Sicilian Culture: The News & Views: Memorable Pizza in A Historic Pizzeria

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Memorable Pizza in A Historic Pizzeria
By Robert A. Masullo

NEW YORK -- Four Sacramentans -- my wife, Eileen, and I and our daughter, Madeline, and son-in-law, Michael Korn -- recently flew to the Big Apple to attend a wedding. The celebration was delightful. But the night before the wedding proved almost as memorable for us.
That evening we tasted history -- in the form of pizza. Great pizza and New York, of course, are almost synonymous.
Not that the eastern American metropolis invented pizza; that honor belongs the southern Italian metropolis of Naples. But New York did introduce the now ubiquitous dish to the United States.
And the person making the introductions was, in fact, a Neapolitan -- Gennaro Lombardi, a baker who left Naples and came to New York in 1895.
Lombardi started making pizza in a bakery (using the same dough recipe that his father and grandfather used in Naples) and selling it by the slice in the most famous of all Little Italies, the one on Manhattan's Lower East Side along historic Mulberry Street, at the time the locus of Italian America.
Because the pizza sold better than his breads and pastries, Lombardi abandoned the bakery and, in 1905, opened his -- and the United States' -- first pizzeria.
Vestiges of the great migration that brought more than 5 million Italians to America between 1880 and 1920 remain visible on Little Italy's narrow streets today in the form of grocery stores, gift shops, espresso bars, restaurants and pizzerias. Including, Lombardi's. Now owned by a new Gennaro Lombardi (grandson of the founder) and his partner, John Brescio, America's first pizzeria still does a brisk business.
The present location 32 Spring St. -- between Mott and Mulberry streets -- is Lombardi's third incarnation, all three, just a few feet from one another. You'd never know it wasn't the original one, however, from looking at it.
From the standpoint of building age, Little Italy is one of the older parts of New York. The structure that houses Lombardi's dates back to around 1900.
Consisting of two long, narrow storefronts connected by a breezeway with an upstairs annex (al fresco in good weather; canvas-covered in bad), the eatery seats only 90 people.
Tables have checkered cloths. Some walls are bare brick; others are covered with glowing newspaper and magazine reviews. The ceiling is stamped tin. Floors are chicken wire tiles. Waiters, including the extremely friendly and helpful Yanni Provias -- he's half Greek, half Italian -- who served us, wear white shirts and aprons in the turn-of-the-20th-century style.
In short, you feel like you've taken a time machine trip once you go through the doors.
Lombardi's most distinctive feature, however, is its oven -- brick, of course. (Movie star Jack Nicholson, a regular patron when in New York, likes to sit in a relatively private nook near to it.)
As any real pizza fan knows, brick ovens make the best pizza. But Lombardis oven is more than just brick. It's also a coal oven (as the sign on the entry awning boasts).
Coal ovens have been outlawed in New York and most other places for environmental reasons but Lombardi's, being so old, was grandfathered in and is one of a handful still allowed to operate.
The advantage of a coal oven is that it heats to 900-plus degrees, some 200 to 300 degrees more than wood or gas ovens.
"That allows the pizza to bake much quicker," explained manager Rosemarie Gentile. "The bottom gets a little blistered and the cheese melts just right. It makes pizza taste so much better."
Co-owner Brescio agreed but noted that other factors contribute to Lombardi's reputation, namely extremely fresh, top-quality ingredients. "I throw them out if they're not just right," he says proudly. That, and the family's secret recipe for the dough.
We tried the standard pizza (mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil, pecorino romano and olive oil), white pizza (mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino romano, garlic, black pepper and no sauce), calzone (a folded-over large pizza stuffed with mozzarella and ricotta, herbs and any other topping you wish), and the house specialty, fresh clam pie (tons of shucked top-neck clams, oregano, garlic, parsley, pecorino romano, olive oil and black pepper).
The clam pizza dates back to a Lombardi family Christmas Eve tradition from a time when all-seafood meals were the rule for the day in Catholic Italy. To say all of Lombardi's pizzas are fantastic is true the four of us wholeheartedly agree but that is almost too much of an understatement.
What makes them so good? Start with the thin crusts, the only kind Lombardi's make. Slightly charred and crispy on the underside, they have a wonderful springiness when you bite into them. Even as a bread -- that is, without any topping -- they would be wonderful, having an ideal texture and taste one rarely encounters.
The toppings -- the mozzarella and ricotta, especially -- were extraordinary. Incredibly fresh, they had a sweetness one only encounters in the finest dairy products.
And if the dough is the keystone of a Lombardi pizza, the mozzarella and ricotta are its zenith. Lombardi's, in the Italian style, is a true pizzeria. Meaning with the exceptions of a few appetizers and beverages it sells only pizza. But it does pizza so well, you won't miss other dishes.
And the history-cum-quality comes reasonably priced: $13.50 for an 8-slice pizza; $11.50 for a 6-slice one. The calzone, which is enough for a small army, goes for $27.
But bring along cash. Lombardi's takes no plastic.
It did not surprise us to learn that in Manhattan, where there are so many excellent pizzerias, Lombardi's was rated No. 1 by the consummer-written Zagat guide in 1996. Then, in 1999, Zagat upped its assessment and rated Lombardi's "Best on the Planet."
That gets no argument from us. In fact, our experience left us with only one regret that Lombardi's doesn't deliver -- to California.

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