Andrea's Pizza

Andrea Kenuti previously worked at @scarrspizza and then did his graduate studies at @lindustriebk before opening his own shop last summer. That’s about as good a lineage as a New York slice shop can have, and their influence is clear. But if you don’t want to wait in the long line at L’Industrie, you can get an excellent, perhaps slightly better, slice at @andreaspizzanyc.

Andrea’s itself looks like it’s transported from 1990. There are a lot of new pizzerias that go with an old-school look these days, but I still pretty much always enjoy it (who doesn’t want to feel like they’re eating pizza in a Beastie Boys music video?). But the pizza you enjoy in your red vinyl channel-back booth is a very precise new-wave NY slice: large, very thin, with carefully sourced ingredients, well-fermented dough, and a much more precise bake than the average neighborhood slice shop. It’s close to my ideal modern New York slice.

The crust was exceptionally thin and crisp, but with enough chew and flexibility to fold without becoming cracker-like. The fermentation gives the dough real character and keeps an extremely thin crust from feeling dense or brittle. Andrea’s uses gas ovens running hot around 700 degrees. That relatively high heat for NY style produces a deeply browned underside, with substantial char across the bottom and cornicione. For something this thin, it had impressive structure. Really, it’s exactly what I look for in a New York slice.

Andrea’s brings elite-level pizza technique to the neighborhood slice. I absolutely love that. And if you’ve read this far, you may have noticed that I’ve actually rated Andrea’s higher than both Scarr’s and L’Industrie. They’re all great, of course, and maybe it was just a great day for them, but I was particularly impressed by my last visit to @andreaspizzanyc: thinner, crisper, simpler, more recognizably old-school, and executed at a very high level.

Highly recommended.