154500 Mon Dec 19 10:34:50 -0800 2005 32 12 Boston Area 0 829872 What exactly is NY pizza and how does it differ from what you get at Regina's or Santarpio's? Someone just mentioned T Anthony's as NY style pizza. I always thought of it as Boston pizza. Do people in NY look for Boston pizza? Is this a Red Sox-Yankee thing? Help me here! Mon Dec 19 10:34:50 -0800 2005 0 chuck s 1 829874 Yeah, it's a Red Sox - Yankee thing. Those poor shmoe's in NYC just don't get it cause they've never been to the real Regina's, which pre-dates just about anything they've got. Growing up in the 60's in the Boston area that's all we used to have - Italian places that served the big flat pizzas with the irregular crust, great tasting sauce (not straight out of a can), real cheese... you had to fold it in a vee and it dripped oil. But somewhere along the line, the pre-formed Greek pizza joints started to come into the picture. And then the chains followed. Boston pizza is now so diluted that you can't say Boston Pizza and have it mean anything any more. So people say NY Style pizza as if Dominoes and Pizza Hut don't exist in NYC. They do - I've seen them. Mon Dec 19 10:50:09 -0800 2005 829872 0 applehome 2 829879 I know a lot of people will say "Boston Style" to mean "crappy Greek style" but, for the record, that's not how I use it. Mon Dec 19 10:54:32 -0800 2005 829874 0 rxrfrx 3 829885 As someone who grew up in the heartland of new york pizza, brooklyn, i only say that new york pizza is marked by a thin crust that needs to be folded in half and then again at the front edge to keep the cheese and oil from sliding off. If you haven't burnt the roof of your mouth after eating a slice, you haven't had new york pizza. I do agree that Reginas (not the original), Bianchi's and some other rare places around these parts come close. Certainly not Santarpios, however. Mon Dec 19 11:21:05 -0800 2005 829879 0 barlev 1 829877 Well, this is a holy war topic if ever there was one on this board. I've never found a definition for Boston pizza, but I can tell you how I define New York style pizza. What I'm thinking of is the pizza you can get at pretty much any strip mall on Long Island. The crust is thin (but not crispy)- it should be a bit elastic and chewy, firm and brown on the bottom, and not at all spongy (an earmark of Greek-style pizza). The sauce should not be sweet, and cheese should be spread with a light hand. Santarpio's and Regina's appeal to me but they aren't what I grew up with on Long Island. The closest I've come in this area to a NY Style pizza are Pisa Pizza in Malden, Big Lou's House of Ribs in Revere and Polcari's in Saugus/Woburn. Also (the gone and lamented) Al Capone's was on the mark. I haven't yet tried Haymarket Pizza or Bianchi's in Revere so I can't say how they compare, but my brother used to like the pizza at Haymarket when he worked in the area and he's a real NY pizza snob. I haven't had T Anthony's in years but I remember it being close to NY style, although I think I remember the sauce was too sweet. Mon Dec 19 10:53:11 -0800 2005 829872 0 Chris VR 2 829964 Perfect description of both Long Island and NYC pizza of yesteryear. It seems that lately, even in NY, pizza has become just a large open-faced grilled cheese sandwich and not a good one, at that. Agree about Polcari's and Al Capone's. Big Lou's less so, but still a contender. Do try Bianchi's, though sometimes they're a little heavy handed with the cheese.Will have to try Pisa Pizza. Mon Dec 19 21:55:17 -0800 2005 829877 0 JRL 1 829878 I can at least speak for myself, though I'm sure there's as many opinions on this subject as there are people who care to comment. I think of "NY Style" as a very thin crust that's very crisp on the outside and very light and moist on the inside. It's baked in small slice shop-type places, and in regular electric ovens that run at lower temperatures (around 450 F). The few pies I've had at Regina and Santarpio's have a more aggressive crust, with a lot more crunch to it. This style, I think, is cooked hotter. Mon Dec 19 10:53:37 -0800 2005 829872 0 rxrfrx 1 829889 Haven't been to Pinocchio's in years, but they used to make about the best NY style pizza around. I know there are a lot of posts here about the Sicilian slices there, but he real treasure used to be the big cheesy thin crust, which required a good fold and flop-over to keep the