Today I’d like to pay homage to good pizza. There is a lot of history behind pizza which I won’t bore you with but there is a type of pizza that is somewhat a dying breed. It is the brick oven or coal oven pizza, not to be confused with wood oven pizza. The lore of New Yorkers tells of a great pizza made in a small corner pizza shop in downtown Manhattan named Lombardi’s.
Lombardi’s is a nice story too. Located in Little Italy at 32nd and Spring Streets. I first visited it back in 2005 when my son and I dropped in on the recommendation of my ex-wife. She had eaten their prior and who knows how she came about the place. But in the end, she told me how great it was and I wanted to know if she was right. I mean, I had to know if a Ukrainian woman really knew pizza! LOL Turns out she did. What she didn’t know to tell me was that I was going to what is rumored to be the oldest Pizza parlor in New York, and more specifically that I would be dining on “coal oven” pizza.
Although Gennaro Lombardi wasn’t the actual maker (pizziolas) of the pizza at first (an employee at his grocery was selling it and it became popular) he did open Lombardi’s Pizza in 1905. His employee later opened his own pizzeria on Coney Island. Thus Anthoney Tontonno stepped out from under the shadow of Gennaro Lombardi to open his own Totonno’s. While the Totonno’s location is still the original location opened in 1924, the Lombardi’s of today is not at its original location (not that either matters). The original Lombardi’s was a block off of 32nd and Spring Street. Totonno’s now has multiple ... more »
