Hots Pizza

Like most of America, I’ve been methodically working my way through the gritty @criterionchannel Abel Ferrara collection. This includes 1987’s China Girl, a recreation of Romeo and Juliet set in contemporary Little Italy and Chinatown. In Ferrara’s “realistic” version of New York, every restaurateur has a machine gun and all-out ethnic war breaks out if you cross to the wrong side of Canal Street. At one point, a Chinatown gangster threatens: “Soon you’ll have to go to Brooklyn to get a pizza.” Truly chilling stuff!

This crossed my mind as I myself crossed Canal Street Friday (cautiously performing ocular pat downs on possibly Uzi-wielding boba tea vendors) for another stop during @newyorkcitypizzaweek.

Hots opened earlier this year at 181 East Broadway, replacing an old neighborhood slice shop. It comes from the team behind nearby @littlecanal, which got into sourdough during the pandemic (Shutdowns were great for our nation’s pizza crust quality). I ordered The Hots: spicy pork sausage, hot peppers and red onion.

The pies are baked in a PizzaMaster electric deck oven. The crust is thin but sturdy, with a deeply browned, blistered underside that held up easily under a fairly heavy load of toppings. The cornicione has more volume than an old-school New York slice - crisp outside, airy and chewy inside - with the sourdough adding noticeably more flavor.

It lands somewhere between traditional NY slice-shop pizza and the newer naturally leavened style: still foldable and structurally very New York, but with considerably more attention paid to the dough itself. Recommend.