Friday, March 25, 2022

Naples Best PIZZA is in Salerno

 






GERARDO

Manning his PIZZA Oven

L'ARCHETTO PIZZERIA / TRATTORIA

SALERNO

ITALY








L'ARCHETTO PIZZERIA

SALERNO VECCHIO






WATCH GERARDO Make PIZZA

PART 1






PART 2






PIZZAIOLO GERARDO

Part 3


He makes the Best Pizza in all of SALERNO, and Better Pizza than most famous Pizzerias in NAPOLI. I like his Pizza far better than the Pizza I had at Di MATTEO in Naples which I felt was quite soggy in the center as much in the Pizza in Naples is. The pizza in Salerno is made thicher and crunchier, and to me, it's better. I absolutely love thee way Gerardo makes his Pizza at L'Archetto. It's delish.





PIZZA DIVAOLA by GERARDO


"Yumm" !!!







POSITANO

The AMALFI COAST

GUIDE BOOK / COOKBOOK


REGIONAL RECIPES of NAPLES

ISCHIA POSITANO The AMALFI COAST

ITALY

by #DanielBellinoZwicke








Another Shot of GERARDO

L'ARCHETTO


SALERNO









WHAT is SALERNO PIZZA




.

.










Thursday, March 24, 2022

Carbone Italian New York Red Sauce Traditions

 



"CARBONE"

GREENWICH VILLAGE

NEW YORK


OLD-SCHOOL ITALIAN NEW YORK

"RED SAUCE JOINTS"




TEE SHIRT


"CARBONE"







SUNDAY SAUCE

OLD SCHOOL NEW YORK ITALIAN

FAVORITE FOODS

MACCHERONI PASTA - LASAGNA

MANICOTTI - SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS

CHICKEN PARM & MORE








The SOPRANOS

SATRIALE'S PORK STORE
















Friday, March 18, 2022

Dominico DeMarco has Passed Away - RIP Dom

 



The Great DOMINIC DeMARCO

"We Lost a Great One"

REST in PEACE DOM



Domenico DeMarco, who founded Di Fara Pizza in 1965, 

has died. He was a link between the cooking of Southern 

Italy and the city’s corner-slice culture.

Over the years he had organized his mise en place so compactly, eliminated extraneous movements so ruthlessly, that it could seem, to the untrained eye, that he simply bowed over a circle of raw dough and waited while it assembled itself into a pizza.

Mr. DeMarco has died at age 85, his daughter Margie DeMarco Mieles announced Thursday in a Facebook post. Originally from the Italian province of Caserta, he began making pies at Di Fara Pizza in Midwood, Brooklyn, in 1965.

He worked efficiently. That’s not the same as saying he worked quickly. Even in the years before Mr. DeMarco became something of a national folk hero and the lines on weekends would stretch on to the sidewalk outside his shop on Avenue J, getting hot food out of his kitchen took a while.


This was true no matter what you ordered. Eventually the demand for pizza pushed virtually everything else off the menu, but at that time you could still get an astonishing meatball sub, or spaghetti with fresh clams, or baked manicotti. That first time, I had meant to try a representative sample of the menu. Then I saw a handwritten sign — on a paper plate taped to the wall, if I remember correctly — that said “baby artichoke pizza,” and suddenly all I wanted was baby artichoke pizza. A whole one.


That really took a while. Mr. DeMarco sautéed what struck me as enough artichokes for four large pies and then spread them over the one that was going to be mine, all mine. Waiting for it to come out of the gas oven was one of the most thrilling moments of my eating life, and it was no less thrilling as the moment stretched to 30 minutes and kept stretching toward a full hour.

That day, I began to see Mr. DeMarco as a living link between the cooking of Southern Italy, where he was born in 1936, and New York City’s corner-slice culture.

Pizza snobs 20 years ago thought it was self-evident that the only worthwhile pizza was the kind made by Neapolitan-style brick-oven pizzerias like Totonno’s and Lombardi’s, which could trace their culinary lineage straight back to Naples. It was less clear that the greasily reliable New York slice, baked at lower heat in gas ovens and consumed on the sidewalk by guys like Tony Manero, belonged to any culinary tradition at all.

Today the gas-oven slice is an object of serious study and appreciation. Shops like Scarr’sUpside and Mama’s Too have re-examined the style and offered subtle, respectful improvements. And it all started at Di Fara.

