OFFAL-Y GOOD PIZZAS AT DANNY MEYER’S MARTA AND NICK MORGENSTERN’S GG’S
By Tejal Rao
GG’s Ebony and Ivory pizza.
The pizza is scorched at its edges, covered entirely in cheese, pocked and handsome like the face of the moon. Then there’s a shower of fragrant white truffles at the table ($60). Yes, this is a bit over the top for a pizza that is, technically, for one person. But every time you lift a slice up for a bite, you’re hit with a little more of that knee-wobbling, mind-bending perfume.
Pizza turns out to be a more interesting vehicle for truffles than a bowl of risotto or gnocchi, because you get to go at it with your hands. You get close to it, and there is so much range in texture here to enjoy than in a spoonful of rice. But a less glamorous slice — the tripe pie — won me over on one of my recent visits to Marta, Danny Meyer’s new restaurant in the redesigned lobby of the Martha Washington hotel.
It was also thin, but draped with such wee garlands of soft, braised tripe, and such a fine layer of sauce, that the crust didn’t give at all under its weight ($16). Still, the tripe made its presence known in the rich, deeply concentrated flavors of the tomato sauce. With the cheese, tiny mint leaves, and clips of chile, this pizza evoked a big platter of trippa alla romana, a traditional dish of tripe braised with tomatoes and wine.
Nick Anderer, chef and managing partner, has been cooking Roman food at Maialino since it opened in 2009. Though Marta lists a saltimbocca (made here with trout instead of veal) and other large dishes, it’s really all about these crackling pizzas, blasted in the open kitchen’s gleaming wood-fired ovens. The pizzas are thin and persistently crisp, topped with precisely as much as they can hold and no more, whether it’s sliced potato and a bit of egg, or pork sausage and mushrooms.
At GG’s, Nick Morgenstern’s revamp of Goat Town in the East Village, it seems there’s a substantial square grandma pie ($18) on every table. They are the opposites of Marta’s crisps — thick but supple heavyweights, loaded with cheese and curly-edged pepperoni pooling with fat. The grandma pie is satisfying and celebratory, and when it comes to the table it suddenly feels like you’re having a proper pizza night (because you are).
To make it, chef and co-owner Bobby Hellen proofs the dough in the square pan, par cooks it, lets it cool, then returns it to the oven with toppings. It’s a longer process than the regular pizzas, which is why the quantity each night is limited. That doesn’t matter too much to me. My favorite pizza on the menu at GG’s was thinner, more restrained, dotted with pieces of sweet black morcilla, a delicious Spanish-style blood sausage made with onions and rice.
Hellen, who grew up on Staten Island, makes his own paprika-happy, uncased morcilla for the Ebony and Ivory ($17), a delicious number that also involves chiles and thinly sliced garlic. In the hot deck oven, the morcilla weeps. It seasons the mozzarella with more heat and sweetness. And even though this pizza is scattered with blood sausage, it maintains that familiar slice shop droop, a slump of flexible, chewy crust that encourages you to fold each slice in half (and, yes, consume it at twice the speed).
Marta is at 29 East 29th Street in the Martha Washington hotel; +1 212 651-3800 or martamanhattan.com
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