Una Pizza Napoletana has returned to New York City. Back in the mid-aughts, self-taught pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri set the bar for pizza in New York when he moved his shop from the Jersey Shore to the East Village. He earned rave reviews and drew long lines of New Yorkers with his fluffy Neapolitan pies. But in 2009, Mangieri left that first incarnation of Una Pizza Napoletana and decamped to San Francisco, where his obsessive approach to pizza making earned similar adoration.

For his big-deal New York City comeback, Mangieri partnered with small-plates aficionados Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra, the purveyors of cool NYC restaurants Contra and Wildair. At the new Una Pizza Napoletana, Mangieri’s slinging his traditional pies alongside appetizers from Stone, desserts from von Hauske Valtierra, and as at the duo’s other restaurants, a solid roster of natural wines.

More than a decade since Mangieri’s pizza’s first wowed New York, how does the fourth incarnation of Una Pizza Napoletana stack up? Here’s what the critics are saying on the matter (and stay tuned for more — this post will be updated with additional reviews as they come in).

The Skip the Margherita News
Eater NY critic Ryan Sutton was decidedly not a fan of Una Pizza’a pies. In a one-star review, Sutton says the pies “aren’t as good as they should be, not at $25 apiece, and not in the crowded, experimental, ingredient-obsessed, regionally focused pizza biosphere that is contemporary New York.”

But it’s not all bad news. Sutton admits Mangieri’s bread is “without equal among the city’s Neapolitan spots,” and although inconsistent, he appreciates Una’s tomato pie (he merely takes issue with “subpar imported mozzarella, too much parsley, uneven salt” and advises diners skip the margherita pie altogether). He also praises Stone’s small plates as “destination-worthy” and names von Hauske Valtierra’s ice cream the number one reason to visit the restaurant, concluding, “this Lower East Side spot, in other words, generally functions better as a modern Von Hauske and Stone restaurant than a classically minded Mangieri joint.”

The Perfect Pie News
Fellow Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema is of the complete opposite opinion. “These are the perfect evocation of pizzas I’ve eaten in Naples, and a great addition to Gotham’s ever-expanding pizza portfolio,” he writes in a first look at the restaurant. The pizza he tried was “unabashedly soupy” with “charred and bulbous” crusts of “exquisitely flavored bread” — all good things. Sietsema is more mixed on Stone and von Hauske Valtierra’s contributions: while the appetizers are the “opposite of what [he] wanted to snack on,” the desserts, like a strawberry panna cotta and tiramisu, are “exceptional.”

Read more

Monica Burtono
source: https://www.eater.com/2018/7/18/17581858/una-pizza-napoletana-nyc-restaurant-reviews

Photo by Dylan and Jeni (ed.n.)

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