Pizza Today - July 2017 - 52

LEFT TO RIGHT: Mo Cheeks Italian tomatoes, Pecorino Romano, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano,
house-pickled red onions and Berkshire guanciale / Monte Cristo Mild Gouda, sliced Canadian
bacon and a pure maple syrup drizzle / Red, White and Greenberg Fresh mozzarella, guanciale,
house-pickled red onions and a baby arugula garnish / Hellboy Fresh mozzarella, Italian tomatoes,
soppressata picante, Parmigiano-Reggiano and hot honey

willing to invest in me," he says. "I went
and took out a second mortgage on my
house, so to speak. Whenever I would go
to find (investors), they would ask me if
I had any skin in the game. I needed to
have some skin in the game."
Eventually he settled on Brooklyn's
Greenpoint neighborhood. "One of the
things I did along the way was I picked
the brains of everybody who's making
the kind of pizza I wanted to make (and)
running an establishment the way I wanted to run an establishment," Giannone
says. The immediate area had no pizza,
just bars. "I saw what was going to happen to this intersection. It had this buzz
to it, and I knew it was going to get better
and I said, 'This is it. I have to get in here
before somebody else does.'" Paulie Gee's
Brooklyn location had been a former restaurant that had suffered a fire and closed.
5 2 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / J U LY 2 0 1 7

With street parking, a large layout and
plenty of room to build a pizza oven, the
restaurant opened in March 2010.
When asked how he classifies
his pizza, Giannone has one word:

"simplicity." His pizza bakes in under
a minute, but he doesn't like to talk in
pedestrian terms like "table turns" and
"check averages."
Instead, his focus is on the food. The
menu consists largely of signature pizzas
baked in a wood-fired oven with kilndried hardwoods -- no additions or
substitutions, please -- and a small handful of salads, soups and desserts. Initially,
Giannone said he expected "to be making
pizza every night because the places I
idolized -- Lucali, Pizzeria Bianco, Di
Fara, Una Pizza Napoletana - they all
were the pizza makers. I thought I had

to be the only one. Friends and Family
Night, I had a rude awakening that I just
couldn't keep up, first of all. I had this
realization that those people had 35 seats.
I had 70 seats. How was I going to keep
up? As time went on, we weren't that
busy at first. People wanted to talk to me,
and I'm standing there making pizza and
talking to people and they were slowing
me down."
He brought on some solid pizza makers and "that's when this stopped being a
job for me and started being a wonderful
life," Giannone says.
The company's top seller is the Hellboy,
made with fresh mozzarella, Italian
tomatoes, hot soppressata, ParmigianoReggiano and hot honey. Also popular
is the Greenpointer (fresh mozz, baby
arugula, olive oil, fresh lemon juice and
shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano). Pizza
accounts for the majority of food sales.
There's no takeout or delivery. "I just
don't like what happens when you put
the pizza in a box," Giannone says. "I was
busy enough to not do it."
The restaurant only recently added a

http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM

Pizza Today - July 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pizza Today - July 2017