It's Raining Pizza

August 22nd 2009 2:20pm
Mini rain break on Houston Avenue before the skies cleared up and our bellies growled for more pizza.

Stop #3: Emporio, Manhattan

August 22nd 2009, 2:00pm
Braving the heat, we trekked on and into the cool, cleansing air of Emporio.
The group scores were as follows:
Cheese to Sauce Ratio: 3.4 out of 5
Crust: 3.9 out of 5
Taste Per Price: 2.9 out of 5 ($15 for a small Margarita)
Assorted Comments: "Beautiful back room: friendly, really salty." -Jason Eppink "Wet and small." -Emily Young

Rated #12 by New York Magazine: Emporio, 231 Mott St., nr. Prince St.
To fit the restaurant’s theme, Cangialosi makes Roman-style pies: thin and crisp rounds designed to whet the appetite, not defeat it. Crunchy where Neapolitan pies are tender and without a discernible rim, Emporio’s pizzas are still fairly pliant and well-conceived. The basic tomato-and-cheese pie, of course, requires no explanation, even if its cooked-in visage does: The buffalo mozzarella is drained, so it doesn’t soak the crust, and applied in such a manner that it virtually dissolves into the tangy tomato sauce, making it impossible to determine where one sublime ingredient ends and the other begins.

Pizza Expedition 2009 Begins

August 22nd, 2009 10:10am
The group met up at the Staten Island Ferry at 10:10am on a slightly gray, yet delicious, morning for a 10:30am ferry. Starting group: Emily Young, Ilya Kushnirsky, Naomi Huth, Jason Eppink, Anneka Fagundes, Raymond Kim, Andrea Waters, Dave Rasura, and Heidi Fridriksson. Pulses racing, and stomachs yearning for pizza, we boarded the ferry excited for the brave new pizza world in front of us. Pigeons wandered around at our feet, unaware of the delicious foods we were about to digest.