"The window paper is finally down (after what seems like years) at Ignazio's under the Brooklyn Bridge: http://twitpic.com/zw25." So sayeth Savory Cities' Chris McBride in a tweet sent to the Eater blog.

Not years per se. But the place was first reported on by the Brooklyn Eagle August 2007.

I had thought it just ran into money troubles and halted its opening. But it does look like there are tables set up in there. We'll see.

Ignazio's Pizza

4 Water Street, Brooklyn NY 11201 (under the Brooklyn Bridge; map)

"The window paper is finally down (after what seems like years) at Ignazio's under the Brooklyn Bridge: http://twitpic.com/zw25." So sayeth Savory Cities' Chris McBride in a tweet sent to the Eater blog.

Not years per se. But the place was first reported on by the Brooklyn Eagle August 2007.

I had thought it just ran into money troubles and halted its opening. But it does look like there are tables set up in there. We'll see.

Ignazio's Pizza

4 Water Street, Brooklyn NY 11201 (under the Brooklyn Bridge; map)

The Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani, the Italian "pizza police" (they certify pizzerias as being authentically Neapolitan), is opening a restaurant and pizza school. It will be called Kesté Pizza e Vino and hopes to be open by the end of February, according to the New York Times.

And then, according to an email I just got from Rosario Procino at the Associazione itself, "Down the road we also expect to have classes for nonprofessional 'pizza lovers.'"

That would mean you and me, folks.

What up with the name? Procino explains: "Kesté (spelled "cheste é") means "This is it!" in the Neapolitan dialect."

271 Bleecker Street, New York NY 10014 (between Jones and Cornelia streets; map)

From Serious Eats

The good folks at weblogawards.org have placed us among the finalists for the 2008 Best Food Blog Award, alongside a host of other fine contenders. Head on over and cast your vote » You can vote once every 24 hours until the polls close on Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 10 p.m. GMT.

Clicking in to the Slice inbox today, we've got ...

GenealogyBank.com (a subscription service) has been adding the Boston Journal. I went through it and found the following long, interesting article [subscription required] on pizza, from 1903. This is two years before Lombardi's establishment opened on Spring Street in New York City, the so-called first pizzeria in America.

A similar, 1905 article from the New York Sun about pizza on Spring Street is on the Library of Congress website, FYI. Both articles spell it pizze.

—Barry Popik

P. S.: I just added a post on Pizza Margherita.

------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Barry,

Thanks yet again for some great research. I love getting these emails from you because they're almost always packed with some sort of nugget of newly unearthed historical information.

As someone who has adopted New York as his home, I'd have to say that 1905 is reportedly the first instance of a pizza license, which doesn't mean Lombardi's wasn't making pizzas prior to applying for the license. I would choose to believe this, just so that New York could keep its historical pizza supremacy over Boston as well as its ACTUAL present-day pizza supremacy.

Thanks again for the intel.

Hasta la pizza,
Adam

Photograph from Blondie & Brownie

I am outraged that all you pizza tourists are crowding my neighborhood spot. Go back home and eat the abominable pizza in your own neighborhoods.

Look at that line! (It comes from a Motorino-Co. head-to-head post by Blondie & Brownie.)

Granted, Co. is my work neighborhood, but still. You are going to make it impossible for me to enjoy a nice quitting-time pie.

Now, shoo!

I'll be speaking as part of a fun year-end wrap-up at Union Hall in Park Slope. My topic? Pizza, what else?

Also speaking will be Patrick Di Justo with "Things We Lost" (the bygones of 2008) Joe Garden with "Welcome to the Night" (the year in vampires), and Marian Salzman with "The Year of Payback" (why the buzzword for 2009 will be "reboot").

The retrospective will be 2009's first installment of Adult Education, self-described as "a useless lecture series" and also as "a monthly event series where various speakers present brief, multimedia lectures on a shared theme."

Attendees are advised to eat a slice of garlic pizza beforehand to ward off any vampires who show up to hear Mr. Garden's presentation.

Adult Education Presents: The Year in Review

Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30)
Union Hall, 702 Union Street, Brooklyn NY 11215 (near Fifth Avenue; map)
$5 cover

I recall a certain episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the android Mr. Data is told that although his recital of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is technically perfect, it lacks soul.

