Han + Diana Eats! A Food Blog: A trio of Brooklyn pizzas: Best Pizza, Forcella and Roberta's

Sunday, September 11, 2011

A trio of Brooklyn pizzas: Best Pizza, Forcella and Roberta's

This post was from earlier this summer. What began an innocent pizza crawl became one of my most beloved hipster Saturdays, including friends bathing in open fire hydrants,

watching an outdoor amateur wrestling match with referees wearing luchador masks

and watching a female roller derby in a college gymnasium.

Random summers in New York are the best.

The mini-pizza crawl centered on Williamsburg / East Williamsburg.

We started out sharing the grandma slice at Best Pizza (because we sort of ate a ton at the Smorgasburg within minutes earlier).

Simple and crisp, the sauce is flavored with anchovies, adding a bit of complexity. Lovely! I especially liked the paper plates decorating the small spot, featuring artwork drawn by their patrons. Late night bar-goers should walk the extra few blocks to grab a late night bite here post-drink.

Second, we headed to Forcella, a new pizza place on the Brooklyn scene specializing in Neapolitan pies.

The unique dish to get here is the pizze fritte - a pizza made with a deep-fried crust! (How do you make pizza even better? Fry that sucker up!)

We opted for the montanara - simple margherita pizza to taste the flavors better here.

Though deep fried, the dough was airy and light. It was then topped with amazing crushed tomatoes sauce and fresh, melted mozzarella across the top.

What was surprising was that this pizza was not hot. The tomatoes were still cold, but I actually did not mind - the whole combination of ingredients, textures and temperatures just added to the absolute freshness of flavors. This pizza was such a delight and perfect for a summer day.

Fried crust = awesome.

Lastly, we found ourselves right in the center of the most hipster block party as we walked to Roberta's. I saw a Japanese guy with the longest hair rocking out on guitar. So fun.

Roberta's was serving up free slices outside at the block party, but we headed inside to rest our limbs, cool off in the shade and order a proper pie.

We let Nick pick the pizza, and he opted for the Rainbow Connection which was really a wilted rainbow chard salad on a pizza with lemon zest, garlic and parmagiano reggiano.

I like greens on pizza. I really do. But this one was just too green! Seriously! It was tart and bitter, and it just lacked any other flavor dimension. I ended up adding red pepper flakes all over it, but I think some salty meat would have helped balance this pie out.

The brunch pizza offering at Roberta's has the pies more up my alley, including the bee sting which features pepperoni + honey. Yum! I also hear their fried chicken is amazing, so stay tuned for that soon !

Best Pizza

33 Havemeyer St
(between 8th St & 7th St)
Brooklyn, NY 11211