Brava Italia: Pizza Adventures with Tony Gemignani
12.16.09 | Pete Bohan | Children's, Food and Drink
On Friday, Chronicle’s marketing department ventured off to North Beach for a special pizza party at 8-time World Pizza Championship winner Tony Gemignani’s restaurant Tony’s Pizza Napoletana for a very special lunch. You see, every Halloween Chronicle’s various departments (Sales, Design, Editorial, Marketing, Production) compete against each other for the best costumes and best themed sketch based around one of our books. This year the Design group picked his book for children, Tony and the Pizza Champions, as their inspiration and they won a half-day off from work! Marketing came in 2nd place and won a pizza party. What better place to have it than at Tony’s restaurant, which has been getting rave reviews across the board? Well, we were in for a treat. In fact, I think we got the better prize.
Instead of randomly picking or customizing our own pizzas, we decided to go “omakase” style, letting chef Tony create a meal of his choosing based on what he thought we would enjoy. Starting with his home-style, unbelievably delicious meatballs (the best I’ve had in years), the courses started to come out fast and furious. First, a masterpiece of simplicity, his Margherita pizza, which won the 2007 World Pizza Cup in Naples, Italy (and is limited to 73 per day), had a perfectly thin and crisp crust topped with fresh mozzarella, basil, sea salt, olive oil and fresh crushed tomato sauce.
Next up was the Pizza Romana grande, a long, thin-crust pizza divided into three sections, each with its own toppings.
From left to right: Cherry tomato, black olives, basil and garlic; Salami, arugula, and parmigiano; and fig preserve, prosciutto, and gorgonzola. We were starting to get full after this one.
One of my favorites was his “New Yorker” pizza, which isn’t listed on the menu. It’s based on a pie made popular by the famous Grimaldi’s Pizzeria (under the Brooklyn Bridge) and topped with ricotta, pepperoni, and sliced sausage. Ok, really full now…
Oh, but we weren’t done by a long shot. While I don’t have pictures of everything we ate, we were also served perfectly al dente rigatoni Bolognese, rich and creamy pasta carbonara with fresh wild mushrooms, his “Little Italy” salad with mesclun greens, walnuts, olives, balsamic reduction, and parmigiano, slices of Sicilian style Fratellanza pizza with salami, pepperoni, mushrooms and sausage, and a “Jersey Style” tomato pie (cheese on the bottom, sauce on top). This style is found in central parts of the state and Philadelphia, but I never had it growing up in Northern NJ. That said, it might have been my favorite of the meal and several of us agreed it had the best tomato sauce we had ever had. Finally, we had the pizza that won Tony the Gold Medal on the Food Network’s Pizza Champion’s Challenge, his Cal Italia: a melt-in-your-mouth and beautifully plated pie with asiago, mozzarella, imported Italian gorgonzola, fig preserve from Croatia, prosciutto di Parma, parmigiano, and balsamic.
To top it off, we even got to see Tony’s dough-tossing skills in action. Check out the video below.
Anyone in town and craving some wonderful Italian food, pizza and otherwise, should add this restaurant to their “must-try” list.
Who doesn’t love pizza? Let us know what you think about this popular food in the comments section and enter to win one of three copies of Tony and the Pizza Champions!
Pete Bohan
Marketing Manager
Popularity: 2% [?]
we LOVE pizza!
Oh PIZZA! YUM!
Can’t wait to try a piece of that pizza!
Yummy.
pizza jones!
I’m always up for some pizza advice. I love making it at home and going out to our favorite pizza restaurants. Yum!
i heart pizza! making it, eating it, smelling it.. suzanne lagasa’s noodle costume was awesome!
I need this book! The pizzas look amazing! I recently had a horrible pizza experience; our house was frozen because of unseasonable low temps but I managed to get my dough to rise perfectly and I added all my toppings…including chicken that had gone bad apparently. The whole thing tasted like a fishy mess. So yeah, I need this book to redeem any dignity I have left. Teach me your ways, Tony!
Seriously, what’s all this about pizza!?!
pizza pie = food of the gods!
My entire family adores pizza. We have a pizzeria nearby that puts a thick layer of cheese on top of all the other toppings and everything goes right to the edge. It’s is so good!
This post made me seriously hungry. Thin crust & light cheese please!
I think pizza is the perfect sunday dish! Friends come over and we have some selfmade pizza! Great.
well I’m from New Haven area, where pizza is rumored to have started in the US (probably not true) we have the most awesome pizzeria’s…this book looks GREAT though, awesome pies..
we all love pizza and I have been thinking about trying homemade..
This is a MOST dangerous post to read when it’s 11:24 and your stomach starts to grumble. I love pizza (the simplicity of the Marghertia is my fave) and this year, decided to take a family member up on her invitation. She’s a food professional who said she would teach me how to make GREAT dough. We’re booking a class for 2010 in her kitchen. Bring on the carbs! as the snow is falling here in Canada. It’s the best way to stay toasty.
Hi everyone,
Thanks to all of you for reading my post and sending your comments. I really got a kick out of it. Just looking at this story again makes my mouth water. I really think I need to go back to Tony’s PRONTO!
Congratulations to user “faz” for winning the giveaway of Tony’s newest book TONY AND THE PIZZA CHAMPIONS! You’ll love it!
Also everyone should check out http://www.chroniclebooks.com/pizzachamps to get a couple exclusive recipes from the man himself.
I could live on pizza alone! I would love to find the recipe for the Cal Italia one. Good book to look for.
Here’s my true, embarrasing story: My daughter is 6, and went to a birthday party in November. When I came to pick her up after the party, the hostess mom apologized to me saying “Grace ate nothing but cake. If I had known she was allergic to pizza I would have served something else!” I burst out laughing – we eat pizza every Friday – she’s not allergic! When I asked Grace later why she had said that, she replied “Mommy, it’s just easier than explaining that no one else’s pizza tastes as good as the ones you make!”