But for those who know the pizzeria — which has previously operated in three successive locations in New Jersey, the East Village and, for the past seven years, San Francisco — it is something else.

Many regard the pies that the pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri makes as the fulfillment of a Neapolitan pizza’s promise. And now, in a violation of 22 years of convention, this new version of Una Pizza Napoletana is a departure from those that have come before.

The old model had four to six pizzas, few beverage choices and little else but a domed oven with a fire in it. Version Four, which opened last month on Orchard Street, comes with appetizers, desserts and two chef-partners — Fabiàn von Hauske Valtierra and Jeremiah Stone, co-owners of the restaurants Contra and Wildair. Those are places where jet-set chefs do pop-up dinners, where elusive bottles of en vogue natural wines are always on offer, where the food is “plated,” not just put on a plate.

In the trajectory of most restaurants, this would be viewed as an easy win for customer and cook alike. But Una Pizza’s legend has been built on the astringent minimalism of its aesthetic and offerings, and the promise that Mr. Mangieri himself would, in his monastic and magical way, make every pie until he ran out of dough, which he still does every night.

He has, until now, always worked almost alone. “Me, I just make pizza,” he explained. “You come eat pizza, who else is going to be making it? It’s my pizzeria. I didn’t think of it any other way.”

Mr. Mangieri, 46, said he had been long contemplating an evolution, with some reservations. “I don’t know if I would’ve been able to pull it off” — meaning food that is not hot and round — “at the same level of what I already know I know how to do.”

That concern is central to his choice to go into business with Mr. Stone and Mr. von Hauske Valtierra — young, celebrated cooks at the advent of their careers. Also, Mr. Mangieri said, “of all the people that I met, they make decisions based on the beautiful aspects before the financial aspects. And most of these other people present a good case, but the reality is on the back end they’re making decisions like Walmart’s.”

Mr. Stone said eating Mr. Mangieri’s pizzas in the East Village restaurant more than a decade ago helped him appreciate, as an aspiring cook, that simplicity and pure intention could be as powerful as the cooking at the flashy multi-starred places he looked up to back then.

At the new restaurant, each cook stays in his own lane. Mr. von Hauske Valtierra handles desserts, including a chocolate-hazelnut gelato that tastes like his signature tart from Wildair if it were thrown into an ice-cream maker. Stone devises the savory small plates, like a burrata-and-cheese appetizer that wouldn’t look out of place at a Roman trattoria (though the oil garnishing it would be olive, not lobster) and another, of raw lobster and Italian chickpeas, that is as confounding in concept as it is compelling to eat.

“Anthony said when he opened, he was trying to be very respectful of Neapolitan pizza,” Mr. von Hauske Valtierra said. “And now with the years he’s been doing his own thing, the dough is very unique to him, and how he constructs the pizzas.”

The chefs are looking to the flavor profile and ideas of Italy, but “trying to see what would be a tiramisù if I’ve never been to Italy and if I had the idea of it,” Mr. von Hauske Valtierra said.

There is some discussion that eventually, maybe, someone else could make the pizza. This has happened only once in Una Pizza’s history, and, by Mr. Mangieri’s account, the results were tragic. But a pileup of pressures have made him change his way of thinking about his craft.

“I’m just physically and mentally not capable of doing, like, 150 pizzas a night anymore. It’s just so consuming,” he said. The ordering, the cleaning and the one-man-restaurant shtick became too much. “If the floors were being mopped, I was there.”
Mr. Mangieri mentioned a chef he admires: Her daughter grew up doing homework in the restaurant and falling asleep on the banquettes — then went off to college estranged, and resentful of being raised in a dining room. Mr. Mangieri’s daughter, Apollonia, has already spent many nights at his restaurant in San Francisco.

“I can’t be a good dad or a husband either, I think,” he said. “Not for the level that I want it to be at.”

Read the full article here

Peter Meehan
source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/dining/una-pizza-napoletana-new-york.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

Leggi il testo integrale nel link FONTE (qui sopra)