You couldn’t miss the integrity of Mr. DeMarco’s cooking, even though he did it standing still on a patch of kitchen floor no bigger than a bathmat. There was his sauce, both thicker and thinner than other slice shops’; it would be mostly absorbed into the dough, but would leave behind a few meaty red shreds of pulp.

There were the cheeses, plural, which he would grate directly over the tomatoes in some ideal ratio that only he knew. There was the live basil he snipped to order over the finished pies or slices. I never believed it all came from the single, scrawny potted plant growing in the window, but there are people who will swear they once saw Dom himself clip off a branch. Before a second location was opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it was said that no one else was allowed to make a pizza at Di Fara.

Watching him make a pie forced you to change your view of slice-joint pizzerias in general. A lot of them aren’t very good, it’s true. But the gas ovens aren’t to blame. If Mr. DeMarco could use a gas oven to bake pizza that made you see the sun glinting off the Bay of Naples, then so could other cooks. They probably wouldn’t equal Mr. DeMarco’s stolid fastidiousness, but they could try.

The last time I went to Di Fara was just before the pandemic. It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and there was no line, like in the old days. There seemed to be half a dozen people working a kind of assembly line behind the counter, and I feared for a moment that Mr. DeMarco had been replaced by a team of cooks.


But every one of them was involved in taking orders, handling cash and making sure each slice ended up in the right hands. Hidden behind this assembly line was Mr. DeMarco, standing on his little square of floor, bowing over the dough, willing the pizzas into existence.







DOM DeMARCO





Saturday, March 12, 2022

Wine Tasting New York Independence

 



BERTANI AMARONE




Me & THe CACALIERE

Cacvaliere Luigi Cappellini

Owner of CASTELLO VERRAZZANO

With Author Daniel Bellino Zwicke




CHIANTI VERRAZZANO

"SASELLO" Gran Selezione

2015

"Awesome Chianti"

From My Pal LUIGI CAPPELLINO






BRUNELLO Di MONTALCINO

COL D'ORCIA

1997


AN outstanding Brunello from the famed 1997 Vintage so many years ago. This Brunello
has stood the test of time, and at 25 years of age is drinking beautiful. It's full of life with very nice red fruit flavors, such as Bing Cherries and Redcurrants, with slight hints of Cocoa and thyme. The wine still has some great flesh, with a good long finish. Quite simple it's a gorgeous wine, and one we were so lucky to taste.

The Count Francesco Maruni Cinzano always brings one great  old vintage Col D'Orcia Brunello from the estates wine library, and we were quite lucky to taste the 1997 vintage this turn around.
Francesco was not there himself, but he was represented by his son Santiago Maruni at this event.





















MASTROBERADINO "TAURASI"

One of SOUTHERN ITALY'S Greatest Wines

2015 RADICI TAURASI Riserva

And 2017 RADICI

Some Good Juice





ITALY'S GREATEST SPARKLING WINE 

FERRARI of TRENTINO

EQUAL to ANy CHAMPAGNE



SOME GREAT BAROLO as WELL



BRUNO GIACOSA

BAROLO "FALLETTO"

2011




A Nice Lineup of BAROLOS

From The Famed Estate of FONTANAFREDDA









CHAMPAGNE - BOIZET

These wine were the First Thing I Drank

I came throught the door and saw this table, so I thought I'd start there.






A TASTY CHAMPAGNE

CHAMPAGNE BOIZE:

"ULTIME"

Extra - Brut

From EPERNAY FRANCE



Produced only in years in which the grapes reach the very highest levels of maturity, this undosed brut Champagne is skilfully blended to reveal the full richness and character of the three grape varieties. No dosage is used to gvie the wine greater roundness at the end of the crafting process; all attention is focused on obtaining a very pure and subtle harmony. Ultime Zéro Dosage remains in the cellar for longer than average, allowing the wine to mature slowly and perfectly.

















Thursday, March 3, 2022

Dinner at Bar Pitti NYC

 




BAR PITTI

Joe Macari, Eddie Macari, Dakota, Tommy Macari

Chris, Terik, Michele, Daniel Bellino Zwicke



Another dinner at Bar Pitti. There have been many over the years, both lunch and dinner, it's always a good time at Bar Pitti, a restaurant that makes some of the best Italian food in New York.

