Una Pizza Napoletana — Restaurant in New York

Pizza craving again, and was lucky to be in the city where my cravings for Naple’s pizza can be satisfied without much compromises.

For Una Pizza Napoletana, if you are a party of 2, good luck in getting reservations. The resy has 1-person bar seatings available more often. For walk-ins, lone eaters at early open time are lucky, yet for party 1, good luck.

Despite the awkward seating of the bar stool where I don’t like where my feet stepped, and the long long long wait time for the pizza (around 30min???), I enjoy the pizza a ton.

The appetizer: Roasted Peppers Napoletana The smokiness from the pizza oven really comes through in the first bite. The sweet peppers are drenched in olive oil and are actually cold: I guess they sizzled the peppers then marinated them with capers, raisins, salt, parsley and oregano. There is a giant basil leaf on top, and I didn’t taste much basil in the peppers after I devoured the basil. The extra virgin olive oil compliments the peppers and helps to incorporate the sweet raisin and the lemony floral tartness from the capers. One thing I do complain a bit is the pine nuts. The nuts added in flavors but not so much in texture. They got a bit mushy as they are part of the marination (maybe) and toward the end the whole dish gets really salty, leaving a briny aftertaste.

Special pizza: The Apollonia It is a white pizza with buffalo mozzarella, herbs, salumi, and an egg! Not really a celebration of the tomato but more like a celebration of Easter🐣. The garlic and black peppers are major flavor influencers. The salumi is not sprinkled homogeneously so for the first few bites I got none of them. But when I had a bite with everything, especially with the basil leaf and the salumi, and larger grains of salt with the mochi-like stretchy fluffy dough, it was sensational. I never would’ve thought how the size of the sea salt would lead to so much texture and flavor differences in pizza. The black pepper also is very tantalizing: it still tickles (in a good way) my lips and tongue 20mins after I finished the pizza. And see the large bubble in the dough and imagine how they bounce on your teeth and on your tongue. It was just an umami bomb that is also texturally addictive.

Almond Cremolata It is not a gelato my friends! At least not texture wisely. The dessert looks like an ice cream but it is not really churned ice cream: I could felt it from the texture. It is more like a creamy almond sorbet without any elasticity, just kind melt in my mouth upon contact with heat. The almond pieces in the frozen desserts had bits of the almond skin, which gave nice touches to the texture. It is naturally almondy, and doesn’t feel fake like how sometimes marzipan taste.

The servers were helpful. The girl at the bar actually told me the meaning of the special pizza. This is a dedication to the owner’s daughter for the Easter time, so that’s why this pizza is egg-washed to give almost a custardy touch.

I guess if you like good pizza, especially IF YOU ENJOY PIZZA DOUGH AND CRUST, you will love it here.

I honestly don’t really get why sometimes people don’t eat the dough or the crust if people come specially for pizza, isn’t that almost like the core of the Naple’s pizza? But I do understand the notoriety of “carb” in terms of body composition controls for people (actually me being one of them, with exceptions of a few things), so i already told my gal friends I would be very happy to finish their crust for them here if carb is a...

Be ready to walk in "North Korea" enclave with its chef ruling as a dictator. Luckily for us, in gastronomy, and in the art of dining, there is no such thing. Pretty much everything is "as it is." we don't do this or wr don't do that. Let me explain, take your time, breathe, and read before you decide to spend a couple of hours in this "venture."

I was there by myself a few days ago, I happened to be staying close by when I read the reviews about the famous pizzeria which by the way if the chef gets ill, it isn't opening that day.

The pizza itself was okay and I would say that only thing special about this pizzeria is that is located in N.Y.C, too far from mother Italy where such pizzas start with 2€ and finish with 20€ with white fresh truffle grinded on top... (unlike here that for a pizza, an appetizer, and a glass of wine + tip, you ende up paying 80$ or more. And when I say pizza is okay, this means that I am comparing it from my list of more than 20 pizzerias (Napoli style, with slow fermented dough or sour dough and flour imported from Napoli and San Marzano D O.P tomatoes, with mozzarella D.O.P, which means they are protected under the region's strict rules and control)

I visited pizzerias (mostly Italy, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, Mexico, ect). None of them, but NONE so far would refuse to splash the burrata mozzarella with a bit of olive oil! These guys did refuse my request and didn't even care!!

When Margherita came, I waited like 30 minutes, The dough itself was sour for me, I personally prefer normal Napoli style dough with starter culture as poolish and cold fermentation overnight, and the day of cooking you let it in room temperature to give time to raise for couple of hours. All the pizza was sour, and I eat sour a lot, I have mo problem with the acidity, even my wine of New Zealand sauvignon blanc which is highly acidic couldn't cover the acidity in this pizza! The pizza istelf lacked in acidic balance, being so, the San Marzano tomatoes have natural acidity the whole pizza was for me way more acidic than it should which in this situation is a profound problem!

The composition of pizza and the baking also were careless, adding some volcanic burns to the dough is delicious, but the bottom of the pizza in some places was burnt completely (see the pictures) this was giving to the pizza extra dose of bitterness.

I can write all day about it.. anyway, if you have a few hours to lose, just go there, have the experience for yourself. And sorry to say this, in order to come to understand my conclusions, you really need to have experience and be qualified to eat or make, the...

This is a good pizzeria, but is it the second best in the world? Nope. Not even close.

The hype is definitely there. I started lining up 30 minutes before it opened. There were already some people lining up, so I was able to get inside about 20 minutes after opening time. That’s about 50 minutes of waiting time. I immediately got seated as I luckily went there solo (parties of two and more were told to come back after a few hours!)

Ok, the moment of truth. First of all, the menu was boring. I mean come on I know sticking to the classics is important, but could you at least be a bit more creative than any random pizzeria in Naples? Anyway, I had roasted peppers for starters. It was alright, just roasted peppers that are better than average. Then, I had to have the margherita, since this place is all about simplicity. The prices were astronomical and the expectations are getting higher, so this margherita had better be so damn good, right? By the way, it is worth mentioning that the extra “red cow 24/36-month old parmeggiano reggiano” was $4. Sure, all of the ingredients were top-quality, but honestly, the pizza was not phenomenal at all. In fact, it had a few weaknesses that affected the experience negatively: The pizza crust was too doughy. The first bite of each slice is delicious, the second is 50% dough, after that you would be chewing 100% dough like a goat. Amazing dough, sure, but dough, nonetheless. The “Sicilian sea salt” (aka sodium chloride that came from Sicily) was too coarse. Some bites were saltier than others because, apparently, the salt did not completely dissolve due to its coarseness. The pizza was a little burnt and the bottom had traces of burnt flour debris from the oven. If you think this is authentic, then I’ve got some bad news for you. From what I know, good pizza chefs ensure that the oven is always clean and the pizza is not burnt so that it wouldn’t have a bitter taste. Unfortunately, I experienced bitterness quite a few times here and it really distracted me from the beautiful sweetness of the tomato. I couldn’t see the pizza. The lighting was too dim. Why make it so fancy and formal? Pizza should be enjoyed casually, it shouldn’t be fine dining. At least not like this.

I have to say that the service was great. But having visited some of the pizzerias from the top 50 list, I expected much, much more from the second best pizzeria...