THAT’S A LOT OF DOUGH!
Pizza is getting an artisanal upgrade, but are the higher prices leaving a bad taste?
A CCORDING to the economic theory known as the Pizza Principle, a New York slice should cost roughly the same as a subway fare. But these days, a slice could cost you as much as a crosstown Uber.
At Alla Pala Pizza & Enoteca, which debuted in the Flatiron District’s Eataly this week, a slice of tricolore topped with prosciutto di Parma and house-made stracciatella cheese will set you back $9.20. And at Una Pizza Napoletana, the recently reopened mecca for crust fanatics, every personal 12-inch pie — even the simple mar- gherita — is $25.
Like craft cocktails and gourmet burgers, pizza is getting posher and pricier — with artisanal ingredients and lengthy production methods meant to elevate what’s typically been an affordable vessel for cheese and grease.
“Six or seven years ago, paying $14 for a cocktail would have seemed crazy,” says Scott Wiener, the founder of Scott’s Pizza Tours. “In the past decade we’ve gotten used to it. I think we’re there with pizzas, too.”
At the end of the summer, Wiener says his company will have to raise the price of his popular walking tours from $45 to $55, pizza included, to accommodate rising menu prices.
Pizzerias are now even offering tasting menus once synonymous with temples of haute cuisine. The $38 “DoughDici Experience” at Sofia Pizza Shoppe in Midtown East must be purchased in advance and features cheese made from the milk of red cows that’s been aged for 36 months. At Marta in the Flatiron District, the “Dueling Pizzas” series costs $80-a-head for a multicourse pizza-centric meal.
Marta chef Lena Ciardullo says pizzas are simply playing catch-up with other menu
items at top-notch restaurants.
“People are very conditioned at this point to spending between $20 and $30 for a bowl of pasta as a midcourse, and that’s kind of the way people are starting to think of pizza as well,” says Ciardullo, whose Roman-style pies range from $19 for a margherita to $27 for a version topped with house-made stracciatella cheese.
Some customers are affronted by the thought of shelling out that kind of dough.
Jim Curran, a 66-year-old retiree from Long Island who recently visited Greenwich Village’s Joe’s Pizza for a $3 slice, says he’d have to be “a couple beers in” to spend $25 on a small pie.
“That’s way over my limit,” he says. “No way.”
According to the pizzadelivery platform Slice, the average price of a standard 18-inch pie in NYC is $16.98, while a 12-inch specialty version hovers at $19.23. In neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side and the East Village, the price of pizza has grown 7 percent from 2016 to 2017, Seamless and Grubhub data show.
Anthony Mangieri, the 46-year-old mastermind behind the Lower East Side’s Una Pizza Napoletana, says he opts for premium tomatoes, mozzarella and other toppings. He imports multiple types of flour and spends two days fermenting his dough in a shrinelike climatecontrolled backroom.
His crust, say fans, is at once chewy, airy and crispy. And they’re willing to pay a premium for pizza perfection.
“Twenty-five dollars does seem like, ‘Holy s - - t, this is high,’ ” says Edward Joseph, a Prospect Heights resident who works in banking and dined at Una Pizza Napoletana earlier this month. “[But] for a really top-tier pizza, at the peak of its form, $25 is fine.” Not everyone agrees. Matt Hyland, the chef and co-owner of Detroitstyle pizza joints Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared, says pizzerias are “criminally overcharging” their customers. products,” says Hyland, whose pies range from $12 to $24 at his three Brooklyn and Manhattan restaurants.
Still, other factors are contributing to rising prices.
Even Hyland admits he’ll probably have to raise menu prices once the minimum wage increases to $15 an hour next year. Rents are another major factor. “If you can convince my landlord to lower my rent, I’ll lower the price of my pies,” says Joseph Castellano, the owner of Denino’s Pizzeria in Greenwich Village.
He estimates that the average cost of a 16-inch pie with toppings at his Manhattan location is $26 — about $10 more than at his original Staten Island outpost, where commercial rents are lower.
Regardless of the reasons for rising prices, some see posh pizza as a threat to the city’s culinary fabric.
“Pizza is one of those things that everyone has been able to afford,” says Lizzy Ouriel, a food Instagrammer under the handle @NewYorkNosh.
“When it starts to only be realistic for certain groups of people, that sort of defeats the purpose of it.”