Cousin Joe gave me a call on Sunday saying he wanted to have a dinner at Bar Pitti this week. A great idea, as always. So Wednesday roll around and Joe calls me, and tell me they are on their way (Joe and Tommy).
A couple hours later, they call and tell me to meet them at Houston and Macdougal. It's Ash Wednesday and I was inside Saint Anthony's Church on Sullivan Street, so I was two minutes away. So I go over to Houston and Macdougal and I see Joe inside a Black Landrover. Joe says, "Tommy's inside (Song Napule Pizza), getting a Pizza." Cool. We wait in the SUV. Tommy caomes back with a nice Pizza Margherita. We're starting the day off right.







Pizza Margherita

Song Napule Pizzeria



I've been going to Sogno Toscano for the past 3 months and posting pictures on Instagram, so Tommy and Eddie have been wanting to go there, so before our dinner at Bar Pitti, we're head over there to drink a little wine and have some Salumi. It's myself, Tommy and Joe, and Terik and Tommy's friend Dakota meet up with us a bit later. We get a nice bottle of Sardinian Vermentino. 
Tommy orders a plate of Salumi and Cheese. Joe's looking at all the food products (Tarrali, Olive Oil, Pasta and assorted Italian Food Products) on the shelves, and says, "I gotta get a bag of some of this stuff." We drink the wine. It's really good. Everyone loves the place, the vibe, the workers, the Salumi, Formaggio, and everything about the place. It's really a nice little Italian Wine Bar / Salumeria, and they are doing well. Bravo.





Sogno Toscano

Perry Street, NY NY





A Glass of CHIANTI

SOGNO TOSCANO

GREENWICH VILLAGE



We had a great time at Sogno Toscano. We finsih up and head over to Bar Pitti.






Inside BAR PITTI



We get to Bar Pitti, and are warmly welcomed by Roberto, Enzo, and the guys.
Giovanni comes over and gives us the warmest welcome imaginiable. He hasn't seen Joe, Tommy, and Eddie in a while, and we're all hugs, and happy to see one another. We chat a few minutes and Giovanni puts down two bottles of Solaia, and says, "This is for you guys," My cousin Joe, says "No, you can't do this," but Giovanni won't take no for an answer, and says, "No baby, this is on me. It's from my own personal collection." I tell you, two bottles of Solaia 2017 is quite a nice gift. Giovanni says, "You guys never let us pay for the Pizza. This is on me." And so we drink the Solaia, and it's damn good. I Love it. Waht's not to love. If you know Soalai, you know what I'm talking about.

Michele comes in, and a few minutes later, Cousin Eddie arrives. We drink the wine, and are having quite a nice time, chit-chatting, and sipping on Solaia. We take quite a little while before we order some food, but when we do, it's serious.





"A Gift From GIOVANNI"

2 Bottles SOLAIA 2017

Excellent Wine






We finally get around to ordering, and we get Eggpkant Parmigiano, Meatballs,
Sauteed Spinach, and Shrimp. It's all good, especially the Melanzane Parmigiano, which is the best in town. I really love the way they make the Eggpalnt here. It is spot on and as good as can be.

We then had a pasta course of Spagehtti Vongole (Clam Sauce), Tortelloni that were quite tasty, and an awesome plate of Paparadelle with Duck Ragu. "Outstanding."





FONTALLORO

And PAPARADELLE w/ DUCK RAGU



We order our main courses. I get the Bolito di Manza. It's boiled beef, and for those of you who do not know, it taste much better than it sounds. It's Beef Short Ribs and it's tasty and succulent. Joe got the Oxtails (Coda di Vaccinara), and iI was a lucky recipient of one of his Oxtails. Along with the Calves Liver, these two dishes (Bolito & Oxtails) are the dishes I get most, whenever I eat at Bar Pitti, a place I started going to with my ex-girlfriend Dante when the place first opened. I was one of their first customers. My girlfriend and I discovered it, ans started eating there every week. We told my friends John O', Michael, and Jorge about it, and we all started having lunch there (or Lanza's) every Saturday for lunch, befroe we all went into work at Les Halles's at night. Good times.

Well, back to our dinner last night. Everything was great. We all got to chat a lot and Michele was telling some great stories, including when her and Giovanni got married in Greve, at Vicchomaggio, an Italian Wine Estate that makes Chianti in the town of Greve.

We got some Panacotta for dessert, and Robero brought us all some Passito di Pantelleria Italian dessert wine on the house.

Yes, it was quite a nice night, and we were all happy to get together.

Basta and Ciao for now.



...... Daniele





Thursday, March 3, 2022

Daniel Bellino Zwicke









POSITANO The AMALFI  COAST

TRAVEL GUDIE / COOKBOOK









The SOPRANOS

SATRIALE'S ITALIAN PORK STORE