The Bountiful Bronx and Peeves Galore 

Riccardo, the charismatic pizzaiolo, also has time for flirtation. Photo: Steven Richter.

        I read about Arthur Schwartz’ favorite New York pizza in his newsletter and I just had to taste it, yes, even if that instant craving meant a trek to the Bronx.  I have nothing against the Bronx.  The man I live with was born near the Grand Concourse and some of my best (and cleverest) friends grew up there. In that way the Bronx has deeply enriched my life.  It’s just that it seems remote, unknown and a little Bonfire of the Vanities to me.  Anyway, I wanted to go with The Food Maven. You don’t know the Food Maven? Intimate, confessional, a loyal friend, impassioned about Italy, Arthur can be rude and cantankerous, loving and loyal.  What he doesn’t know about food may not be worth knowing.  That doesn’t mean we’re going to agree about a pizza that requires all of us to leave many carbon footprints on the West Side Highway.

        Whizzing north from our Upper West Side pad with Francesco, a friend who knows the boroughs, takes barely 15 minutes and five to stalk a parking space.  I am anticipating a worthy pizza.  I am not expecting Trattoria Zero Otto Nove, one man’s love affair with Salerno. We stroll past the deserted bar into a narrow corridor with doors on either side, doors that don’t open that I later realize are meant to suggest the narrow streets of Salerno leading into a glorious piazza…and yes, here we are in a soaring space, like a stage set for “The Rose Tatoo,” skylight overhead, with the pizza oven and a movie star handsome pizzaiola juggling pies with a long-handled paddle and flirting with the female customers…a trompe l’oeil street on one wall, a balcony with chandeliers and tables above and our table in the corner. “Arturo, Francesco!” cries padrone Roberto Paciullo, Michelangelo of this fantasy al fresco illusion, summoned, from his Roberto’s down the street, hugging and kissing our guides like long lost cousins.  Asked about the ambitious architecture, he shrugs. “I was an artist when I was a kid,” he says. “I used to mix the paints and get the exact color of skin.  But I worked for my father as a carpenter too so I know both the art and the building…and that’s how I did this. There was no plan.  No drawing.  Just every morning I would tell the workmen what we gonna do today.”

In the fantasy of a piazza in Salerno at Zero Otto Nove. Photo: Steven Richter.

        It is decided that we should start with a sparkling red, a Gragnano, as if we were in a Salerno pizzeria. Nothing I need to sample again, let me note.  And once we’ve bowed to regional custom with a few gulps, Francesco switches to a serious red he’s brought along.

        Arturo orders, determined that we shall have the full gut-challenging experience of Salerno cocina: baby octopus smothered in a very good tomato sauce, fusilli al forno with amazingly light meatballs, soppressata, ricotta, mozzarella, sliced egg and more of that tomato sauce. A heavenly depth charge in a baking dish.  “Should she taste the pasta e fagioli too?” Arthur asks Roberto. “It’s different,” he adds, “Not the soup you knew.  It’s baked dry in Salerno.”

        “Certo. Certainly,” Roberto eggs him on.  “In Italy they have lasagna. In Salerno we have pasta e fagioli.” Another heavy weapon. I love it too.

        “How about a salad?” I ask.  “Insalata di arugola,” I read from the menu.

        “Are you crazy?” Arthur asks.  “You don’t come to the Bronx for a salad.”

        He laughs when the eggplant parmigiana arrives in an elegant crepe-like layering. “It’s a downtown parmigiana,” he cries. And in a cultural aside to me: “In Brooklyn we say we’re going to the city when we’re going to Manhattan. But in the Bronx, they call it downtown.”   The uncharacteristically demure eggplant layering is barely enough for four tiny bites and we’re five. “Steven can finish the octopus,” he suggests.

Arturo, the Food Maven, approves the pizza marinara. Photo: Steven Richter.

        As for the pizzas that lured us here, Arthur is right. They are a model of brick oven pies. The crust has appealing flavor though it’s not crisp like my favorites at Celeste.  The splendid buffalo mozzarella shows best on the Margherita with San Marzano tomatoes, though the Marinara with capers, anchovies and pitted olives is admirable too.  And I love the untraditional pie with sliced potatoes, sausage and smoked mozzarella, as one would an unruly child.

        Arthur, leaving the next day on the publicity tour for his newest book, “Jewish Home Cooking,” confides his goal of elevating

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Yiddish recipes. “Mario Batali, who practically made his career serving cheek meat has nothing on the Lubovitch Hassidic women of Crown Heights,” he tells us.  “They’ve been cooking cheeks for generations. And my grandmother was rubbing chickens before Bobby Flay’s parents were born.”  He turns to Francesco, “Did you ever realize that kreplach are actually meat-stuffed tortelloni?   Okay, call them agnolotti. Chinese people think of them as Jewish wontons. I like to say that to make Jewish food contemporary, all you have to do is add broccoli.” He scoops up the last of the baked fusilli.

        “You won’t want to eat this,” says Roberto, presenting a plate of rabbit cacciatore rather tentatively, with what I can only guess is Salernoesque humility. “It’s more olive oil than tomato.”  Of course we want it, even though waistbands are already straining. The sauce-smothered rabbit is even better than it looks - that rarity, juicy rabbit.

        I’d like to say that in a lucid moment we decide to skip dessert.  But there is no lucid moment.  The Road Food warrior has his usual sensible lemon sorbetto. But Francesco manages to put away two big slices of Nutella pizza with such gusto you might have thought that’s why he came.  I pride myself on not being susceptible to Nutella (I have enough junk food cravings for one lifetime), but of course I have to taste. It’s my job. Hmmm. Perhaps I have underrated Nutella? It’s no worse than rather ordinary fudge.