The other night, as I prepared to venture outside, the sky took on the ominous tone of gunmetal, and my phone lit up with a warning: severe thunderstorm approaching, flash floods and hail likely, seek cover. All of my instincts told me to retreat, and yet I had an appointment that I simply could not miss, come hell or literal high water. I’d finally been granted the chance to order from Stretch Pizza, a pop-up by the chef Wylie Dufresne, tucked into Breads Bakery, just off Union Square.
Perhaps this sounds like the ravings of a madwoman; maybe you’re wondering if any pizza could be worth it. But what’s a little tempest, really? It felt strangely refreshing to experience such heightened drama around something as low stakes as pizza. I headed for the subway. By the time I arrived at Fourteenth Street, the storm had passed, and it was barely drizzling. At the top of the station stairs, a woman hawked umbrellas with a comfortingly familiar rhythm: “Five-dollar, five-dollar, five-dollar!”
Early in the pandemic, Dufresne—who made his name with wd-50, his lightheartedly avant-garde Lower East Side restaurant, and who, in recent years, had turned his talents to doughnuts—discovered a forgotten pizza oven in his basement. For months, he geeked out on it; a year later, he decided to share his R. & D. with the world.
Dufresne’s crust, made from dough flecked with whole wheat and cold-fermented for seventy-two hours, is notably tangy, and satisfyingly chewy beneath its crackly exterior. It makes an excellent base for each of the four pies (plus one calzone) available, including the Classic New York, with tomato sauce and shredded low-moisture mozzarella, and my favorite: the Everything, topped with cream cheese, poppy and sesame seeds, dried garlic, and salt, and finished with fresh chives—a toasted bagel with melty schmear, in pizza form.
Still, I can’t exactly recommend the byzantine process it takes to obtain Dufresne’s pies, weather notwithstanding. Tuesday through Thursday nights, Stretch offers a limited number of reservation-only time slots for pickup, which sell out fast. Nothing came of adding myself to the online wait list for various dates. When, after weeks of randomly checking the Web site, I finally snatched up an opening, I had to both preorder and prepay, days in advance.
The month prior, when I’d made it off the much friendlier rolling wait list for Pies Upstairs—a similar if scrappier operation that, frankly, I’d forgotten I’d signed up for—it felt more like winning the lottery. “Upstairs” refers to the fifth-floor Crown Heights apartment of David Kay, a former Gramercy Tavern chef, who started his home pizza business in January. If you can’t make it when your number is up, he’ll offer you another time.
Kay produces just twelve ten-inch pies a night, at a maximum of two per customer, twice a week, and also sells his own cream soda (seasoned with vanilla and cocoa nibs) and cookies from Best Damn Cookies, the pandemic project of another chef, who happens to be Kay’s roommate. My pizzas—one red, with mozzarella, soppressata, and pickled peppers, the other white, with mozzarella, caramelized onion, thinly sliced potatoes, roasted-garlic cream, and capers, both bearing beautifully bubbled crusts—were faultless, the cream soda and cookies (dark-chocolate chunk, made with brown butter and coconut sugar) each an argument for its form. Being ushered knowingly toward the elevator by a man eating nachos in the lobby felt like a rite of passage.
In May, 2020, Gabriele Lamonaca, a native of Rome who lives in Harlem, began bartering homemade square pizzas—including his signature Burrapizza, for which each slice is topped with an entire ball of burrata—via Instagram. For a year, he met strangers on street corners, swapping for anything from caviar to guitar lessons. Last month, he opened Unregular Pizza, a slice shop not far from Breads. Accepted tender is mostly traditional, but you can still add yourself to the list for his single daily trade. (Stretch pizzas $19. Pies Upstairs pizzas $13-$16. Unregular Pizza slices $4.50-$12.) ♦
