RESTAURANT: 800° Woodfired Kitchen
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We love good pizza. What’s good pizza? To us, it’s a thinner, crispy crust style, a hint of smoke from a wood-fired oven, and great toppings. By great we not only mean top-quality ingredients, but a choice to make our fantasy pie. That, and more, is available at 800° Woodfired Kitchen, with 8 locations on the east and west coasts, plus 7 locations from Tokyo to the UAE and Qatar. We just got our branch in New York City, and couldn’t be happier. We can create the pizza of our dreams, or choose from dreamy pizzas designed by the chefs. Not up for pizza? There’s something for everyone, with bountiful offerings at lunch and dinner: Pizza is one of our passions, and our biggest frustration is that most pizzerias offer the same old, same old. The best-tasting pizzeria in our neighborhood is so old-fashioned that it has the same classic toppings it had when it opened in the 1950s. Tastes have expanded since. Foodies seek more options—arugula, bacon, burrata, chicken, caramelized onions, honey, jalapeño and other chiles, prosciutto, smoked salmon, truffle cheese, and on and on (all of these are on the menu at 800° Woodfired Kitchen). Whatever your druthers—classic or contemporary, carnivore or vegan, plain or piled high—we promise you’ll be happy here. The only frustration is figuring out what an “everything” pizza would be, because with some 40 choices, there are enough ingredients for many “everythings.” But wait, there’s more: 11 specialty pizzas created by the chefs. We’ve had three of them so far, and liked them so much we can’t wait to have them again—making it difficult to get through the rest of the list. Let’s call them out: Restaurant founder Chef Anthony Carron, whose 20-plus years as a chef include stints at gastronomic temples such as Michael Mina in San Francisco, has brought his inspiration, innovation and dedication to the very-best quality ingredients, to the art of cooking with wood fire. |
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His menu is “woodfired to perfection,” infusing each item—pizzas, meats, fish, etc.—with just the right amount of smokiness. Why wood fire pizza? Chef responds: Aside from the smoky taste of wood fire, the main difference between the other types of ovens have to do with a texture. Generally speaking, a stone floor oven (brink or deck oven) will give you a crispier crust. These ovens generally run around 650°F so the pizza has more time to dry out before it gets too dark, making the crust crispier. The stone floor also “wicks” moisture out of the dough, for added crispness. Why 800°? Chef explains: With our ovens and Neapolitan style pizzas in general, there is some temperature variation throughout the day as the fire changes. Also, some Neapolitan pizza cooks like to run a little hotter, and some a little cooler, to achieve their preferred result. Each oven varies individually as well, and also varies with the weather, dryness of the wood etc. What happens at 900°? So if someone is touting 900° as better than 800°, it’s just marketing. Our ovens can get to 860°F; it’s all a function of the conditions described above. ________________ *How is tartufo the same word for a pricey underground fungus (the original tartufo, or truffle) and an ice cream dessert? Chocolate tartufos are round balls of ganache created just after the French revolution (1799). The dark brown chocolates were named after the precious, dark brown Périgord truffles, hunted in forests. The ice cream tartufo dessert appeared around the Victorian era (1837-1901), when the molding of ice cream into flowers, fruits, and other shapes became popular. To resemble the original tartufo, the coating of an ice cream tartufo should be chocolate cookie crumbs or mini chips, rather than enrobing in smooth chocolate.
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