cheese and sauce from falling off. It was true heaven. Do they still make a great pie? Mon Dec 19 11:33:31 -0800 2005 829872 0 Two Forks 1 829901 Though the toppings and sauce matter, New York pizza is primarily about the crust, and that's where so many pizzas elsewhere in the country (including Boston) fail. NY pizza has a flavorful yeast-risen dough that is probably worked long and hard to form a good amount of gluten. This gives it a great texture (like the difference between cheap mass-produced, spongy French bread and a good, chewy/crusty loaf of artisan bread), and a yeasty taste. The crust is preferably thrown to order, though pulled can be okay. It is baked in a very hot pizza oven oven without the use of a pan. The crust sits directly on the smooth oven floor. The crust is crispy and thin, with thicker edges that form large bubbles when cooking. I disagree about a previous post saying NY pizza uses a lower oven temperature. The best NY pizzas are made from old coal-fired pizza ovens. They are extremely hot (900 F) Everything above the crust is relatively easy to achieve, though it certainly can be messed up by too-sweet sauce, or too much cheese. Toppings should be relatively sparse but flavorful. You don't pile a bunch of raw veggies onto a good NY crust. A few well chosen tasty morsels of meat or veg is all that is needed. I think Bertucci's pizza comes close, but it is still pretty far from the mark. Mon Dec 19 12:22:52 -0800 2005 829872 0 Christine 2 829903 Check the oven of your typical slice joint in NY (e.g. the late Joe's, RIP) and you'll find that the temperature is FAR less than 900 F. These are run-of-the mill electric pizza ovens, probably in the 450-525 F range. You don't need a coal oven to make a good thin pizza, and you can't make a "street slice" type pizza with a 900 F oven. Mon Dec 19 12:27:59 -0800 2005 829901 0 rxrfrx 3 829947 Easily the most detailed, scientific, gastronomic study on the topic that I'm aware of I read in Jeffrey Steingarten's "It Must Have Been Something I Ate." (His books are wonderful, BTW) Here's a link to the full article, citing NYC & New Haven pizza oven temperatures ranging from close to 700 degrees on the low end to over 1000 degrees on the high end. Also note the difference in temperature from oven floor to ceiling. BK Link: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,807445,00.html Mon Dec 19 16:46:58 -0800 2005 829903 0 BK 4 829950 I would suggest that this report glosses over a very important aspect of formerly great NY pizza: it was omnipresent and easy to get. That was a huge part of the chow factor. Turning this into some elaborately monstrous experiment misses the point.... I will say that the other factor missed is how important it can be to have lots of great yeast built up from many decades of baking. (The inability of a new establishment to mimic this is telling; it applies to all the branches of the great pizza oven mothers, as it were.) Regina's in Boston's North End has been a baking site since 1888; even though they switched to gas, the presence of the yeasts in the dough at that site gives the crust immeasurable character. Even my uber-hound oldest brother, who has tested all of the best (save DiFara's) in NY and New Haven for years, was floored by the quality of Regina's crust. Mon Dec 19 17:10:37 -0800 2005 829947 0 Karl S 5 830105 But as you say, he didn't go to DiFara's. Dom serves the best pizza in NYC (imo) and he doesn't use a coal oven. Have to admit, however, that I never tried Regina's when I lived in Boston. Also, the OP asked whether people in NYC ever look for Boston-style pizza. I was about to make a smart remark in the negative, but realized that I've actually asked a variation of this question myself. Specifically, I've often lamented the asbsence of Greek-owned pizzerias, which are a fixture in Boston. Can't tell you the last time I had a decent spinach and feta pizza. Wed Dec 21 14:06:21 -0800 2005 829950 0 a&w 4 830070 having read steingartens article on espresso as well as pizza, i find he sometimes misses the forest for the trees.........the Lombardi's he talks about is very badly inconsistent--3 times mor eso than Pepe's in new haven (see discussion on that board) but his article should put to rest the temperature issue...since he measured with a temp sensor..... note these are not gas ovens.........675-770 where the