Pizzas that weathered the storm

Though Staten Island has harbored a thriving Italian community at least since exiled patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi lived there in the 1850s, it wasn't until the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 that legions of Italian-Americans moved there from Brooklyn. Today more than one-third of the population can claim Italian ancestry.They brought with them a love of pizza: The island has roughly 75 pizzerias, about 35 percent more per capita than in Brooklyn, according to my calculations using 2010 Census figures. And a drive down Hylan Boulevard, the main drag that runs the length of the island's beach-fringed south shore, reveals that many are grand sit-down affairs with lively bar scenes.But the bridge has done little to dispel the island's culinary isolation, so its pizzaioli have largely gone their own idiosyncratic ways. Hurricane Sandy imposed new barriers to their livelihoods and clientele. As the island marks the first anniversary of the October storm, I drove over the bridge to see how the pizzas have held up.Staten Island fields a stunning diversity of pies, but the most characteristic flaunts a doughy crust halfway between the thin Neapolitan and the thick Sicilian. These medium-thick pies tend to be round, with dough that remains moist at the center (as at L&B Spumoni Gardens in Gravesend, Brooklyn). Clams, shrimp and fried calamari are frequent toppings, reflecting a distinctly Sicilian passion for seafood. And sometimes those sea creatures swim in creamy sauces, making for pizza that must be eaten with a knife and fork. The fabled New York fold won't work.This opulent style is found at its most extreme at Goodfella's Pizzeria, which has established branches in Manhattan and New Jersey. Founded in 1992, the original still operates in Dongan Hills, a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. Its signature Specialty Pizzas are thick and circular, with themes that might go over big in Las Vegas. One, the Crustacean Sensation, is topped with squid and shrimp in a cheesy cream sauce, while another plants mushrooms, peas and prosciutto in a thick white Alfredo. The Quatro Cantone allows you to select four gloppy toppings, and separates them with ropes of braided pastry on a crust that could double as a throw pillow.Sitting at the bar, trying to make a dent in one of these gigantic pies, I asked the bartender how Goodfella's had fared during Sandy. "Our basement was totally flooded," he said, "but we got a generator and were able to reopen in two days. Really, not bad compared to Midland Beach."Signs of destruction are still apparent in Midland Beach, an adjacent marshy neighborhood dotted with small frame houses. A local hangout called LaRocca's once offered an excellent Sicilian slice of the "upside down" variety, the cheese laid down first and the tomato sauce poured on top to maintain the crust's crispness. Today, the building - inundated during the storm, with people marooned on its roof waiting to be rescued - is still boarded up. The phone is disconnected, and attempts to contact the owner, Joseph LaRocca, were unsuccessful.But just a few blocks inland, another of the island's famous pizza parlors, Nunzio's Pizzeria and Restaurant, offers no hint of the wall of seawater and sewage that tumbled through kitchen and dining room during the hurricane, ripping off the roof. (It reopened last December.) The restaurant was founded in the early 1940s by Nunzio Trivoluzzo. A frame structure painted hot pink was a longtime favorite with beachgoers; that building was demolished in 2002 to make way for a new one, with beige stucco on the outside and a marble-faced kitchen and prominent takeout department in front, where you can watch the jocular pizza makers pulling, twirling and slapping the dough.Most of the slices sold there are either "regular" (thin-crusted Neapolitan) or square Sicilian, but in the rear dining room the classic pizzas are thick, round and puffy, like those at Goodfella's, including one topped with what might be called a clam bisque, shot with garlic and black pepper. As you assay your pie, other diners around you may be chowing down on Buffalo-fried calamari and outsize Sicilian rice balls smothered in crushed tomatoes and cheese.A few blocks uphill from Goodfella's, Lee's Tavern, ensconced since 1940 in a handsome two-tone brick building across the street from the Staten Island Railway station, with an antique barroom and a cozy dining nook in back, suffered little damage. "We didn't even lose electricity," the waiter said as he brought me a small artichoke pie the size of a paper plate, with a thin, well-browned crust that could double as a cracker.This pizza is emblematic of another Staten Island style that might be termed a bar pie. The utility of a rigid crust? Well, you can hoist a beer with one hand while daintily nibbling a slice with the other. These pies (a larger size is also available) are usually topped with tomato, cheese and a single main ingredient, such as Italian sausage, mushrooms, eggplant and a dozen other choices.A similar sort of pie is served at Denino's Pizzeria and Tavern, the island's best-known pizzeria and the one most visited by tourists. This squat brick blockhouse on the northern end of the island, not far from the Kill Van Kull tugboat docks, was opened as a bar in 1937 by John Denino, a Sicilian immigrant. It wasn't until 1951 that his son Carlo started serving round pizzas with a thin, crisp crust; in the 1960s, he further expanded the menu and added a dining room, which is now decorated with blown-up black-and-white photos, the largest commemorating the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. One of the most revered pies is the M.O.R. (meatballs, onions, ricotta), lushly topped with flocculent white cheese and fragmented meatballs. It's a study in how rich and flavorful blandness can be.Thin as it is, the crust at Denino's seems thick compared with that of Joe & Pat's Pizzeria and Restaurant, on a working-class commercial stretch of Victory Boulevard in the middle of the island. It was founded in 1960 by Joe and Pat Pappalardo, and the most popular pizza has an imperially thin crust, crisper than regular Neapolitan, with a sprightly tomato sauce and memorably good mozzarella.The best seats in the house are along a counter that faces the pizza ovens and prep counter, creating a kind of pizza theater. When I visited, the pizzaiolo nicknamed Big John was forming balls of dough into small flat rounds, leaning them against one another to make a long slouching line of crusts waiting for their final stretch."What's the most popular slice?" I asked him."Most people like pepperoni," he said, pausing just a moment to wipe his floury hands on his apron before returning to his lunchtime preparations.Most Staten Island pizzerias offer pies in an array of styles. Nevertheless, Brother's Pizzeria, near Denino's but farther inland, may have set a record. Its menu includes pizzas in a wide variety of thicknesses: regular pies, Sicilian pies, rustic and lush margherita pies and so-called grandma pies with fresh mozzarella and basil. There are soupy pizzas with vodka sauce, employing a topping normally used on pasta, and even an approximation of Chicago pan pizza baked in a cast-iron skillet and possessing an adamantine crust. Brother's is the Macy's of Staten Island pizza.Are there hidden gems among the island's pizzerias? On a recent visit I stumbled on Pizza D'Oro, which turned 40 years old in April, according to Perriann D'Orio, a rare female pizza maker, who was working the ovens when I arrived. She told me the parents of her husband, Neal, Sal and Antoinette D'Orio, had founded the pizzeria, a modest establishment that occupies a storefront attached to the family's two-story frame house, where the driveway once was; one of the dining rooms is actually inside the house. The complex is now hemmed in on two sides by a strip mall.The perfectly browned crusts are thicker than regular Neapolitan, with a bulbous dough rim around the circumference, reminding us that pizza is really just decorated bread. The lasagna pie is really neither a lasagna nor a pizza: a generous mix of cheeses and meats on that thick crust, awash in a heady, well-seasoned sauce. Nowhere else but Staten Island can you get a pie quite like it.© 2013 New York Times News Service