That's how I feel about most of the Neapolitan-style pizza I've tried. When it's done right, it's delicious but often lacks a nice crispness, and its daintiness is almost always just a little less than satisfying.

So when Girl Slice and I met up with some of her friends at Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco's Mission District over the holidays, I was prepared to be mehhed.

The photos I'd seen of Pizzeria Delfina's pies all said Neapolitan, and San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer described it as "thin crust, Neapolitan style with a nod to New York."

"Nod to New York," I thought. We'll see. It seems that when I travel outside New York, the pizza I eat falls into three categories:

• Decent-to-masterful Neapolitan-style pizza
• "Not New York–style but good for XYZ city"
• Ugh

Where did Delfina fall?

Thankfully in none of the categories above. It was, similar to Bauer's description, equal parts Neapolitan (small, personal-size pizzas with exceptionally puffy rims) and New York-style (that all-important and hard-to-achieve crisp-chewy crust).

Somehow, Delfina is able to crank out some satisfyingly proper-crusted pizzas in a gas-fired oven. That the toppings are fresh and outstanding doesn't hurt either. We shared four different pizzas to eat through a variety of what's on offer at this small space next door to the heralded original Delfina restaurant.

The Salsiccia came recommended by Bauer in his review; it's topped with house-made fennel sausage, tomato, bell peppers, onions, and mozzarella ($14). I'm pretty much a sucker for any sausage-and-onion pie. This one was my favorite of the evening.

Girl Slice chose for her pick a basic Margherita (pictured at top of post), which was good, because it gave us a good baseline to judge crust, cheese, sauce, and overall balance. It passed—and exceeded—muster in all respects. New Yorkers familiar with Lucali should imagine one of Mark Iacono's pizzas but smaller.

We also chose a couple pizzas that were either specials or that weren't listed on the Pizzeria Delfina online menu, because I have no idea which of the seven on-menu pizzas the two above would be. Sorry. The point of the dinner was not so much a pizza review as it was a catching-up with (and, for me, meeting new) friends.

The topmost of the two pies above was a white pizza topped with guanciale, and the one just above had prosciutto and fresh greens and was almost a salad pizza. Not bad, but by the point I ended up eating these two, I was stuffed to the gills, and I'm afraid I couldn't full appreciate them.

You see, I had eaten a "baby burrito" at La Corneta between lunch and dinner.

Fresh-stretched mozzarella appetizer (four ounces; $8.25).

Insalata tricolore (arugula, radicchio, and endive with lemon, extra virgin olive oil, and grana padano; $8)

The fact that we noshed on some appetizers (above) didn't help things, either.

Another box joins the Slice Pizza Box Museum.

We couldn't house all the pizza on the table by the end of the meal and had to take some home.

The only other pizzerias I've eaten at in San Francisco are Pizzaiolo and Blondie's. Blondie's was UGH, but I'd have hard time choosing which was better among Delfina and Pizzaiolo. Though, from memory, I'd give the edge to Delfina right now. I'd have to revisit both on the same day to do a head-to-head comparison.

And, yeah, I know there are tons of other places that I should have tried, but I only had so many meals out on my dance card while I was there, so don't rake me over the coals for missing your favorite or one that you think is better than Delfina. (Although you're free to leave suggestions in the comments here for my next visit.)

Pizzeria Delfina

Address: 3611 18th Street, San Francisco CA 94110 (near Guererro; map)
Phone: 415-437-6800
Website: pizzeriadelfina.com

Bonus: Star Trek's Mr. Data Plays Music

Raphael here in the office just asked, "I want to know, officially, is it 'Co.' or 'Company'?"

So I just called.

Co.: "Hello, Co."

Me: "Adam Kuban here, from Slice, America's Favorite Pizza Weblog."

Co.: "Um, yes?"

Me: "So there's been some confusion about your name. Are you 'Co.' or 'Company'?"

Co.: We're 'Co.' as in 'company.'"

Does that sort out any confusion, Raphael? It's still sort of a nonanswer answer. But we'll just make the call and say that we'll refer to it on Slice officially as "Co." and pronounce it as co.

