Thursday
November

11

2004
12:17 AM

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Totonno's, New York, NY, February 21, 2004 — I'll admit that I don't have the deep and abiding love for pizza that some people do. For them pizza is like sex. Even bad pizza is preferable to none at all. That said, The unique combination that is dough, tomato, and cheese is quite compelling. And even moreso when done to perfection at Totonno's pizza on Coney Island in Brooklyn. I'd had decent pizza, but theirs was simply the best I've ever had. Needless to say, given that we've already gone all the way to Manhattan (from our basically pizza-less Seattle homebase) the trip to Coney Island seems like a long haul. Given our laziness we were excited that another Totonno's existed in Manhattan. Wondering if it was possible to replicate perfection a few miles away we were eager to try it out. We even asked on Coney Island how similar the pizza was. They assured us that it was identical. They were wrong.

We should have known that things were not going to go well when on the phone I asked the Manhattan folks if they were related to the Totonno's on Coney Island, and the woman answering the phone had never even heard of it. Oh oh. But we thought to ourselves that we had a secret that would save the day. The last time Steve and Kira went to the Coney Island Totonno's they were told that if they went to Manhattan, they should order their pizza "Coney Island style". This apparently means more burnt on the bottom. Apparently the New Yorkers in Manhattan freak out at a little charring, while the more hardy Brooklynites (Brooklynians?) know that this is how their pizza comes out best. With that little tidbit in our arsenal we ordered one cheese pizza, Coney Island style.

And while it was nicely roasted with charred edges, it was just not the same. The sauce in Manhattan was definitely the same - robust, flavorful, and delicious. But the pizza didn't come out the same. Was it the cheese? The dough? The water? The oven? Was it the fact that it wasn't a descendant of the founder personally making the pizza? The waitress claimed that the owners were the same, but she seemed to lack conviction, and her answers were suspect. I suspect but can't confirm that the Manhattan Totonno's is the result of some ancient licensing arrangement with the original (I have no proof of this, just a hunch).

We tried a couple of other pizzas. The cheese on the Margherita was a little too even, a little oily, and a bit salt. Maybe they were using a different mozarella. Peyman had a neapolitan with sauce, oregano, onion, and garlic which he thought was fantastic. The sauce was super present flavor-wise and the garlic was roasted to perfection. And though it shouldn't matter, I couldn't help but be slightly oppressed by all the St. Patrick's Day decoration giving this place more of a sports bar feel than the atmosphere of a place where great pizza is created. Though if the pizza were great I wouldn't have cared if they had Christmas decorations up in April.

Perhaps the real issue is quality control. Maybe the intangibles that make the pizza great on Coney Island simply don't translate into a different borough. It's not the first (or last time) that perfection doesn't scale when it comes to food.