{"id":2910,"date":"2013-09-06T10:06:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T14:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=2910"},"modified":"2013-09-06T10:24:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T14:24:53","slug":"keste-and-more-nyc-eats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/06\/keste-and-more-nyc-eats\/","title":{"rendered":"Keste and more NYC eats."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m <a href=http:\/\/espn.go.com\/sportsnation\/chat\/_\/id\/48829>chatting today<\/a> at 1 pm ET.<\/p>\n<p>In the last three weeks, I&#8217;ve hit three more places from <i>Food and Wine<\/i>&#8216;s list of the 48 best pizzerias in the country (I don&#8217;t know why they chose 48, and it&#8217;s 47 now anyway with one closed), and I&#8217;ve at least found one rival to Pizzeria Bianco for the best pizzeria in the country, as well as hitting the first of the four spots from the list located in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"kestepizzeria.com\" title=\"Keste\">Keste<\/a>, located on Bleecker in Greenwich Village, is run by an Italian pizzaiolo who was born and raised outside of Naples and learned the craft of pizza-making in that city, the capital of pizza in Italy. The style is true Neapolitan, with a thin crust and a soft center so that the crust struggles to support the toppings, and Keste does it correctly, something few places that boast of serving \u201cauthentic\u201d Neapolitan pizzas manage to do. The menu is quite large, with a huge selection of pizzas with tomato sauce, a small selection of \u201cwhite\u201d pizzas, and a number of gluten-free options. My friend Toby and I ordered two pizzas and split them \u2013 the margherita with buffalo mozzarella and the daily special with burrata, prosciutto, and truffle oil.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/instagram.com\/p\/dsrAthmEBv\/embed\/\" width=\"408\" height=\"473\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The crusts on both were spectacular, exactly as promised, with a little char on the exterior, good tooth on the exterior crust, and just enough underneath to keep the toppings off the plate and give some texture contrast. The special was among the best pizzas I&#8217;ve ever had thanks to the creaminess and bright flavor of the burrata, and the salty-but-not-too-salty prosciutto, as well as the hint of truffle flavor that didn&#8217;t overwhelm any of the other ingredients. The margherita was notable more for the brightness of the tomatoes than anything else, with good balance between that and the mozzarella di bufala. The flavors on both pizzas were loud, in a good way, and everything was balanced and fresh and just incredible. <\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, I managed to sneak into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.co-pane.com\/\" title=\"Co.\">Co.<\/a>, the pizzeria founded by Jim Lahey of no-knead bread fame, for dinner with my family on a trip to Boston. The crust was outstanding, as you&#8217;d expect, but the rest of the experience fell very short for us. For one thing, the pizzas were small and sparsely topped, skimping especially on cheese, which is kind of the essential ingredient when pizza is the entree because it&#8217;s the only real protein source on any pizza without meat. For another, I am not sure when I have ever been in a colder restaurant than Co. was on that night \u2013 it could not have been over 65 degrees in there \u2013 and it was incredibly loud.  I was more impressed with the bread and olive oil starter, which does a better job of showing off Lahey&#8217;s technique, than I was with either of the pizzas we ordered. I&#8217;ll tolerate atmosphere issues if the food is amazing, but the crust was just good, not enough to make me want to deal with the conditions there.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"www.frannysbrooklyn.com\" title=\"Franny's\">Franny&#8217;s<\/a> in Brooklyn was an outright disappointment, however \u2013 so sparsely topped that it was more like having bread for lunch than pizza, with almost nothing beyond a thin layer of tomato sauce on top. The crust was gorgeous, with some blistering on the exterior, great tooth to the exterior, and a good contrast between the edge and the interior. But man, you need to put something on top of the pizza to get me to fight my way down Flatbush to come eat at your place.<\/p>\n<p>Moving on from pizza \u2026 After Keste, Toby dragged me kicking and screaming to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grom.it\/eng\/index.php\" title=\"Grom\">Grom<\/a>, a gelateria (one of two Groms in the city, plus a summer location in Central Park) that imports the product from Italy. Their commitment to product quality is insane, with organic eggs, spring water for their sorbets, and fruit from their own farm in Costigliole d&#8217;Asti. And the gelato is amazing \u2013 the dark chocolate \u201csorbet,\u201d made with egg yolks and Colombian chocolate but no dairy, is as intense as eating a bar of very dark chocolate but with the creamy texture of actual gelato; the caff\u00e8 flavor uses Guatemalan coffee beans to create a dark coffee flavor that doesn&#8217;t hide the coffee behind sugar and cream. It&#8217;s a hell of an experience even when you&#8217;re already overstuffed with pizza. (I also love that their URL is grom.it; too bad walla.ce isn&#8217;t available.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=http:\/\/www.cultureespresso.com\/>Culture Espresso<\/a> on 38th Street doesn&#8217;t roast its own coffee, but buys from some of the best roasters in the country &#8211; currently using coffees from <a href=http:\/\/www.heartroasters.com\/>Heart roasters<\/a> in Portland, Oregon, a micro-roaster that specializes in very light roasts of single-estate coffees. Culture is currently using a blend of two coffees, an Ethiopian and a Central American (I think the barista said Colombian), which produced a medium-bodied shot that still had the bright strawberry notes of the east African half of the blend. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m chatting today at 1 pm ET. In the last three weeks, I&#8217;ve hit three more places from Food and Wine&#8216;s list of the 48 best pizzerias in the country (I don&#8217;t know why they chose 48, and it&#8217;s 47 now anyway with one closed), and I&#8217;ve at least found one rival to Pizzeria Bianco [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[752,728,145,165,172,201,568,240],"class_list":["post-2910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brooklyn","tag-food-and-wine-pizza-crawl","tag-gelato","tag-ice-cream","tag-italian-cuisine","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-pizza","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2910"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2916,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2910\/revisions\/2916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}