Pizza Maker Strikes Back at Times, Toppings, Himself

Jim Lahey— the effervescent, no-knead dough guru and chef/owner of Sullivan Street Bakery and pizza joint Co.— has some advice for Frank Bruni following the single star Times review of Co. earlier this week. "If you want your cheese and sauce, you can get it [at Ray's]," he told the Observer’s Daily Transom. "They'll actually put extra shit on for ya!" Lahey’s working pizza philosophy at Co. (megawatt chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is an investor) adheres to a principle that pizza should not be laden with toppings and it is best cooked in a 900 degree oven. “The driving force was to change this genre of food-making so it's not falling into the same stupid cliches,” Lahey told the Observer, “like, the thick crust on the edge and lots of tomato sauce and cheese.” Lahey conspicuously sports a “Consume Less” t-shirt on the Sullivan Street website; Bruni’s admonishment that Lahey “needs to sweat the cheese and the rest of it a little more” seems to have specifically irked the chef. The Observer article, with more expletives, is here. Expect a Diner’s Journal rebuttal to Lahey’s rebuttal, which veers sharply into self-deprecating territory, sometime today. (photo courtesy Adam Kuban/Slice)

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By Hugh Merwin in Food on April 10, 2009 1:55 PM

Comments [rss]

NannyState

Bruni just loves the Super Supreme, that's his problem.

blablanyc

After reading the comments, it doesn't pay to make pizza into some type of fancy pants food.

The End.

P.S.

Frank Bruni, don't ever do a pizza review ever again. You may wind up in a swamp in New Jersey.

Trilby16

I like burnt crust with big bubbles and light on the cheese. Seriously! That picture's making me hungry.

JacqueMehoff

the profit made by these pizzamakers must be astronomical.

I like the thick crust, it holds all that extra sauce and cheese.

Past Taliban

"They'll actually put extra shit on for ya!"

Sounds DELICIOUS. Can I get extra PEE on it too?

Splicer

Agree with #2. Stop telling New Yorkers how to enjoy our pizza. If I can't fold it, I'm not eating it.

Past Taliban

Tell that to your gay BF.

ohgoodgolly

Dude, Jim Lahey needs to get over himself. First of all, pizza is serious business in NYC and he's got to understand that his tiny, fancy versions might not go over well with pizza traditionalists.

Second, I ate at Co. soon after it opened. My friends and I got salads and two pies to share. One pie came out a full 30 minutes before the other. It was burned. The second came out cold and piled with heavy spinach that made it impossible to eat without a knife and fork. The diners next to us (thanks, communal tables) had gotten the wrong meal entirely and were left waiting for their food for an hour and their check for over half an hour. Everyone seemed anxious and angry and the food was not worth it. For a guy who acts like such a dick, his food should at least back it up.

shovel

Are you talking about traditional New York or Italian style pizza? There's nothing wrong if you have a preference for a slice you can fold, but the pizza I've consumed in Italy is definitely smaller, thin-crusted, and not piled with toppings.