Happy New Year! I may have had a New Year's Day revelation—even I'm getting tired of rolling out The Year That Was across Serious Eats land. So for today, we're going to finish this off with the best food porn across the SE sites. It's not like a lot of us have the capacity today to do more than look at pretty pictures anyway. Mmm. Beautiful pictures. Drool, mmm, click.

Pizza Showdown: The Best Delivery Pizza »

Sedona, Arizona: Apizza Heaven »

Weekend Pizza Report: Bacon Pizza at Famous Original Ray's; Bar Tano in Gowanus »

Pizzeria Bianco: The DJ Bubbles Drive-By »

Waldy's Bacon, Chicken, Chipotle Pizza »

Roberta's: The DIY Pizzeria »

Pizzeria Bianco Mops the Floor with Mozza »

Sam's, a Cobble Hill Fixture Long on Character »

Dessert Calzone at Toby's Public House »

Apizza Scholls: One of the Top Five Pizzerias in America »

Chicago's Spacca Napoli: Good But Not Great »

John's Pizzeria, a Familiar Taste »

Covo a Welcome Addition to West Harlem Pizza Scene »

A Pizzeria AND a Liquor Store? It Must be Marie's »

Pizza for $1 at St. Marks 2 Brothers Pizza Plus »

Super Thin-Crust Pizza at Michael Angelo's II »

John's Pizzeria in Jersey City, New Jersey »

Bollini's Pizzeria Making Worthy Neapolitan Pies in Monterey Park, California »

First Taste: Motorino Is Awesome »

Delisi's Pizzeria & Bar: A Fully Restored Neighborhood Institution »

Great Sicilian Slices at Sal's Pizzeria in Mamaroneck »

Italian Fiesta Pizzeria: The Obamas' Chicago Pizza Favorite, Reviewed »

First Taste: A Pizza Preview of Jim Lahey's Upcoming Pizzeria, Co. »

How to Make a Pizzarito »

Edwardo's Natural Pizza: No Longer Great, But Still Very Good »

Co. Pizzeria Soft Opening Photo Gallery »

From Serious Eats

Jeeves, valet to Bertie Wooster, is one of the most renowned characters of English fiction. How did he garner fame and notoriety? Well, it all began on the day that Bertie hired him in the first of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. Jeeves confronts Bertie's wretching hangover with his magic potion: raw egg, Worcester sauce, and red pepper. As Jeeves puts it: "It is the Worcester sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening."

Lo and behold, the hangover vanished. Bertie attests: "I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more."

It's New Year's Day. Chances are, you may need a little something with color, nutrition, and bite to invigorate you after last night. No guarantees, but this potion may help hope to dawn once more. I've heard of a lot of crazy ways to de-hang yourself. Emergen-C, pickle juice, Gatorade, Alka Seltzer, hair of the dog, whatever that may have been, Bloody Mary, sand, sweat…

What is your surefire hangover cure for those of us without a Jeeves waiting in the wings?

From Serious Eats

Well, we've wrapped up 2008 at Serious Eats (we accept that some of you think we have in fact over-wrapped it), so I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all of the serious eaters out there a happy, happy new year. Our collective New Year's resolution at SE HQ is to bring you as much fresh, hot, delicious food content in 2009 as we can possibly dish up. If that means being even more vigilant in our never-ending search for seriously delicious food, we are ready, willing, and able. I hope that we are more than up to that all-too-pleasurable task. What are your New Year's food resolutions?

From Serious Eats

The Year That Was: Where serious eaters were eating out—or should have been—in 2008.

National Stories

Regional Hot Dog Styles:To celebrate July 4th weekend, we brought you Serious Eats' definitive guide to America's regional hot dog styles.

Where to Find Duck Fat Fries: Chefs across the country were skipping peanut or cottonseed oil to embrace rendered duck fat for fries.