pizza cooks in one...850 in another, but i suspect 850 is tops there "At the reasonably authentic Neapolitan La Pizza Fresca Ristorante on East 20th Street, for example, the floor of its wood-burning brick oven measures 675°F; the back wall (and presumably the ambient air washing over the pizza) pushes 770°, and the domed ceiling 950°. The floor of Lombardi's Neapolitan-American coal oven soars to 850°" Tue Dec 20 20:47:15 -0800 2005 829947 0 fusilli 3 830071 very few electric in NY...mostly gas..........under 600 degrees usually Tue Dec 20 20:49:15 -0800 2005 829903 0 fusilli 2 829907 Traditionally, both NY and Boston are thin crust pizzas. NY was traditionally a bit *thicker*, so it could be folded *without* cracking too much, while the better Boston slices were thinner and more prone to cracking too much (the superlative example being Regina's, well-done, at the mother ship). At least before the advent of gourmet pizza. And Sicilian was a much more common style in NY than in Boston, which has a much lower profile Sicilian demographic than NY. Now, the advent of very-thin crust pizza in NY has distorted what most NYers expect in a pizza pie, because you cannot cook the more traditional (thicker thin) crust quite right in the overtouted ultra-hot coal ovens. And then there has been the advent of outsourced dough (just like what has happened to bagels), which has screwed things up at the other end of the thin crust spectrum. (That is, flabby dough that rises quickly without much flavor. Think Sbarro's....) Greek pizza in Boston simply got there earlier. Feh! As I have noted before Papa Gino's is actually a lot better than many of its competitors (in some respects, possibly better than Bertucci's, which has declined in recent years), and is often mistakenly overlooked by pizza snobs (which I did until I reevaluated it last year). Its major sin is that the dough does not have a good flavor (that is, it does not have a lot of flavor to begin with). But otherwise, that dough is properly thin, topped with an unsweetened sauce and a prudent amount of cheese. Avoid all toppings but plain or pepperoni (theirs is actually higher quality than most), and you actually have a decent (if not astounding) Boston style pie. Which makes sense because the chain started out as a mom & pop in East Boston in the late 1920s. In any event, NY pizzas (like NY bagels) are not what they once were. You have to tread much more carefully than 30 years ago. Mon Dec 19 12:41:55 -0800 2005 829901 0 Karl S 3 830069 NY Pizza 3 0 years ago had a higher average quality level........that is many many neighborhood pizzerias made decent pies/slices.......... now, the vast majority stink or are mediocre.......... at the same time, in the last decade, more sit-down by the pie, gourmet joints have opened.......meaning more good stuff at the upper end...........but really the overalla average is way down Tue Dec 20 20:42:04 -0800 2005 829907 0 fusilli 3 830076 I feel so vindicated - I was always too embarrassed to mention Papa Ginos (even to close friends!), but it's always been one of my favorites... (Now don't go crazy - it's not my ABSOLUTE favorite, but all I'm saying is that it's pretty good. Yum!) I also agree that while both Boston and New York have thin crusts, NY-style is typified by a softer, more bend-able crust and Boston-style is typified by a crispier crust. But, as this discussion proves, these definitions have not been made dictionary-clear! Wed Dec 21 08:50:37 -0800 2005 829907 0 Jellybelly 4 830117 Thank you for the validation. It was easier to make this distinction a generation ago than it is today. when the availability of good versions of "traditional" (i.e., NOT gourmet) NY and Boston pizzas is at a low ebb, and you have a kind of barbell curve distribution towards the flabby vs gourmet ends. Wed Dec 21 15:29:28 -0800 2005 830076 0 Karl S 2 830068 NY pizza does not ave to be 900 degrees and in fact rarely is.............many excellent places cook between 575 and 650................others are towards 700 nor did they all ahve coal...there are good places which are 60 years old and always had gas ovens.......one of NY's gas oven manufacturers dates from the 20's......... AND Pino tells me that in the Napoli area some places have now installed dual gas/wood ovens --wood for the flavor and to impress, but gas cause its more reliable and can start