L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele

“The Ancient Pizzeria of Michele” is a NYC outpost of the famous pizzeria in old Naples. The original was founded in 1870, shortly after Italian Unification and decades before the first American pizzeria (@lombardis_pizza_nyc). By all accounts the pizza here is the same Neapolitan style as served in the old country at @pizzeriadamichele, save that you don’t have to cut the slices yourself here. We ordered the “Margherita Double” - essentially a margherita with extra cheese (🇺🇸). I might say this is the *most Neapolitan* pizza I’ve had. Antico serves their pizzas only in 16” sizes - significantly larger than you usually see here. They use very fine grain flour and as a result the very thin crust was quite soft with a puffy cornicione and lightly charred - not the highly stylized Neapolitan-American leopard spotted crust. Structurally, the pizza was completely unsound (as is traditional) and at 16” it was near impossible to eat by hand. The middle of the pie was soggy from the sauce and generous helping of mozzarella. If we had to do it over, we’d probably go with a sophisticatedly simple regular Margherita pie to let the sauce and crust shine through more. But still, @damichelenyc was an awesome pie and a truly delicious mess.