America's Heroes, Grinders, Subs, and More: Hoagies, heroes, subs, wedges, po'boys, grinders, and the list goes on. We compiled a list of America's best hold and cold sandwiches.

iPhone Waiters Line-Waiter's Guide: Apple's iPhone 3G came out July 11. We imagined there would be some iPhone camping expeditions at Apple Stores across the country, with people lining up to get their grubby little hands on one as soon as possible. We're more concerned with grub in hand, so we asked our nationwide network of Serious Eats contributors to give us their picks for serious eats near the Apple Stores most likely to draw crowds in New York, Philadelphia, D.C. Metro Area, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Boston

Clear Flour Bakery. Photograph from mkrigsman on Flickr

Boston City Guide: Boston Magazine's Amy Traverso gave us the rundown on Beantown from post-Fenway feeding to the best clam chowdah. Go Sox!

Best Ice Cream: We investigated the claims of "best ice cream" in Boston, visiting the two top contenders, Toscanini’s and Christina’s.

Boston's Flour Bakery and Clear Flour Bread: Carey Jones took us to two Boston bakeries with similar names and loyal followings. Joanne Chang's Flour Bakery churns out killer baked goods, like the incomparably gooey Sticky Sticky Buns. And across town is Clear Flour Bread, a tiny Brookline bakery famous for classic Italian breads and French pastries—and the mouthwatering oven fumes wafting down the block.

Holy Cannoli: Mike’s Pastry and Modern Pastry Shop in Boston's North End contend for the title of best cannoli in the neighborhood; we weighed in.

Chicago

Chicago-style hot dog. Photograph from roboppy on Flickr

Our Chicago bureau chief, Michael Nagrant, kept us in the know with his weekly dispatches from the windy city.

Chicago City Guide: Your one page guide to eating out in Chicago.

Best Dining Experiences: Michael Nagrant shared his five favorite dining experiences in Chicago: "The unifying feature of all of my choices is that the spots below represent the true personality of the driving force behind the restaurant."

Los Angeles and Southern California

Clockwise from top left: Blue Velvet; the patio at Wilshire Restaurant, photograph from Peter Pak, MD; BREADBAR

Best Dining Experiences in Los Angeles: Patric Kuh is the restaurant critic for Los Angeles Magazine and the author of The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: The Coming of Age of American Restaurants. He's also one of the most thoughtful food writers we know, and shared his unique perspective on dining experiences in Los Angeles with us with his http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/05/los-angeles-dining-experiences.html
">five best dining experiences in Los Angeles.

Best Ice Cream in Los Angeles: Local contributor, Leah Greenstein, introduced us to the best ice cream in Los Angeles.

LA Taco Trucks Safe: In August, we celebrated when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overturned a controversial rule made in April that forced the city's 14,000 registered taco trucks to move every hour, thus stalling normal business. Judge Dennis Aichroth ruled in favor of taqueros, calling the ban “too ambiguous to be enforceable” and “arbitrary and not based upon any rational, intrinsic or natural basis."

Best Date Shakes: Erin Zimmer introduced us to Date Shakes. "California is a date mecca, especially in the southern half near Palm Springs. The prune-resembling pellets are packed with natural sugars, which makes them a great—yet shocking to outsiders—ingredient for milkshakes."

Montreal, Canada

Photographs by Zach Brooks

48-Hours in Montreal: 48 hours is hardly enough time to eat your way through any city, especially one as rich, and deliciously diverse as Montreal. But that doesn't mean Zach Brooks and his wife didn't try. Follow their itinerary, and you won't leave Montreal disappointed (or hungry).

Poutine: Montreal's most famous dish, poutine, is made of fries, gravy, an cheese curds. Serious Eats readers Kathy Park and Rob Price emailed us an account of their recent trip to Montreal—and their first taste of poutines at La Banquise and Patati Patata.

New Orleans

What to Eat at Jazz Fest: Rather than providing the standard concessionaire fare, the Jazz Fest organizers have a competitive, juried process for getting food selling space inside the Fairgrounds. Serious Eats' contributor, The Gurgling Cod, surveyed the offerings on our behalf, and also paid a visit to Cochon, a restaurant "very much in the genre of the porkcentric, heavily lauded restaurant that seems to be the rage recently—serious cooks cooking serious meats in a relatively informal setting—think Au Pied Du Cochon in Montreal, the Chang Dynasy in New York."

