Sunday, June 12, 2005


hot date

rule of thumb here is that when the mercury hits 90, it's too hot to bake pizza at home. usually this doesn't happen until august.

however, today we hit the jackpot here in bklyn, and so trotted ourselves off to peperoncino on 5th ave. and st. mark's near park slope. what's interesting about this place is that they have a wood-burning pizza oven that's an exact copy of one in naples, italy.

the oven is in fact lovely, decorated with cute gold tile. the pizza is made in the true neapolitan style with italian 00 flour.

of course i ordered a margherita.

i liked the crust, per se, quite a bit -- with the caveat however that the oven was too cold. the crust didn't have enough color, and the genuine fiori di latte wasn't melted, bubbling, and golden.

so this was a serious drawback. mr. right's crust was in trouble -- actually a tad raw in the center.

on the crust, therefore, i have to say that they are going in the correct direction. proper temperature management of the wood-fired oven, however, that they need to work on.

they also, alas, suffered a sauce problem. the sauce was just too watery, too bland, and yet at the same time too salty. and since they hadn't painted the crust with olive oil, or at least not enough!, the crust was quite wet. . .

i did remark that the cheese was good, yes? it was in fact the real deal, delicious -- but just not golden enough and lacked that little crust. . .

so overall, the pizza was a disappointment. however, only a few small improvements would be required to make the pizza a standout here!

mr. right had a little hand-made sausage on his pie, an only slightly spicy fennel. this was rather good.

the best part was that once you're in this nabe, you're only steps from chocolate heaven(s). it's a hop down to the chocolate room, where sweet mr. right bought me an artisan apricot-caramel dark bar made by joan of chocolat moderne.

and then we continued down several blocks to bierkraft, which had closed not a minute before we arrived. i ghosted sadly about the door, and the owner richard took pity on us.

he's so nice he actually opened the shop so mr. right could further indulge me in a bar of that utter heroin, the slitti lattenero 70%. and also a bar of chapon 64% mendiant!

(patrice chapon, everyone agrees, is the nicest, nicest guy. . .)

hooray! a perfect summer sunday all told.

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