Forcella, Williamsburg's Pizza Force, To Open New Bowery Location
By Yvo Sin.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Deep fried pizza?
No, it's not the latest treat to come from a state fair, but rather a long-standing tradition from Napoli, where home ovens were not common and the only way to make pizza at home was to fry it.
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Forcella, the Williamsburg pizza staple, is set to open a new Manhattan location Thursday as Giulio Adriani, a Master Neapolitan Pizzaiolo, brings this tradition to the Bowery.
The new location will offer the fried pizza specialty, called the Montanara, and other decadent pizza dishes like pizza fritte.
The Montanara is flash-fried, creating a light, airy crust, then sauced, dolloped with house-made mozzarella, and finished in the wood-fired oven.
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"Pizza fritte has been more of a success than I expected," Adriani said. "At first I was just doing it for fun. Of course the Montanara, which is basically a flash-fried fried Margherita will always be on the menu."
The pizza fritte was more of an experiment at first, I didn't make it up... it's a traditional pizza in Naples, but I experimented with it and developed my own recipe. People love the the fact the the crust is both light and chewy, it has a really unique texture and taste."
Even the oven at Forcella is from Napoli. It reaches temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees, making pizzas in the blink of an eye.
"For me it's all about the pizza," Adriani said. "You don't have to know a lot about what makes a Neapolitan pizza Neapolitan, I just love my restaurants being packed with people who appreciate what I'm doing and who are hungry. I'm that typical Italian, I want everyone to eat and to enjoy."
For those who believe in pizza for every meal, at Forcella, you can have it for every course too - try the Pizza alla Nutella, which is stuffed with nutella and almonds for a decadent ending.
"Being able to bring Forcella to Manhattan is very exciting, there's some serious pizza here and a crowd that really gets it," Adriani said.
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Yvo Sin is the founder and head writer of The Feisty Foodie.