Il Leone
158 Seventh Ave. nr. Garfield St., Park Slope
Photograph: Courtesy Il Leone
In 2021, Ben Wexler-Waite opened Il Leone on Peaks Island off the coast of Portland, Maine. The island, which is linked to the mainland solely by ferry, was a giant change — each geographically and culturally — from Wexler-Waite’s hometown of New York and the Democratic campaigns he labored on in his post-college years. Nonetheless, the seasonal nature of politics left him to discover different pursuits — together with pizza. Now, he’s turned that right into a full-time gig and returned residence to open a Brooklyn department.
The area received’t look too totally different from its earlier tenant, Bar Vinazo: A bar nonetheless stretches down the center of the room, whereas the white brick partitions might be adorned with colourful plates and platters painted with sunflowers and cheerful langoustines. One bar seat will all the time be reserved for Giorgio, a stone lion that Wexler-Waite introduces with a beaming smile. “I discovered it in a junkyard on Ischia, wrapped it in tons of bubble wrap, and shipped it again,” he explains. What if enterprise is busier than anticipated, they usually want an additional seat? He guarantees Giorgio will all the time have his place, and diners ready for a desk can seize a drink within the yard.
In Maine, the pizzas are wood-fired, however extra stringent laws on dwell flames within the metropolis imply he’ll be baking his pies in an Italforni Caruso electrical oven. What received’t change is Wexler-Waite’s fanatical devotion to substances. He’s trying ahead to having readier entry to issues like contemporary buffalo mozzarella, which he’s getting from the Il Casolare dairy in Southern Italy. He’s simply as explicit about his basil, which he’ll inform you is as powerful to supply in New York as it’s in Portland. A lot has an excessive amount of moisture or simply isn’t the identical as you’d discover in Italy, plain and easy. So he’s needed to determine that out, together with discovering a farmer to develop his tomatoes. “I’m buddies with Franco Pepe’s tomato farmer, Mimmo,” Wexler-Waite says, referring to the well-known pizza man from Naples. “He gave me these particular seeds for a tomato that Franco makes use of for his most well-known pizza, the Margherita Sbagliata.”
For now, he’s excited a couple of pie made with that mozzarella and greenhouse-grown cherry tomatoes from Maine. It’s impressed by pizza he loves in Campania, the place piennolo tomatoes grown on the base of Mount Vesuvius are sometimes used for the margheritas. The cherry-tomato sauce offers him the very best approximation of that sauce. “After all the dream can be to have the ability to use contemporary piennolo right here,” he says. (The jarred selection simply received’t lower it.)
He’s importing extra from Maine than simply tomatoes, like lobster for a cheeseless pie with tomato sauce, white wine, chile flakes, basil, parsley, and garlic. There’s an expanded menu, too, with such appetizers as complete artichokes fried in olive oil and meatballs made with grass-fed beef. Tiramisu is whipped up in-house, whereas lemons within the sorbet come from the Amalfi Coast.
Handfuls of lemons seem on the blue tiles that enhance a lot of the tables within the area. Wexler-Waite obtained them in Vietri sul Mare close to Salerno. “I spent three months looking for actual hand-painted tiles right here,” he says, sighing. Ultimately, he gave up and determined to go on to the supply.
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Should you favor to learn in print, you may as well discover this text within the November 3, 2025, difficulty of
New York Journal.
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