Lord of the Pies
SIX-TIME WORLD PIZZA CHAMPION BRUCE DIFABIO BRINGS A TASTE OF DETROIT TO THE GOLD COAST
Bruno DiFabio is back.
He left Greenwich years ago, not too long after he opened Re Napoli in Old Greenwich and then took off to open more pizzerias — eight by last count — in seven cities.
He’s the Johnny Appleseed of pizzas, fermenting pizza dough and stirring up marinara
sauces wherever he goes, even on TV. He’s the Lord of the Pies.
That’s also the name of the new place he opened on Grigg Street, down at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, across from Diane’s Books.
The name is apropos because what DiFabio does with his pizza dough is so intense and time consuming, there is no other no
menclature that does him justice. He’s fanatic about the high-protein flour he uses. He talks about coldrise, long fermentation, naturally pro-biotic and an easy-to-digest, airy dough.
He jokes that he could bore you with the products and methods he uses. He says he’s been making pizza since he was 10 years old, starting when he worked at his father’s pizzeria, Benny’s, now long gone from Greenwich Avenue.
Two weeks after DiFabio opened his latest venture the place was hopping — with take-out orders.
It seems that corporate Greenwich can’t get enough of DiFabio’s Detroit Pan Pizza. The dough is triple fermented, rolled out, topped with slices of pepperoni that are a gentler cousin of its more aggressive fiery relative, dressed with tomato sauce and finally twice baked in a deep pan. It’s thick and spongy and easy on the stomach.
DiFabio’s ovens are not the usual pizza infernos; his fire away at a humble 500 to 550 degrees Fahrenheit. In such an oven, the crust of the Detroit becomes a caramelized cradle of Asiago cheese. When he introduced a cauliflower version in his regular pizza lineup, he sold out before he could replenish his larder.
Besides pizza by this national and international champion of the Neapolitan iconic food (six-time World Pizza Champion), DiFabio has pita wraps, heroes, salads, entrées and other enticements on his menu.
For a scandalous twist on lasagna, scoops of the completed ricotta/mozzarella dish are rolled in panko crumbs and deep fried. That’s a step too far for some, but tasty nonetheless.
The pizzeria, which took over the space where the old Bruckner’s Good to Go dished out deli take-out for years, is small and rustic and seems like it has been there forever.
That look is new and deliberate, however: it could pass for a store-front pizzeria off the main piazza in Naples, a glass of cold beer at the ready. (The only food rule Italians break in their code of wine or water, nothing else with their food. Cold beer is the best beverage with pizza.)
The interior has veneer bricks with scripted CocaCola sprawled across it, a stone arch leading to back rooms; and a wall scrapbooked with artistic pop culture images; bare, distressed-wood communal tables; and metal chairs and stools that, truth be told, are uncomfortable. Pipes crochet the ceiling and the kitchen is crammed with young, energetic workers feeding dressed pies into ovens or packaging orders to go. On frenzied weekends, the staff swells to 15, including delivery drivers.
DiFabio loves to tweak traditional dishes of his forebears, who incidentally came from Abruzzo, not too far from the Bay of Naples. He dishes up a fat meatball, for example, tops it with mozzarella and tomato sauce, and slides it into a dough that is then deep fried and finally baked and dusted with tiny bits of garlic, cheese and a squirt of olive oil. The crust is strongly reminiscent of zeppole, that cloudlike dessert pastry served on the feast of St. Joseph in Italian communities throughout the world. DiFabio’s savoy rendition is excellent.
He takes zucchini and spirals them into ridiculously long strands as if they’re spaghetti run amok on a pasta machine stuck in the on position. He caramelizes onions, swirls in an egg yolk and some grated cheese to make a sauce and facetiously calls his dish Spaghetti No Carbonara. That means no bacon, although the menu erroneously lists that ingredient in a description of the dish.
Everything is sourced from top purveyors, DiFabio says, and there’s no skim dairy anywhere in DiFabio’s kitchen. That means the mozzarella is full fat and melts as it was born to do: gooey, stringy, and yummy. His herbed tomato sauce is simmered for hours with its mirepoix base of onions, carrots and celery which makes it almost like a ragu and a bit too heavy, unfortunately, for a simple spaghetti dish, but works well with meat and heavier pastas.
Flour comes from Canadian wheat and is transformed into dough that goes through such a regimented series of steps you would think it was aspiring for a Ph.D.
The only items on the extensive menu not housemade are the desserts with tiramisu, the hands-down favorite. Take some home to enjoy along with an icy limoncello. Bliss.