Una Pizza Risurrezione

A Neapolitan-pie master returns to New York with less trailblazing, more polish and comfort.

- Adam Platt

FEW THINGS ILLUSTRATE the madcap, upside-down nature of the dining world over the last decade or so better than the apotheosis of the lowly Neapolitan-style pizzaiolo. Witness the improbable career of Anthony Mangieri, a baker from the Jersey shore, whose tiny, bunkered wood-oven establishment, Una Pizza Napoletana, helped usher in the great Neapolitan-pie craze when it opened in the East Village back in 2004. Mangieri’s intense, hollow-eyed pursuit of the perfectly pure, perfectly crafted margherita pie (he traveled to Naples to divine the secrets of the ancient masters; unlike local slice merchants, he shunned sugary sauces and bleached flour; he made every single pie himself) became the stuff of local legend not just among the city’s opinionated, ever-expanding rabble of pizza scholars but among the increasingly craft-conscious, Slow Food–centric food world at large.