Motorino

c/o Eater

319 Graham Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
view map
718.599.8899

Cuisine: Brick Oven Pizza
Our Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Cards: All Major
Price: $$
Hours: Sun-Thurs 11am-midnight; Fri-Sat 11am-1am
Booze: Full bar
Subway: L to Graham Ave
Menu: Click Here
Delivery: Yes
NY Mag says:

Williamsburg pie man Mathieu Palombino was born in Belgium, speaks French, and has cooked at Bouley, Cello, and most recently BLT Fish, where he ran the kitchen and earned a Michelin star. But don’t hold that against him. Deep down, Palombino has always felt he was put on this earth to answer a higher calling. That calling, he has determined in this advanced stage in his career, is to flip dough, ladle sauce, and turn pizza around the oven’s hot spot. “I always believed in pizza,” says the chef. ”Pizza for me is not just a snack. It’s a magnificent thing.” It should be noted that magnificence, according to Palombino, doesn’t only reveal itself in classic permutations like the Margherita and the Marinara. Thus, Motorino’s wood-fired brick oven will also accommodate such freewheeling pies as the Gorgonzola-speck-and-cippolini-onion and the iconoclastic mussels and mozzarella. And, in the current Otto-inspired pizzeria-plus fashion, Motorino augments its carb-centric menu with salads, antipasti, cheese, salumi, and — equipment arrival pending — gelati.

Time Out New York says:

Pizza is and has for a long time been serious business in this town, and while New Yorkers are often prepared to throw down over the supremacy of a slice, the truth is, a lot of it isn’t that good. Fortunately, some restaurants have abandoned corny dough-tossing antics and turned instead to the great Neapolitan pie, which, among other specifications, must be sized for an individual and cooked in a wood-fired oven. The latest of these pizzerias, Motorino, passes the litmus test: Its “DOC” version of the Margherita—the classic combination of tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil—comes straight from the dining room’s glowing masonry oven, with melted islands of buffalo-milk mozzarella on a thin layer of sweet sauce. The crust meets two critical standards: A properly blistered char and a wonderful elasticity that is so often missing from lesser examples. If we were to quibble, the crust could have been airier, and the pie could have used a less generous grating of pecorino romano, which can overpower delicate mozzarella. For bolder palates, the Pugliese features pleasantly bitter broccoli rabe and the no-joke punch of fiery chili peppers. While the pizza is the draw, supporting dishes are also worth a detour: Two oven-roasted artichokes were tender to the core; a half dozen plump baked oysters were enlivened with lemon, chili oil and diced bacon; and the limited dessert menu included a masterful tiramisu with a thick layer of mascarpone cream, and rich, silken gelati. The prideful may be loath to admit it, but New York’s pizza scene just got a little better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 6th, 2005 at 6:33 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.