As you may have heard around the pizzasphere today... Michael White, who gives foodies boners with his fare at places like Marea and Ai Fiori, is opening a pizzeria called Nicoletta on Second Avenue at 10th ... the former Cafe Centosette, which closed in April. (Grub Street heard the rumors going back to September.)
According to Diner's Journal:
[T]he pizzas at Nicoletta ... will be baked in a gas-fired brick oven but would be "different, crisper" thanks to both his technique and a flour that is lower in protein.
There will be six or eight pizzas, with ingredients like sausage made on the premises. He plans to use a whole-milk mozzarella made to his specifications in Wisconsin. The restaurant, with about 60 seats plus 10 on the sidewalk, will have a takeout window, but will not sell slices.
As Jeremiah put it today: "Here comes yet another fucking upscale pizzeria for the East Village, where there have always been plenty of good, cheap pizza places."
Nicoletta is on the CB3/SLA docket Monday night.
"who gives foodies boners with his fare at places like Marea and Ai Fiori"
ReplyDeleteNice.
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ReplyDelete@BB
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Focus group research found that I needed to start using "boner" and "chubby" more often.
another fancy-pizza place. fantastic.
ReplyDeleteHey, I like fucking upscale pizzerias. I like downscale ones, too. And I like cheese from Wisconsin and people from Wisconsin, and I hate -- HATE -- the ENDLESS boring moaning about how rich people from Wisconsin are getting peanut butter in our chocolate and shit and making the East Village all boring and not at all punk rock and wasn't it better when the neighborhood was EDGY and proto-hipster upper middle class white people of the sort who now write blogs could impress their old friends back home in Wisconsin by regaling them with tales of how dangerous their edgy post-apocalyptic hood was. Can the depressive Statler and Waldorf routine. Y'all don't even make credible curmudgeons
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Who needs another fucking pretentious pizza place when Pete's-A-Place is still MIA and Five Roses is dead?
ReplyDeleteLet's play a game. Let's play "I remember when it was a ______".
ReplyDeleteI'll start, since I'm a relative newcomer, having only come to the 'hood in 1987, moving into a studio apt. on that block of 10th street (waves to Blue Glass).
IRWIWA bodega. That had no prices on anything. And I negotiated the price for a pint of half-and-half (yeah, so booo-jeee) at the counter. And that crazy guy Gus would sell plants on the sidewalk along 10th Street.
Next.
@Anonymous: 6:01PM
ReplyDelete"Hey, I like fucking upscale pizzerias."
Could you please state your opinion without telling us about your sex life? #TMI
Sounds good....We can have both upscale and downscale pizza places. Can't we all just get along?
ReplyDelete- Versus
and a hi back to VH McKenzie -
ReplyDeletei don't remember all the places that were on the corner of 10th and 2nd, however, i do remember a large discount drug store that also sold small appliances but not prescriptions.
centosette started out on 13th street and 3rd avenue where it was replaced by kiehls. kiehls started out in that corner space before it expanded and moved up 3rd avenue.
the grubby little pizza shop on 2nd avenue between 10th and 11th streets served an inexpensive tasty slice and they were open late.
the greatest change to second avenue was the closing of sticky fingers.
Good one Marty. I also miss Tony of Pete’s-A-Place and the Stuyvesant Grocery as well on 14th and Ave A. Does anyone know what the deal is now? Is it your typical NYC scumbag landlord story?
ReplyDeleteR.I.P. Five Roses!!!!
ReplyDeleteOrchidia.
ReplyDeletethanks Anonymous 10:47am
ReplyDeletei could not remember the name Orchidia
Orchidia was on the NW corner of 9th. It became a Starbucks and was a major turning point in the gentrification of LES. They had some of the best pizza I've ever eaten.
ReplyDeleteThe Centosette space was a laundromat in the early 80's.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 5:22 - you left out over twenty years of history, the Orchidia space did not "become" Starbucks. After the outpouring of anger over the closing of Orchidia the Frusen Glädjé ice cream shop that was supposed to open there never materialized. The space remained empty for a couple of years until Steve's Ice Cream opened mid-eighties. That lasted for about two years. The space was empty again. The restaurant In Padella opened at some point and closed around 2005. Empty again until Starbucks moved across the street from the SW corner of 2nd Av. and 9th.
we need more slice joints, not this crap
ReplyDeletePicking this up after nearly ten years... As I recall, the Orchidia operated almost until Steve's Ice Cream opened. I don't remember a long vacancy. (Maybe I'm wrong.) And when the Steve's was getting ready, there were protesters outside, handing out flyers, asking us to boycott the place because we didn't want chain ice cream shops mucking up our streets.
ReplyDeleteThis would be 1984 or '85, because I was living two blocks up the avenue then. A foreigner, vaguely European, blond and flabby and I believe female in her short-shorts, was mystified by the protest. She imagined there was a fellow named Steve, and he was opening an ice cream shop, and us locals didn't like him for some reason. Anyway, that Steve's did not last long. Blessed karma.