Ed Levine packed his scale with him when he went to New Orleans, and packed on a couple of pounds when faced with the city's tastiest temptations, including Willie Mae's fried chicken.

Philadelphia

Reading Terminal sign. Photograph by roboppy on Flickr

Philadelphia City Guide: Joy Manning, the restaurant critic at Philadelphia Magazineand regular Serious Eats contributor shared her picks for the best eats in the city of brotherly love.

The Best of Philly's BYOB: Joy Manning shared her selective list of bargain BYOBs, that offer unfussy but fantastic food, and unbeatable prices and personality.

Best Philly 'hood for a Restaurant Crawl: Head to the Queen Village neighborhood, where there's a high concentration of outstanding eateries, many serving small plate options. Joy Manning recommended four spots you must hit along the way.

Pittsburgh

Serious Markets, Bakeries, and Delis in Pittsburgh's Strip District: Pittsburgh isn’t usually considered a culinary center. But a Saturday morning at the Strip District is a serious eater’s paradise, when everything from mung bean pancakes to fresh-baked biscotti can be snagged without leaving the sidewalk. We explored it all, including a visit to the flagship location of the Primanti Bros, home of over-sized sandwiches served with fries and slaw inside.

San Francisco Bay Area

A dish from the French Laundry

Great Dining Experiences in the Bay Area: San Francisco Chronicle's Michael Bauer shared five great dining experiences in the San Francisco Bay area. His San Francisco and Napa Valley restaurant experience picks had mostly surprises and one obvious choice.

Best Fried Chicken Sandwich: Erin Zimmer discovered the Bay Area's best fried chicken sandwich at Bakesale Betty's in Oakland. "Almost as satisfying as the actual eating of this sandwich is watching the rushed yet scientifically precise assembly line of fried chicken sandwich-makers behind the glass.:

Best Ice Cream in San Francisco:: When it's warm enough (or even when it's not), San Francisco correspondent, Jen Maiser, advised us to head to Bi-Rite Creamery for some of the best ice cream in the city.

Washington, D.C.

Typical feast at Etete. Photograph by roboppy on Flickr

Washington, D.C. City Guide: Food writer Jane Black at the Washington Post shared her top picks in the nation’s capital.

Best Eats Near Union Station: Changing trains in D.C.? Got a few hours to kill? Rolling your eyes at the fluorescent-lit options near the Amtrak desk? Erin Zimmer gave us her recs for strange characters and comforting foods that will eat up time.

Best Ethnic Markets and Grocery Stores: Erin Zimmer brought us seven great ethnic markets and grocery stores in the Washington D.C. area covering Hispanic, Turkish, Lebanese, Ethiopian, Italian, and Vietnamese cuisine.

Best Georgetown Eats for Hoya Fans: With a tear, and napkin ready, Erin Zimmer bid farewell to the Hoya season with these campus favorites.

Best Beer-Centric Spots: A round-up of Erin Zimmer's favorite beer-loving bars and eateries in the Washington, D.C., area.

Snapshots from Italy

Gina dePalma was in Italy this year researching her second book and reporting back to us with Snapshots from Italy. Via Gina's words and photos, we visited Rome, Abruzzo, Turin, Frascati, and Ferentino.

Best Lunch in Paris

Serious Eats intern Sarah Wolf explored the best lunches in Paris. The contenders: Croque Monsieur aux Courgettes, Shakshouka, escargot, and gourmet frozen pasta.

More of The Year That Was

Ingredient of the Year: Bacon
Dear Serious Eats: "Enough with the Damn Year-End Reviews!"
Nagging Questions
Food Photography
Ed Levine's Serious Diet
Rest in Peace: Obituaries
Food Video Games
TYTW in Burgers
Stop-Motion Food Videos
Pizza
Food as Other Stuff
TYTW on Serious Eats New York
Movies
Food in Space
Food Media
Food Shortages, Scares, and Rising Costs
Videos
Science
Starbucks
Bacon
The Top Talk Posts of 2008
The Top 10 Posts on Serious Eats
The Top 8 Posts on Slice
The Top 10 Posts on A Hamburger Today

From Serious Eats

We've been going a bit nuts with with our "The Year That Was" year-end roundups here on Serious Eats. Thank you for indulging us. (For those of you getting sick of these retrospectives, here's the official party line on that.)

