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Rexburg, Idaho, could also be one of many extra surprising locations to discover a world-class slice of New York-style pizza. The windswept metropolis, residence to B.Y.U.-Idaho, is a three-hour drive from the closest main airport and a couple of,200 miles from Manhattan. But from its electrical oven, Righteous Slice is serving pizza that may not be misplaced in Greenwich Village.
With a correct char on the underside, the slices stand as much as a fold. They are topped with low-moisture complete mozzarella and Grana Padano; the sauce carries the right faint sweetness of high-quality canned and steamed tomatoes, and is ringed by an exquisite three-inch-high cornichon, or raised lip, that has quite a few charred air bubbles. The crust is thicker and never fairly as crisp as, say, a slice at Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street. But then Joe’s doesn’t have the Grand Tetons out on the horizon.
“Nobody expects nice pizza in Rexburg,” stated Bill Crawford, the proprietor of Righteous Slice. “It’s a small neighborhood with quite a lot of farmers, price-sensitive faculty college students and one of many busiest Little Caesar’s in America. But I believed that nice pizza was one thing individuals would search out as a result of it’s craveable.”
Mr. Crawford has by no means lived in New York City. In reality, he grew up in a double-wide trailer in japanese Oregon. And he had by no means labored in a pizzeria earlier than he began making Neapolitan-style pizzas in a cellular wood-burning oven towed to farmer’s markets in Rexburg eight years in the past. He was an Air Force pilot who flew fight missions in Iraq earlier than incomes a grasp’s diploma from Harvard Business School.
“Our New York-style pizza has been the principle driver of our progress since we launched it about three years in the past,” he stated. “We at the moment are just about maxed out on our capability, however demand retains rising.”
And that demand isn’t confined to southeastern Idaho.
In the final 25 years, the slice of pizza went from a workaday avenue snack kind of endemic to the 5 boroughs to an object of food-nerd fascination far past town. And when you might purchase pizza by the slice exterior town — say, at bowling alleys or ballparks — it was not often as much as New York requirements. That has modified, nevertheless, due to entrepreneurial pizzaiolos, pizza evangelists and keen diners.
An important slice may be had at Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage in Boulder, Colo., or Post Alley Pizza in Seattle. Students in Berkeley, Calif., can get pleasure from a severe model at Pizzeria da Laura, and in Washington, D.C., educated pie lovers frequent Slice & Pie. In reality, on the listing of the highest 10 slice joints printed by the revered pizza commerce group Pizza Top 50, seven are exterior New York City. The slice is now effectively and actually nationwide.
One of the chief evangelists was Adam Kuban, who began the weblog Slice to doc his exploration of New York’s pizza scene shortly after he arrived in 2003. Slice joints had been in every single place within the metropolis, and had been for many years. Many had the identical feel and look: slim storefronts with a window onto the road so prospects might get a slice or two reheated after which eat whereas strolling (like John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.”) But Mr. Kuban was among the many first to deal with them as topics worthy of significant culinary consideration.
He additionally helped codify the shape. “New New York slices are made with barely aged low-moisture or full-cream mozzarella, plain raw steamed and canned tomatoes, on a regular basis bread flour, salt, water and yeast,” learn the Slice weblog. “These slices had been baked at 500-600 levels for 8-10 minutes in a gas-fired Maestro oven, which was launched on the 1964 World’s Fair on the Maestro Pizza Pavilion. What comes out of these ovens is a slice with a crispy however barely chewy, thin-ish however not cracker-thin crust that bends however by no means breaks when folded and eaten.”
According to Scott Wiener, who leads pizza excursions of New York and is taken into account one of many foremost authorities on town’s pie scene, “Adam created an area for neighborhood that impressed curiosity. The rising pizza slice motion is rooted in his work with the Slice weblog.”
As slice eaters turned extra discerning, slice makers started to get extra severe about their craft.
In 2009, Frank Pinello, a Brooklyn native, took his chef’s coaching and love of pizza and opened the primary cheffed-up slice store, Best Pizza within the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“I grew up in Bensonhurst, the place there have been so many good old-school slices across the neighborhood,” Mr. Pinello stated. “But by the point I began working in restaurant kitchens in New York I discovered myself surrounded by dollar-slice joints” promoting pizza made “with horrible elements.”
Mr. Pinello centered on high quality elements like natural flour and housemade mozzarella. And whereas his use of a coal-fired oven might not have been canonical New York slice method, the pizza was a success, and immediately Mr. Pinello has three pizzerias.
“The concept was to make and promote nice slices that gave mad respect to the old-school slice-pizza methods and used the craft and information I had gained in restaurant kitchens and on the Culinary Institute of America,” Mr. Pinello stated.
Craft can be essential for the 13-time world champion pizza maker Tony Gemignani. Born and raised in Northern California, Mr. Gemignani began making pizza at age 15 in his brother’s pizza store in Castro Valley, Calif.
When Mr. Gemignani encountered his first New York slice on a go to to town 20 years in the past, he was a modified man. “In California, pizza was simply that, pizza. But after I began touring and visiting locations like New York, you perceive pizza in a very completely different and delightful manner,” he stated.
