EYES ON THE PIES
Martina, an East 11th Street satellite of Meyer and Anderer’s sit-down restaurant Marta, slashes through the confusion like a rolling cutter.
Inside a bright storefront space with clean lines, customers place orders at a counter, then receive buzzers that purr when the food is ready.
Nothing could be simpler, but any new place from Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group — even budgetfriendly Martina, where 10-inch pizzas are just $7 to $12 — is micro-scrutinized for deeper meaning: Could this be the start of a new Meyer empire?
“I’m not talking to anybody about leases for a second [location],” Anderer says in response to rumors that Martina will soon spread around the world like an olive-oil slick. The chef ’s only interest is the East Village, where he has lived since 1998. “My plan is to concentrate on this neighborhood,” he says. “I picked this spot deliberately. My first apartment after college was a few blocks from here.”
Anderer says his thinking centered mostly on speeding up Marta’s fine-dining pizza process. “I thought, ‘It would be awesome to figure out a way to get this pizza out to more people,’ ” he says.
Martina’s irregularly shaped roundish pies are a tad smaller than Marta’s — 120 grams of dough versus 170 grams — but the “dough recipe is exactly the same,” Anderer says, combining “workhorse” high-protein bread flour with whole-wheat flour.
He shuns fussy twists in favor of classic approaches. “For example, the fior di zucca is not my recipe,” he says. “It’s something they make in a million pizzerias in Rome.”
The fior di zucca is a white pie topped with zucchini flowers, mozzarella and anchovies. Although the oilpacked fillets are hard to spot, their flavor bursts over the dough and cheese. “We tear them up, and residual oil spreads itself around,” Anderer says. Like all of Martina’s pies, this one boasts a nicely blistered crust and gratifying mouthfeel.
Elsewhere on the menu, a basic margherita pie (tomato sauce and mozzarella) sticks out as pedestrian compared with the ortolana (mozzarella, pecorino, black olives and not-too-tough Tuscan kale) and spicy salsiccia (pork sausage, mushrooms, mozzarella and pecorino), but it’s Martina’s best seller so far.
The menu has snacks and starters, too — such as the luscious chicken meatballs ($7) — but when in the East Village, do as the Romans do and save your appetite for the pies.
Martina, 198 E. 11th St. Credit cards only. No reservations, no tipping.
Martina’s 10-inch thincrust pizzas are just $7 to $12 a pop. Clockwise from top left: the margherita, fior di zucca, salsiccia and ortolana.