Pizzas at Il Leone.
Picture: James Lynch
In case you went on the lookout for the Maine of New York Metropolis, you may discover your technique to Park Slope: each bougie escape hatches, quiet and just a little uncool, with bountiful entry to nature and a few really unbelievable public parks. So it has a type of bashert sense that when a New Yorker turned Mainer turned pizza chef — Ben Wexler-Waite of Peaks Island, an island neighborhood of roughly 1,000 full-time residents — returned to the town to hold a shingle, he discovered his technique to Seventh Avenue, 11215.
New York is a pizza city in a manner that Portland, Maine, will not be, however a current go to to Il Leone — “The Lion” — confirmed that Wexler-Waite is acquitting himself admirably even on this extra aggressive market, and with out the added benefits of Casco Bay surroundings. (He’ll return to Maine within the summers and hold Il Leone going up there, too.) The slim area that final housed Bar Vinazo has been softened a bit with hanging platters, however the room maintains its twilight illumination, crammed early with what gave the impression to be extra good friend teams and double dates than single ones, and emptied, Park Slopeishly, by ten to 11.
Just a few native changes have been made for the transfer. In Maine, Il Leone’s pies are cooked over wooden, whereas right here an electrical Italforni oven does the work. However the crusts are nonetheless naturally fermented sourdough, and a few components are being imported from the Pine Tree State, for higher or worse. The normal Margherita, one in all Il Leone’s quick listing of pies, is made with San Marzano tomatoes, however the house-special Margherita del Leone is made with greenhouse-grown Maine cherry tomatoes — often. “They’re back-ordered proper now,” our server admitted, dropping off a scorching platter. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “However these is perhaps even higher.”
With no disrespect to Maine agriculture, I can’t think about lacking them, not when the Brooklyn cherry tomato sauce — milled every day and raw till it goes into the pizza oven, making for a rosier, tangier sauce — is as brilliant and contemporary as it’s. Wexler-Waite’s pizzas lean towards the moist aspect, with a extra even handed software of cheese, and the upshot is you could eat the higher a part of two or three with out feeling fairly as overloaded as you may in any other case. Plan to order at the very least one pie per individual, because the menu doesn’t at this level embody a lot else: an appetizer of fried artichokes, some cheese, an arugula salad, and a bowlful of sentimental, tennis-ball-size meatballs are about it. Of these, I wouldn’t skip the meatballs.
What does really feel irreplaceably Maine is the Isola (“island”) pizza with Maine’s favourite ingredient: lobster. The inspiration was apparently lobster fra diavola, and there’s not far more on Wexler-Waite’s stretchy crust than chile-flecked tomato sauce and a very spectacular amount of claw. The menu lists the pie because the dreaded “MP,” and the evening we visited, it rang up at $48, a splurge to make sure, however for extra lobster than I’ve typically had out at twice that worth. “Oh, that is naughty,” a dinner companion of mine mentioned when the Isola was dropped off after our Margherita del Leone and a mushroom pie. My solely phrase of warning can be to get your personal pincers prepared: I didn’t miss the cheese besides that, with out it, the lobster meat slid round my slice with whole abandon.
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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