PIE AND MIGHTY
ON a brisk night in late November, top pizza makers from around the country, members of the food media and even Mayor de Blasio gathered at a new pizzeria on the Bowery, preparing to taste the sublime. The renowned Italian pizzaiolo Gino Sorbillo, perhaps the most famous pie maker in Naples, Italy — the birthplace of pizza — was celebrating the opening of his long-awaited, eponymous restaurant. As a procession of steaming hot pies passed among the partiers, there were the usual press-friendly praises . . . but also a quiet rumbling of criticism about “soupy” toppings and “chewy,” “wet” dough.
Can the reigning king of Neapolitan pizza make it in the Big Apple? Right now, mixed reviews are just one of his challenges.
In Italy, the 43-year-old Sorbillo has a larger-than-Vesuvius reputation as a pizza maker and TV personality. While tourists and locals alike endure hour-plus lines at his locations in Naples and Milan, it seems New York City’s decade-old craze for the Neapolitan trend has cooled off — making way for new obsessions such as the square-shaped, deep-dish Detroit style that’s been a huge hit at joints such as Emmy Squared, as well as a revitalization of the “grandma slice.”
Before the November event, pizza aficionados had been predicting Sorbillo could stoke the wood-burning fires once again for puffy-crusted pies topped with San Marzano tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. But his first NYC venture, the friedcal-zone-and-pizza eatery Zia Esterina, which opened in Little Italy in April, has already shuttered. (Sorbillo’s publicist Shari Bayer said the closure was caused by damage from next-door construction and is temporary.)
The new Bowery spot comes with its own issues. Sorbillo’s friend and fellow pizzaiolo Giulio Adriani has helmed a number of restaurants at the location: Forcella, A Slice of Naples and the pizza speak-easy SRO. Adriani says he closed SRO in early 2016 after uneven business and a large rent increase. (The Williamsburg Forcella is still open.)
“It’s a tough area, but the biggest problem is the [lack of a] liquor license,” says Adriani, who went on to help launch the Neapolitan Express pizza trucks and is debuting a new fastcasual venture, the Local Pizzaiolo, in Atlanta in January.
Back when he arrived in NYC in 2010, to open Olio e Piú, Adriani says you could name all the city’s authentic Neapolitan
pizzerias on one hand: Kesté and Motorino, which were soon followed by Paulie Gee’s. Now, he laments, “there are too many to name.”
“When I opened [Kesté] 10 years ago, it was easy to do a good job,” says Roberto Caporuscio, who recently expanded from his original pizzeria to locations in Williamsburg and the Financial District, where he has also built a pizza school. “It’s [even] changed a lot from five years ago when I opened Don Antonio. Today, you need to be very precise and careful.”
There is no doubt that Sorbillo has icon status in his home country.
“His family is 100-percent pizza — real lineage there, multiple generations,” says Scott Wiener of Scott’s Pizza Tours.
“Pizza is my life — my daily food, my profession and my history,” says Sorbillo (via a translator), who was taught to make pizzas by his aunt, Zia Esterina, and his father, Salvatore, who is the 19th of 21 children — all pizzaioli. “When I was a child, my friends were able to travel, and all I did was make pizza and go to school.”
But that kind of history doesn’t hold much stock with New Yorkers.
“New York City is not an easy market,” says Ribalta executive chef Pasquale Cozzolino, who moved to New York from Naples in 2011. “There’s a lot of Michelin-starred chefs, but New Yorkers don’t care if you’re famous somewhere else in the world. They want to see you here, working hard. They want to see you prove you are right for them.”
Although Sorbillo plans to be in New York frequently, his home base will be Naples, where he has already conquered intense pizza competition. He stood up to the Mafia by refusing to purchase their food products and quickly rebounded from a 2012 arson attack suspected to be the Mafia’s doing.
In Sorbillo’s place at the oven on Bowery are three of his trusted pizza makers, all of whom have worked for a minimum of three years at his shops in Naples. His menu is decidedly Italian, from the classic margherita to the nduja pie made with spicy Calabrian spreadable salami. And he uses the same organic flour and 20-hour dough fermentation as he does at all of his locations. But that attention to detail might not please American taste buds.
According to the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the most widely ordered Neapolitan pie is the margherita (topped with San Marzano tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil) — a strict recipe that falls under the European Union’s “Traditional Speciality Guaranteed” status. For unfamiliar American palates, Adriani says Sorbillo will have to deal with customers who complain that the pizza is soggy.
“We [Neapolitan pizza makers in New York] all have had the same problem . . . and we each decided how to handle it,” says Adriani of the textural difference. For instance, he adjusted his recipe to use less sauce and ingredients that release less water, such as pre-roasted mushrooms and fresh mozzarella that’s been drained overnight.
Sorbillo does not plan to change any of his recipes — his pies, he says, are his pies.
His pizza is larger than typical Neapolitan pies seen in the city thus far, with a smaller crust — a style called “ruota di carretto” or wagon wheel. “Our goal is equilibrium around the border with ingredients well-distributed,” Sorbillo says. “Otherwise when you fold it, it’s too [cumbersome] and hard to eat.”
Paul Giannone, better known as the man behind Greenpoint’s Paulie Gee’s, which serves Neapolitan-inspired pies, is optimistic about Sorbillo’s chances.
“It’s not just somebody opening a Neapolitan pizzeria — it’s the most respected Neapolitan pizza maker in Naples, and it’s a great honor to have him,” says Giannone, who is on the brink of opening his first slice joint near his original whole-piesonly location.
No matter what happens in Manhattan, Sorbillo is not afraid.
“I am very stubborn,” he says, “and moving forward with my focus, which is the pizza: tradition, innovation and heritage of place.”
“Pizza is my life — my daily food, my profession and my history.” — Gino Sorbillo