Pizze

Appears in

The Barbuto Cookbook: California-Italian Cooking from the Beloved West Village Restaurant

Published 2020

About

Pizza was always on my mind when I first opened Barbuto. The special oven that the very talented Nobile Attie and I designed was created to include both a grill and a pizza oven in a single unit. It is an oven that my colleagues covet and are truly fascinated by. Our grill chef at Barbuto needs to be deft and skilled to the point where they can perform the tasks of two people. The Nobile-Waxman oven is that good!

As far as inspiration goes; well, I have had superb pizzas the world over. My first Italian pizza was in the Milan train station in 1977. It came from a wood-oven pizza vendor located inside the main train station. The taste of that pizza was a shock to my system. This pizza had nothing to do with the pizza of my youth. First of all, it was a personal-sized pizza, not meant for sharing. The fire had imparted a charred flavor, and the perfume wafting up from the bubbling hot cheese and tomato topping was intoxicating.