Pizzas at Il Leone.
Picture: James Lynch
In case you went searching for the Maine of New York Metropolis, you would possibly discover your approach to Park Slope: each bougie escape hatches, quiet and just a little uncool, with bountiful entry to nature and a few actually unbelievable public parks. So it has a type of bashert sense that when a New Yorker turned Mainer turned pizza chef — Ben Wexler-Waite of Peaks Island, an island group of roughly 1,000 full-time residents — returned to the town to hold a shingle, he discovered his approach to Seventh Avenue, 11215.
New York is a pizza city in a approach that Portland, Maine, just isn’t, however a current go to to Il Leone — “The Lion” — confirmed that Wexler-Waite is acquitting himself admirably even on this extra aggressive market, and with out the added benefits of Casco Bay surroundings. (He’ll return to Maine within the summers and hold Il Leone going up there, too.) The slender house that final housed Bar Vinazo has been softened a bit with hanging platters, however the room maintains its twilight illumination, crammed early with what seemed to be extra good friend teams and double dates than single ones, and emptied, Park Slopeishly, by ten to 11.
A number of native changes have been made for the transfer. In Maine, Il Leone’s pies are cooked over wooden, whereas right here an electrical Italforni oven does the work. However the crusts are nonetheless naturally fermented sourdough, and a few elements are being imported from the Pine Tree State, for higher or worse. The normal Margherita, one in all Il Leone’s brief record of pies, is made with San Marzano tomatoes, however the house-special Margherita del Leone is made with greenhouse-grown Maine cherry tomatoes — normally. “They’re back-ordered proper now,” our server admitted, dropping off a sizzling platter. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “However these is likely to be even higher.”
With no disrespect to Maine agriculture, I can’t think about lacking them, not when the Brooklyn cherry tomato sauce — milled each day and raw till it goes into the pizza oven, making for a rosier, tangier sauce — is as vibrant and contemporary as it’s. Wexler-Waite’s pizzas lean towards the moist aspect, with a extra considered software of cheese, and the upshot is that you could eat the higher a part of two or three with out feeling fairly as overloaded as you would possibly in any other case. Plan to order no less than one pie per individual, because the menu doesn’t at this level embody a lot else: an appetizer of fried artichokes, some cheese, an arugula salad, and a bowlful of soppy, tennis-ball-size meatballs are about it. Of these, I wouldn’t skip the meatballs.
What does really feel irreplaceably Maine is the Isola (“island”) pizza with Maine’s favourite ingredient: lobster. The inspiration was apparently lobster fra diavola, and there’s not way more on Wexler-Waite’s stretchy crust than chile-flecked tomato sauce and a really spectacular amount of claw. The menu lists the pie because the dreaded “MP,” and the night time we visited, it rang up at $48, a splurge to make certain, however for extra lobster than I’ve generally had out at twice that value. “Oh, that is naughty,” a dinner companion of mine stated when the Isola was dropped off after our Margherita del Leone and a mushroom pie. My solely phrase of warning could be to get your personal pincers prepared: I didn’t miss the cheese besides that, with out it, the lobster meat slid round my slice with complete abandon.
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