To make it easy for you to browse all these wraps, I've gathered them all here for you. Enjoy! (Or not!) After the jump, the roundup roundup.

Best Bites

Ingredient of the Year: Bacon
Dish of the Year: The Burger
Eating Out Across the Nation (and World)
Best Dishes in New York

Recurring Memes, Themes, and Schemes of 2008

Questionable Celebrity Chef Hairstyles
Dear Serious Eats: "Enough with the Damn Year-End Reviews!"
Nagging Questions
Food Photography
Ed Levine's Serious Diet
Rest in Peace: Obituaries
Food Video Games
TYTW in Burgers
Stop-Motion Food Videos
Pizza
Food as Other Stuff
TYTW on Serious Eats New York
Movies
Food in Space
Food Media
Food Shortages, Scares, and Rising Costs
Videos
Science
Starbucks
Bacon

Top 10 Posts (in Terms of Pageviews)

The Top Talk Posts of 2008
The Top 10 Posts on Serious Eats
The Top 8 Posts on Slice
The Top 10 Posts on A Hamburger Today

The Year's Best Food Porn on Serious Eats (and Its Subsites)

Serious Eats Food Porn
Burger Porn from A Hamburger Today
Pizza Porn from Slice
Serious Eats New York Food Porn

"It hasn’t yet offered me a perfect meal. But it improved enough between two visits to inspire hope that Motorino will eventually launch itself into the upper strata of the city’s pizzerias." [New York Times]

From Serious Eats

I was wondering when someone would express this sentiment. From the Serious Eats inbox ...

Why the fuck did I read your site all year when it turns out I can just tune in this week and get an entire year's worth of shit in my RSS feeder? Enough with the damn reviews clogging things up. I can't find the new material for all this review shit. Stop it. Stop it now!

—Holli
on vacation with a damn Google reader clogged with stuff I've already seen

------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Holli,

The time between Christmas and New Year's Day is a slow period for almost any media outlet that publishes on a daily or weekly schedule. After all, like you, we want a vacation, too. ;)

So we, like other publications, work ahead of time in early December to prepare these endless year-in-review items that we can schedule for posting while we're enjoying the holidays with our family and friends.

Tired of "The Year That Was"? We're not! So until we return you to your regularly scheduled programming, use this special feed from Yahoo! Pipes to filter it out.

But it's not just an easy way to generate content and mindlessly go on autopilot. I know I've had a blast looking through the archives of Serious Eats and all its subsites, and I think my co-eater Alaina Browne here summed it up nicely: "It's a great view into the breadth of the Serious Eats beat and the memes and themes that emerged, and a fun way to revisit some of our favorite and most popular posts."

I'm happy that you've read the site so thoroughly and remember everything on it so well that these Year That Was posts are all old hat to you. We love readers like you! But lots of our community members don't have the same steel-trap mind (I know I don't—I had forgotten about a lot of the content we covered this year). Moreover, we've grown so much over the year that much of what we've covered is new to a lot of readers.

Look, I know it can be frustrating. I was watching CNN last night while they did a 2008 campaign wrap-up. I was totally all, "SEEN IT!" and changed the channel.

I wouldn't go so far as asking you to tune out until Monday, when we'll be through all the retrospectives we've got in the works, but I just took some time to make you a special feed using Yahoo! Pipes. Here you go: Serious Eats "The Year That Wasn't". You can go to that page and add the special feed to your Google Reader.

Since you're clamoring for some new material, I'll see if Kerry is available at this hour to mix you up one of her New Year's Eve Champagne cocktails. Look for it in two and two, then have a sip, and relax.

Seriously,
Adam

For Lovers of The Year That Was

Nagging Questions
Food Photography
Ed Levine's Serious Diet
Rest in Peace: Obituaries
Food Video Games
TYTW in Burgers
Stop-Motion Food Videos
Pizza
Food as Other Stuff
TYTW on Serious Eats New York
Movies
Food in Space
Food Media
Food Shortages, Scares, and Rising Costs
Videos
Science
Starbucks
Bacon
The Top Talk Posts of 2008
The Top 10 Posts on Serious Eats
The Top 8 Posts on Slice
The Top 10 Posts on A Hamburger Today

"Our pizzas are not always round."