He opened the acclaimed Tony’s Pizza Napoletana within the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco in 2009. Shortly after, he realized that the New York slice was simply as deserving of respect because the sanctified complete Neapolitan pizza and coal-fired-oven pies that the majority pizza nerds lauded. So the next yr he opened the primary Slice House subsequent door — the place the pizza containers learn, “Respect the Craft!” in huge, brilliant crimson letters.
“I felt that the New York slice on the time didn’t obtain sufficient credit score nationwide. For some cause, in lots of cities and suburbs it turned the ’80s and ’90s slice that you’d purchase at a mall, which I felt left a nasty style within the client’s mouth,” Mr. Gemignani stated, including, “The slice idea simply wanted to be re-looked at, tinkered a bit and executed effectively.”
With that partly in thoughts, he additionally opened Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza in 2009. Bill Crawford is a proud alumnus of the college, as are his spouse and enterprise associate, Cheryl Crawford; and Audrey Kelly, a co-founder of Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage; and Laura Meyer of Pizzeria de Laura.
“I’m actually happy with the numerous gifted ladies who got here by way of my faculty,” stated Mr. Gemignani, who closed the college in 2022. “Pizza making has historically been a male bastion, however that’s quickly altering.”
Ann Kim is one other graduate. A Korean American chef in Minneapolis who moved to the United States as a baby, she had fallen in love with New York slices whereas attending Columbia University within the Nineties.
In 2010, she and her husband, Conrad Leifur, wished to open a wood-oven, whole-pie restaurant, Pizzeria Lola, and later a slice joint, Hello Pizza. Although an completed chef, Ms. Kim was new to creating pizza. That’s the place Mr. Gemignani’s faculty got here in.
“I discovered a lot from Tony,” she stated. “He is obsessive about craft. Tony makes pizza making right into a religious quest.”
At first, many Minnesotans didn’t know what to make of Ms. Kim’s pizza by the slice. “It was a overseas idea,” she stated. “People had been dumbfounded by the truth that I used to be placing a slice again within the oven to crisp it up. Customers would ask: ‘Why would you do this? Why are you giving me an outdated slice?’ ”
Justin De Leon confronted the same studying curve at Apollonia’s, the slice store he opened in Los Angeles in 2012.
“Many individuals didn’t know what to make of the paper plates the pizza was served on, or the greasy paper luggage the slices got here in,” he stated. “They used to ask us for plastic forks and knives to chop their slices.”
Knowledgeable photographer turned pie man, Mr. De Leon opened Apollonia’s in a strip mall on Wilshire Boulevard. Mr. De Leon had been making pizza at eating places in his East Los Angeles neighborhood since he was a teen. He spent elements of the subsequent 25 years making a dwelling as a photographer, whereas moonlighting as a pizza maker when he wanted to enhance his revenue.
It value Mr. De Leon $30,000 to open Apollonia’s, however he spent subsequent to nothing on promoting and publicity. By 2012, social media had exploded, and he used his pictures abilities by posting a lot of slice photos. It seems that Instagram loves pizza, and slices had been being photographed by the tens of millions of individuals everywhere in the world. It all helped to show retailers like Apollonia’s into locations.
In some methods, Los Angeles has turn into New York’s sister metropolis of slices. They are terrific on the Friends & Family Pizza Co. in West Hollywood; the James Beard Award-winning pizzaiolo and chef Chris Bianco opened his extraordinary slice store, Pane Bianco, downtown in 2022. Shins and LaSorted’s additionally bake tremendous examples.
Great slices may be discovered at any one among Prime Pizza’s seven areas. And there at the moment are six Joe’s areas in Los Angeles (although their relationship to the unique Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village is difficult), whereas a department of NoLIta’s buzzy Prince Street Pizza just lately opened in Santa Monica.
The nationalization of the New York slice in some methods is simply getting warmed up. Mr. Gemignani, for one, has huge plans. So far, he has franchised 16 Slice House areas, with one other 130 in improvement — to not point out 25 licensed areas already open in ballparks and casinos.
For his half, the acclaimed Brooklyn pizzaiolo Paul Giannone has expanded his Paulie Gee’s operation to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Chicago.
While the worldwide pizza advisor Anthony Falco is venturing even farther, taking the slice world. Mr. Falco perfected his pizza-making abilities at Roberta’s, the much-written-about Brooklyn pizzeria that opened in 2008, and he has since consulted on slice retailers as far afield as Mumbai, Taipei and Mongolia.
“When I first began my pizza consulting enterprise, most of my purchasers wished to serve Neapolitan pizza. Now everybody desires New York slices,” Mr. Falco stated. “And don’t assume it’s straightforward to search out mozzarella in Mongolia.”
Back in Idaho, Bill Crawford is creating a second restaurant, which is able to solely promote slices.
“My son has fallen in love with pizza and desires to take over the pizzerias,” he stated. “I feel a slice store will supply him a greater alternative.” But Mr. Crawford will nonetheless be making pizza day-after-day someplace. As for a lot of of his New York-slice contemporaries, pleasure is the frequent ingredient.
“I’m going to fortunately spend the remainder of my life tinkering with my slices,” he stated. “Making pizza is each bit as thrilling to me as flying an F-16. I completely love making pizza.”
Brian Gallagher contributed reporting.
