The Times
A pizza tour of New York
A pizza tour of Brooklyn with slices of authentic margarita thrown in is simply topping
James Doran
A HALF-DAY bus tour of Brooklyn? “Fugheddaboudit” is the response one might expect from a Brooklynite. But mention that there is free pizza thrown in, and that the slices on offer are among the finest on earth, and the tour becomes suddenly tempting.
“A Slice of Brooklyn” is a guided tour devised by Tony Muia, a first-generation Ital-ian-American with an unrivalled passion for both the borough of his birth and one of the finest foodstuffs from his mother country.
“There’s pizza,” Muia beams, “and then there is Brooklyn pizza. Brooklyn pizza is the best outside Italy. In Brooklyn we take our pizza very seriously.”
Muia loves the combination of crust, sauce and cheese with such a passion that he has set aside a full-time career as a respiratory therapist to introduce visitors to New York to a higher plane of pizza appreciation.
Tickets for the tour are $55 (£28.50), which seem steep compared with the $29 charged for New York tour guide staples such as the Harbour Lights, or the Circle Line Ferry trips around Manhattan.But Muia’s trip includes a pizza lunch with soft drinks at Grimaldi’s, a Brooklyn classic where a pie costs about $19. A second helping later on at L&B Spumoni Gardens, a real old-school Italian eatery in Brooklyn’s Ben-sonhurst section, is worth another $24 — depending on your capacity.
But the real value in Muia’s tour is his enthusiasm as a guide. Over the years in New York, I have taken countless friends and relations on different guided tours of Manhattan, but A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza beats them all.
Muia grew up in Brooklyn and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the area, film and Italian food is enough to satisfy the most ardent historian, film buff and gastronaut combined. Although you won’t see anything to compare with the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building on his Brooklyn tour, you will see some hidden architectural gems that would be overlooked on a more traditional trip around New York.
There is the grand entrance to the Manhattan Bridge, or the Brooklyn Bridge, called the Eighth Wonder of the World. And who would want to miss the parachute jump ride on the Coney Island boardwalk, a giant mushroom of girders referred to as Brooklyn's Eif-fel Tower?
Over lunch at Grimaldi’s Muia peels a slice of fresh margarita from its aluminium plinth and holds it up like a father showing off a newborn son. “Is that the finest slice of pie you ever saw?” he asks.
Grimaldi’s, in the trendy Dumbo section of Brooklyn (Downtown Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), opened in 1990, 100 years after the margarita was invented in Naples to celebrate a visit by Queen Margarita and King Umberto of Savoy; it still uses the same recipe. The pizza is excellent — fresh mozzarella is applied sparingly and the sauce is nothing but fresh ground tomatoes and basil leaves.
Good as it is, Grimaldi’s has nothing on L&B up in Benson-hurst. The fashion here is rooted somewhere between the late 1970s and an episode of The Sopranos. Lou Barbati, a large man of very few words, runs the joint his father opened in 1939 and his pies are like none I have ever encountered. L&B’s Sicilian pizza is typified by its square shape, two types of cheese and an abundance of sauce.
So which of these two different types is the real McCoy? Which one is Brooklyn pizza?
Two New York City cops standing at the counter in L&B settle the argument. “It’s all about the sauce. You can tell a slice of Brooklyn pizza because it has really good home style red sauce,” says Officer Benjamin Almonte.
Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour is on Mondays and Fridays, 11am. Tickets must be bought in advance. See www.bknypizza.com or call 001 212 209 3370.
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