prop up my fries in a bowl and put my friend’s fries directly on his plate?’  A bit inconsistent.  Upon further relfection I wasn’t sure I understood the restaurant’s plating concept.  Why so many vessels?  Why not put my apple relish directly on the dog in the roll?  Is putting separate elements of a dish in their own container Braeburn’s idea of ‘elegant’?  To me, if the plating of an element feels superfluous or forced, such as fries awkwardly propped in a metal bowl, then don’t do it.  Sometimes adding to the experience of a dish means to not clutter it.

But enough about plating, I had my Quail Dog to contemplate.  Now I am a big fan of sausage and all sorts of force-meat products.  But, as with my plating opinion, I think a preparation or process should be used only if it adds to the flavor and experience of an ingredient.  Having this quail in dog form did not do that for me.  The pieces of quail inside the dog casing were unfortunately a little dry.  And a little big for my liking.  Sausage works because it is typically fattier off-cuts of meat that have been ground into bits and loaded with seasonings.  Quail is not very fatty.  So biting into a larger piece of the bird within the dog gave me no juiciness.  And big pieces of meat leave little room for spices to uniformly flavor every bite.  I ended up feeling that I was eating an under seasoned de-boned quail packed into a tube on a bun.  Of course I ate every bite.  But in the end it seemed like a lot of effort put into a preparation that did not do much for the taste experience.  My ‘fall apple relish’, though, was very good.  Little minced cubes of apple, cornichons and shallot (maybe?) all mingled together with fresh dill.  A nice accompaniment to any ‘dog’. 

Overall our meal at Braeburn was good and we had a very nice time with our friends.  But I couldn’t help thinking that so much of what we ate was close but just missed the mark in one way or the other.  Whether it was the concept of the dish, its seasoning or plating, many of the elements that we tried were good but left me wishing that they would have been developed further.  Of course this was just brunch, of which a restaurant’s full breadth and depth cannot be judged.  I will have to return at some point to try Braeburn’s dinner menu.  But… it has been my experience that seeing how a restaurant executes the little things, even the afterthoughts that get put on a brunch menu, is a good indication of how it treats the big things on its roster.  A consistent eye towards concept, flavor and enhancement of ingredients is the mark of a great restaurant.  Regardless of its atmosphere.

 

restaurant where “we would feel comfortable dining at any day of the week”, and

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am a pizza addict.  A promiscuous pizza floozy.  If it was socially acceptable I would eat pizza every day.  Along with sushi every day.  Pizza and sushi every day.  While listening to the Smiths.  O.k… that’s a step too far.  But suffice to say that I love pizza.  Of course upon hearing this you might think that my pizza bar is set pretty low.  “He will eat any ol’ pizza and be happy with it,”  you’re thinking.  And this is pretty close to the truth.  BUT, just because I have a vast breadth of pizza experience does not mean that my pizza discernment lacks depth.  On the contrary.  I have a great love for pizza.  And because of that love I am an expert at knowing what constitutes a great pizza.

In terms of Sal & Carmine’s, they had me with the first slice.  And hundreds of slices since. 

Now let me just say that Sal & Carmine’s is a bit different than, say, Lombardi’s, Grimaldi’s or Patsy’s.  There is no 100 year old coal fired oven to lend its aged flinty smoke to the taste complexity of the crust.  Sure they have been in business for a long time, since 1959 if I am not mistaken, but there is nothing sacred or storied in their space or their equipment I don’t think.  Heck, they even moved a while back.  Maybe I am wrong.  But from what I can tell Sal & Carmine’s space seems pretty typical of New York’s many pizza joints.  It is small.  Only a few tables.  It sells whole pies but mainly slices.  It’s menu and its range are limited in that it has only a pizza oven, a counter and fridge to make and hold the dough and a cooler for drinks.  That’s pretty much it.

But the pizza that comes out of Sal & Carmine’s oven is quite frankly some of the best in New York city.  Easily within the top ten.  Possibly within the top five.  I am not sure what their secret is but Sal & Carmine’s crust has a character all its own that subtly sets it apart from other pizzas.  The dough of every pizza is multi-dimensional.  Thin and flexible in the center.  Then bubbling up into pillowy heaps toward the outer edge.  As if driving across the Great Plains the fields on either side of the road were covered in cheese with the Rocky Mountain foothills and muscular peaks of crust rising before it.  The crust itself, instead of charring to a hard dark outer shell, somehow maintains a light coloring of flour, slicked here and there with some of the cheesy oil that has found its way through a ‘mountain pass’.  When bitten into the crust has a slight bready give to it and then a satisfying toothsome chew.  With just enough salt in the dough to keep the taste buds dancing.  Thick in places, yet airy and pliable, a real pleasure to eat.  This is not crust that will get left behind by a picky pizza eater.

Sal & Carmine’s toppings are all fairly straight forward.  There is nothing fussy here like fresh basil or buffalo mozzarella.  But everything from the aged cheese to the pepperoni is good.  Really, though, it is the dough that takes all of the ingredients and toppings and elevates them to something very special.  I usually eat only the simple plain cheese slices so that I can savor the crust all the more clearly.  But whatever you order you can be certain that it will be good.  The one detail that Sal & Carmine’s does add to the diner’s experience is that they tie each pick-up order pizza box with a few wraps of red and white kitchen string.  Which I love.  I carefully untie the string and save each one I get.  Not only is it pretty but I have also then gone on to use it to tie the odd roast or bird. 

So what makes Sal & Carmine’s pizza so good?  The quality and taste of their pizza is simply astounding considering its humble home.  Pizza this good should be served to hundreds every day in a large restaurant.  But maybe that is the point.  Sal & Carmine’s is a family operation.  Brothers Sal and Carmine Malanga have been making pizza together for a long time.  Unfortunately Sal passed away last year.  But Carmine and grandson Luciano Gaudiosi (with the help of a couple other family members) continue to carry on Sal’s tradition and make the pizza every day.  So maybe it’s that family understanding, the familiarness of shared experience and values, that gives Sal & Carmine’s its outstanding flavor and character.  Its pizza dough mojo.  Sal & Carmine’s is run by a family that is not so concerned with growing the business, making lots of money or opening a second restaurant.  They just want to make seriously good pizza.  Which they do very well.