Mano's Pizza

There’s a term “comedian’s comedian.” @manos_pizzeria is a pizzaiolo’s pizzeria - a place that impresses people who make pizza themselves (as opposed to sledgehammering watermelons & pineapple into pizza for Nebraskan tourists).

I ordered the upside-down pepperoni Sicilian, which is also perhaps an uncharitable description of me. The slice looks like a brick, but it is actually much lighter than it appears. The crust is remarkably airy, with huge fermentation pockets and a crisp, deeply browned bottom. Mano’s ferments its dough for five days - which is longer than most everyone else - and on this slice you can clearly see what all that time does to the crumb.

The construction is excellent. Cheese underneath, a generous layer of tomato on top, Pecorino, and very thin pepperoni cups that get aggressively charred around the edges. The contrast between the crunchy bottom, airy interior, melted cheese, and heavy tomato layer is excellent.

Mano’s opened in Ridgewood in 2021 and has developed a serious reputation well beyond Queens. But the shop itself feels like it has been there forever: red-checkered tables, family photos, Italian pop music, and enough Italian-American memorabilia to make the place seem like it has been gradually accumulating decorations for the last 40 years. Ridgewood has its history of Gambino activity, but I am still tempted to dock Mano’s 0.1 points for the picture of John Gotti (The mafia is bad -You heard it here first).

Having recently patronized some of Manhattan’s “line culture” pizzerias, it is striking how little circus there is around Mano’s. There are enormous lines elsewhere in New York for pizza that isn’t this good. Here, I walked right in to the counter.

As I was leaving, however, the next pizza aficionado arrived with his family and began explaining the finer points of a top-tier grandma slice versus a Sicilian slice to his patient wife.

That underscores: This is a place for people who know good pizza.