REAL NYC PIZZA DEEP IN HEART OF MONTROSE.

BY ALISON COOK

So I finally tried the NewYork-style pizza that the Hutchinson clan has introduced at Pizaro’s, where the original specialty was Neapolitan-style pies.

I’ve been dragging my feet. I adore Neapolitan pizza, and Pizaro’s version has been my favorite since the Memorial store opened six years ago.

But the rigor of Neapolitan pies, with their lean, flashcharred crusts of high-protein flour and minimal toppings, is not for everyone. Especially in more-is-more Houston. There’s a real market for sprawling NewYork-style pizzas, baked longer with more toppings, on crusts enriched with oil and even a bit of sugar.

I just thought that market wasn’t me. Until I visited the West Gray location, the family’s second, and ordered a 16-inch NewYork pie customized with the same ingredients I might have chosen at my favorite New York-style pizzeria, John’s on Bleecker Street.

Crumbled fennel sausage? Check. Garlic? Check. I debated having Calabrian peppers on the side, then forgot it. On the long list of optional ingredients Pizaro’s offers for its NewYork pies, I spotted their house-made mozzarella, which I’ve always liked. So I ordered that, in addition to the regular lowermoisture mozzarella blend they use.

Paterfamilias Bill Hutchinson raised an eyebrow over that. New York pies bake in a gasfueled deck oven here for six minutes or so, as opposed to 90 seconds for the much hotter wood-fire oven specific to the Neapolitan style. The longer cooking time allows the highermoisture house-made mozzarella to throw off more moisture and, according to Hutchinson, “start to break down.”

That didn’t bother me. My NewYork pie arrived wafting a cloud of fennel scent, the white blobs of fresh mozz popping out of the red/ brown/golden canvas. They looked perfectly fine to me. The first bite was glorious: the crust almost butterytasting, with filmy-crisp surfaces above and below; the tomato sauce racier, spicier, more in-your-face than the purist San Marzano Neapolitan sauce; the sausage fragrant with fennel seed and garlic.

And having the extra, stretchy strings of mozzarella to sling around felt very satisfying. Half the enormous pie was gone before I realized what I had done. I admired howthe crust held just the right amount of New-Yorkstyle body when you held up a piece and gave it a slight fold to eat, the end sticking out straight with no assistance.

No, it didn’t have that coal-oven sootiness that makes John’s pizzas so unique, but for a minute, if I squinted and sipped a bit of shockingly good red box wine, I could imagine I was back on Bleecker Street.