wood,......... Tue Dec 20 20:39:39 -0800 2005 829901 0 fusilli 1 829904 I am just wondering why Pino's hasn't come up yet. They make pizza that is as close to NY style as I have had in Boston. Al Capones has relocated by the way, not closed. This was a shock to me as well when a friend told me about their relocation. Mon Dec 19 12:33:46 -0800 2005 829872 0 Tzonis 2 829905 Pino's is great. Also, in my opinion, their neighbor, Presto's, is highly underrated. Mon Dec 19 12:40:09 -0800 2005 829904 0 rxrfrx 2 829913 Al Capone's is, at best, tolerable (sometimes the sauce is alright, and the crust doesn't taste like a dish rag). But it is perfectly inconsistent, with the lower end of their spectrum being truly flat-out bad. Don't insult NY or Boston pizza by including Al Capone's in either group. Mon Dec 19 13:01:58 -0800 2005 829904 0 Alcachofa 3 829944 Well I haven't had Al Capone's in its new location- didn't even know it had relocated. My basis for bringing it up was visits there about 15 years ago, but it was the first time I'd had pizza in Boston that tasted anything like the pizza I grew up with. Mon Dec 19 16:27:11 -0800 2005 829913 0 Chris VR 4 830096 It had been going steadily downhill for a couple years at its old location. Maybe I should try the new location, but Viga is right around the corner from the "new" Capones, so it's just not worth it for me to potentially get a crappy slice. Wed Dec 21 11:19:55 -0800 2005 829944 0 Alcachofa 2 830067 Pino's was opened by a friend of mine nearly 40 years ago...............he sold it circa 1970 to the current guys...........they DO NOT make it nearly as well as he does.................NY style is an adapation of Naples style.........as it stood from say the 20's thru the 70's..... All said.......Pino's is ok........YES it is NY style, but its not top shelf,.,.just average NY pizza Pino was from Capua outside of Naples, thats his region and his style.........he has a pizza place in NY since the mid 70's..........altho he tellss me pizza back home in Capua and Caserta has declined...only in Naples center is it as good as it was.........his place in NY is the way Pino's was a long time ago..........and is far better Tue Dec 20 20:35:28 -0800 2005 829904 0 fusilli 3 830082 care to drop the name of his current NY place? Wed Dec 21 09:40:46 -0800 2005 830067 0 rxrfrx 4 830257 it's joe's pizza on 6th avenue Tue Dec 27 09:14:05 -0800 2005 830082 0 fusilli 1 829909 In addition to all the things others have said, a real New York pizza (the kind you find in the city and stretching out into the NY suburbs) is about the size of a large manhole cover and a slice can measure up to about twelve inches at the crust end... Mon Dec 19 12:47:06 -0800 2005 829872 0 newhound 1 830083 After all this talk I had to go get a small T Anthony pizza yesterday. Man, so good, fresh out of the oven... but yes, the sauce is a little too sweet. I usually put a bunch of salt on there, which I think balances it all out, but straight out of the oven, the sweet flavor is a little obnoxious. Wed Dec 21 09:43:15 -0800 2005 829872 0 rxrfrx 2 830118 One can use a pinch of sugar to balance over-acid tomatoes, but it should never EVER be noticeable. It's a major crime against tomatoes (and is a crutch designed to cover the fact that you had crappy tomatoes). Wed Dec 21 15:33:08 -0800 2005 830083 0 Karl S 1 830107 Ah yes...NY pizza. Very simply (New York is not Long Island or Westchester but can include Brooklyn and Queens). First the crust is thin, the oven is blazing hot, the 900 degree comment is pretty accurate. The dough is tossed to approximate a circle, then placed on a pizza peal and topped with a thin layer of sauce and cheese (sliced versus shredded depends on the venue). Any other toppings are added. Then the pizza is placed on the stone floor of this inferno and 10-12 minutes later, heaven appears from hell. The floor is so hot that it draws all the moisture out of the crust as it bakes. Crispy, thin crust is the key. Believe it or not, New Haven and NY pizzas are the best thinners. Wed Dec 21 14:12:59 -0800 2005 829872 0 ncfooddog 2 830111 Ah! I see! Based on the preparation method you described, compared to how everyone else also makes pizza, I can see the difference between NY and non-NY style pizzas. Basically, one of these pizzas are not both the same. Wed Dec 21 14:50:27 -0800 2005 830107 0 Two Forks