Each time I find myself in Greenpoint, I think of Paulie Gee’s. The buzzy Neapolitan pizza shop seems to me forever entwined with the sunny, quaint streets of one of my favorite Brooklyn neighborhoods. The reason it took me so long to get here is mostly due to the incredibly popular nature of this shop. Come at 5pm right when it opens or risk a 3+ hour wait time. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the most patient when it comes to restaurant wait times, so the 5pm had to be strategically planned.
After being seated immediately, my table of 3 seemed to spend what felt like hours (reality check, probably only 20 mins) browsing the menu. Conjuring pizzas in our mind we poured over the ingredients (glass of wine in hand) thinking about what would be the best decision and give us the most variety. To our side, we could smell and hear the large coal, pizza oven at work with its mini creations. With a little help from our waiter we arrived at 3 pies for the table: the famous Hellboy, Sake mountain way, and Ricky Ricotta.
The Hellboy (pictured above) has just about everything you’d want from a pizza. It’s a pie with fresh mozzarella, Italian tomatoes, spicy Berkshire soppressata, Parmigiano Reggiano and Mike’s Hot Honey. It is quite possible the most perfect combination of ingredients to co-exist together on a pie. When spicy meats and honey are combined, sparks tend to fly. Add onto this the greatness that is the pillowy, chewy, delectable dough that forms the basis of these Neapolitan pies and you have yourself a winner.
The sake mountain way (above) was a real underdog. As the last pie that was decided on, we figured this would be a simple pizza to not compete with the two others. We were wrong. The pie arrived with fresh mozz and a pink tomato sauce, balanced out with garlic, onion, olive oil, basil, sake reduction and heavy cream. The balanced and rich rose sauce pooled on top of the heavenly crust. The chewy mozzarella topping completed what was a taste of pure comfort.
With three pies there just has to be winners and losers. While everything we ordered was fantastic, the Ricky Ricotta was simply the least fantastic. Maybe it was the presence of arugula on a pizza – too much green?? Maybe it was the lack of mozzarella? This pie housed only Pecorino and post-over Ricotta dollops. Maybe it was the lack of red sauce? There was only tomatoes and olive oil. Or maybe it was that its competitors just blew us too far away in the pie category that this also good pie couldn’t compete. We may never know, and that’s okay.
As we lingered to finish our wines and take in the sight of fresh, glistening pizza’s leaving the oven, we were greeted by a friendly visit from Paulie Gee himself, a friendly New Yorker (that accent was a dead giveaway) with a mission to make great pizza for all. Boy, did he deliver.
Coleslaw Etc. 