Scarr's World

He runs the city's coolest slice joint. Sushi is next.

- TAMMIE TECLEMARIAM

Scarr Pimentel's profile in the fashion world has grown since he opened his small pizzeria on Orchard Street, though he says he has little interest in becoming a celebrity himself.

SCARR PIMENTEL is sitting outside a coffee shop on Lafayette Street, keeping an eye on his Mercedes. He waited nearly two years for the midnight-blue G-Class SUV, owing to a full customization. It’s parked in a clearly marked loading zone, but Pimentel—dressed in Supreme camo pants and a black skull-and-crossbones sweater—doesn’t seem bothered by the idea that someone might ask him to move it. He’s more interested in the jerk chicken that his cousin and right-hand man, Audie Villot, just brought over from a truck on 8th Street. “It’s really good,” Villot confirms between bites.

Pimentel remembers a Jamaican place on 125th Street where he went when he was 17 and selling beepers nearby. “They never made enough food for the day. I used to come in at one or two—they’d come out of the back always sucking their teeth.” Villot nods: “Their food was fire.”

Pimentel, who is 42, is a New York–restaurant lifer. “I’ve cleaned toilets, I’ve worked in kitchens, I’ve worked everywhere,” he says. Six and a half years ago he opened his own place, Scarr’s Pizza, on the Lower East Side. It is often called the best slice shop in New York City, which would make it, in turn, the best slice shop in the world.