Going to Mayfield last night reminded me that I'd been meaning to write up a place that's diagonally across the street from it (on the corner of Franklin and Prospect), which I came upon when I was walking to David's Brisket House a little while ago.
This place looks like an Old Skool local pizza joint that's been there forever. The kind with pizza, rice balls, heroes, pasta plates.
But it's new. It's run by hipsters. You walk in and you get hit with a blast of Grateful Dead.
And -- here's the charm of it -- like any hipster/NBC place, they list their purveyors on the bottom of their menu. But instead of the new-age locavore regulars, their list namechecks all the best classic Italian purveyors of Brooklyn. So these guys are paying attention to ingredients, and using nothing but the best -- but they're still kicking it Old Skool. Or, to put it differently, "paying tribute to classic Italian-American cooking" in an honest way.
Since I was on my way to David's, I could only try a slice. (Yes, I was so intrigued that I had a slice on my way to David's. Yes, I'm an idiot.) It was very good. Not great or spectacular: as good as Joe's in the Village, just discussed here in detail. Meaning, good NYC slice pizza -- not as easy to find as it used to be.
What I want to try, however, are the heroes and the rice balls and maybe even the pastas. I have a very strong suspicion that this is a stealth place serving versions of this food done markedly better than it's usually done anymore. Another of the more intelligent versions of the NBC Elevation Of The Vernacular -- this time with a particularly intelligent approach to sourcing.
I wonder if they deliver to Plaza Street?