Clockwise from top left: Co. opened with a soft launch this evening; there were actual people from the general public in the dining room. As FOS Kathryn Yu said, from the outside, it looks less like a pizzeria than a fancy Asian restaurant. One of the stars of the evening, the Ham and Cheese pie. (You can click all images bigger.)

When I checked in late afternoon to find out if Co. really was opening on Friday, the gentleman in the dining room told me, "Yes—and tonight, too." It was a sort of soft opening. With the place just a couple block from Slice–Serious Eats HQ, my workmate Alaina and I went to check it out. We were joined by her husband and a couple friends.

I've already given you more Co. Pizzeria than you need, so I'll keep this one mostly to pictures. Ahead, photos of what we had—and the big menu reveal!

Click me bigger »

I love this disclaimer.

First up, the Boscaiola: tomato, mushroom, buffalo mozz, pork sausage, onion, chiles. After all was said and done, the table agreed that this was one of two standouts tonight. This was one of my favorites from the preview I went to, and I was glad to see it made it onto the actual menu.

Next out of the gate was the Special Pie: brussels sprouts, béchamel, cantal, buffalo mozz, shaved chestnuts, and smoked bacon. It was good, but the brussels sprouts overwhelmed the rest of the flavors—even the bacon to some degree. This one was not in the preview I had.

The basic Margherita and its upskirt.

The Margherita arrived next. It was excellent, but I have to say that this is one of the rare occasions where I've liked topped pizzas more than a plain pie. Its crust was light and crisp, with great hole structure and plenty of yeasty flavor, but it was still beaten out by the Boscaiola and one other. (You're going to have to keep reading to find out which one.)

The Flambé was the next to hit the table. It has caramelized onions, Parmesan, buffalo mozz, and lardons. It's a white pie, and though the menu does not list béchamel as one of its components, I believe it was present, as this one was very heavy. The lardons were porky goodness, but even with five people splitting it, we found it was quite the gut-buster.

Oh, I just realized that I revealed in the opening photo that the Ham and Cheese pie was one of the two stars of the evening. Well, that's why its photo appears twice here, I guess. It's topped with pecorino, gruyère, buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto and has a few of caraway seeds incorporated into the bottom of the crust. Not that you can see any in the upskirt here:

Co. will be open officially on Friday, January 2. It will serve dinner only for now—though we're told that it may start serving lunch as soon as late January (which in Jim Lahey time means March 2010. Just kidding; we're keeping our fingers crossed that it really does start lunch service by late next month). Hours are 4 p.m. to 11 or 11:30 p.m., depending on patronage, according to a Co. employee.

Co.

230 Ninth Avenue, New York NY 10001 (at West 24th Street; map)
co-pane.com

After other food blogs reported that Co. would open on Friday, January 2, Slice walked its lazy ass over to the joint to confirm. Turns out it's actually OPEN TONIGHT for a soft-launch dinner service. Closed tomorrow and Thursday, and then officially open Friday.

We're there now and will have pictures in the morning. Why don't you head down and see if you can find us there.

Co.

230 Ninth Avenue, New York NY 10001 (at West 24th Street; map)

I like the headline on this Grub Street post about Co.: "A First Look at Co., Jim Lahey’s Crusty New Pizzeria" Sorry, but it's been done, folks: First Taste: A Pizza Preview of Jim Lahey's Upcoming Pizzeria, Co.

So, yeah, this has been on Flickr since March 2007, but Raphael just pointed it out to me now.

When I was a kid and my dad owned a pizzeria, we used dough dockers to prevent this, but when I get a slice with a bubble, I quite like how it pulls up, sloughs off its cheese and gets extra crisp.

This is the biggest pizza bubble I've ever seen. But if you've seen one bigger, send me a pic or a link to one, and who knows, maybe I'll send you something from the pile of pizza crap here in the office.