Via Tribunali: The Calzone that brought down NYC pizza forever!

Marinated olives, Piazza Dante, and a wood burning oven.

So pizza is not exactly my jam.  Yeah, yeah, I know, I live in New York City and our pizza is the best... blah blah blah.  NYC pizza is just okay.  It's not better than any other city's pizza, it's just bigger, flatter, and greasier.  I like real pizza.  Pizza that has the dirt of San Marzano tomatoes on it.  Pizza that has cheeses like grana padano, provlone, and mozzarella di bufala.  Pizza that talks with it's hands and and has the sweat of a Pisan on it, with his muscles rippling and glistening in the light of a wood fired oven as he shovels that pizza in and out and in and... oh wait, what were we talking about?  Oh yeah, pizza.

Luckily, I live across the street from one of the best Neapolitan pizza places in the city.  Yeah, I know, true story!  Via Tribunali's pizza is like crack - I can't get enough of it and I jones for it.  Whenever my friend Shannon comes to town, the first thing she does is demand good pizza (she's very pushy like that).  The small Georgia town she comes from greatly lacks in this area (I can attest to this because I lived there for 5 years and I never had good pizza).  Well, I think after having her visit twice a year for 5 years, we have finally found a place to satisfy her pizza palate, as we ate here twice in one week, and with no complaints from me.  

Calzone Vesuvio, Specialita' della Casa!

This place is tiny.  I mean, really tiny.  It's about as big as my living room and most of that is taken up by the gorgeous wood fire oven they have in the back.  The tables are ridiculously small, especially considering your putting a pizza on it.  The chairs are like little torture devices after 20 minutes and the service can be pretty slow.  But you know what?  I don't care, because this pizza is that friggin' good!  

The first time we went we started with their marinated olives.   Anyone who knows me knows that I am an olive freak.  These are awesome - lemony, garlicy, olivey, heavenly and a nice pairing with their house wine.  On our waiter's recommendation, we ordered the Piazza Dante (pomodoro, provola, prosciutto di parma, arugula, cherry tomato), it was delicious!  Their dough is perfectly chewy, light, and a little smoky from the wood fire.  The tomato sauce (pomodoro) is clean and simple.  This had a great balance of warm cheesy pizza with the freshness of a tomato and arugula salad on top with some salty prosciutto.  It's no wonder it's a house favorite.  

Mezza Luna Nutella

But then, there was the Calzone Vesuvio... there's no coming back from this one.  I've never seen anything like this.  This is not your doughy, folded over calzone... oh no.  This a pizza with a thin layer of pizza dough over it that puffs up like a volcano while it bakes.  Cut it open and inside is a delicate feast of pomodoro, fior di latte, ricotta, prosciutto cotto, roasted mushrooms, and fresh basil.  It's not too heavy, but it has this amazing richness to it that makes your eyes roll back into your head.  It was perfection.

On our second trip, we decided to start with a couple of salads and lighten it up (I am a fan of the house salad with the Italian tuna and Shannon went with the Caesar - which was excellent) and then go right into the Calzone Vesuvio.  There was no question in our mind that this calzone needed to happen again.  However, we also decided to save room for their house dessert, a nutella calzone.  People from the table next to us were salivating and making comments to us how amazing this looked.  And you know what? It tasted even better than it looked.

This place is too easy for me.  It's steps from my apartment, and on a cold, rainy or snowy night when I don't want to cook or go very far, this is my home away from home.  It's pizza at it's finest and comfort food to boot.  Plus they have a slammin' happy hour - $5 pizzas and $8 for a half craft of house wine.  Can you blame me for going??  Hmm... maybe I'll stop in tonight.

Pig & Khao: A Most Delightful Combination

 Chicharrons with coconut vinegar & a Michelada

My favorite thing about my friend Shannon visiting is that she is a fearless foodie.  I will literally forgo going to restaurants until she comes to town so we can experience them together.  However, she's gotten into a stale routine the last few years of going to the same places over and over again.  This visit, I was determined to break her out of her routine and introduce her to my yummy neighborhood!

Pig and Khao opened over the summer and I've been dying to try it!  Using a Google Offer ($15 for $30 - yeah, baby!) - which we desperately needed after our week of eating out - we jumped in chicharrons deep!  What??  That's a saying.

Grilled Pork Jowl with watermelon, and chicharrons

The restaurant is sleek, modern, tiny, and congested.  It's a little noisy and a little too friendly with the neighbors seated next to you.  But this is indicative of many new restaurants in NYC these days, especially in the LES.  The nice thing about these tiny little places, is that the eavesdropping is usually fantastic and so is ordering off of other people's tables.  "Um, I'll have what that person two tables down is having... yeah the noodle thing."

We of course started things off right with a couple of cocktails and some five spice chicharrons with coconut vinegar (it's okay, I didn't know this was a thing either).  They were fresh, hot, crunchy, spicy, salty... the best.  If you've never had fresh chicharrons, you are missing out.  To wash them down, I had a Michelada, (Genesee beer, P&K sangrita, Thai chili salt) one of my favorite drinks and a good deal at $6.  Shannon had the Phuket Punch (Prosecco, grapefruit-cinnamon syrup, and mint), which I determined tasted exactly like applesauce, and we agreed that was not a bad thing at all.

Grilled Curry Lamb Ribs

Our next course was Grilled Pork Jowl with watermelon, chicharron, toasted rice, lime-chili fish sauce, and herbs.  This dish was so damn near perfect that I dream about it at night.  The pork jowl was grilled perfectly and melted in your mouth as soon as it hit your tongue.  The jowl paired with the sweet, refreshing watermelon, spicy, salty, crunchy chicharrons and the perfect hit of acid from sauce and a little cool cilantro - it was truly amazing.  We practically licked the plate clean!

As an entree we ordered the Grilled Curry Lamb Ribs that came with an  a little yogurt sauce, pickled beets, whole wheat roti chapatti.  We also ordered a side of their vegetable of the day, which was some sort of Asian green with a tasty little sauce on it.

The perfect bite makes Shannon very happy -
that cocktail wasn't hurting either!

Okay, I'm not going to lie, I really do love food that requires assembly like this.  I enjoy putting together that perfect little bite of food that suits my palate just right.  These lamb ribs were fantastic!  They were tender, well seasoned and grilled, and not gamy or fatty (which can happen with lamb).  The combination of the meaty smoky lamb, with the cool yogurt, tang of the beets, bitterness of the greens, sweetness of the coconut rice rolled up in that light and delicious roti was amazing!  And as you can see from Shannon's face, it made us that happy!

Turon - banana fritter, chocolate sauce,
and salted caramel ice cream

For dessert - yeah, we managed to shovel some more food down our throats - we got the Turon (banana fritter, chocolate sauce, and salted caramel ice cream).  This was probably our least favorite dish of the night.  I mean don't get me wrong, we ate it, but it was lowest on the list.  The "banana fritters" weren't exactly what you want from a "fritter."  These were essentially pastry wrapped bananas, like you'd see at any typical Thai restaurant.  Nothing to write home about for sure.  However, I would write home about that salted caramel ice cream, because it was fantastic.  I recommend just ordering a dish of that.

At the end of this amazing meal, we definitely felt like pigs and cows... not to be confused with Pig and Khao!  It was excellent, and I am soooooooooooo excited to go back when their garden is open!