“Una Pizza Napoletana was voted number one in the world twice, number one in America twice. Our style of pizza is rooted in Neapolitan but it’s our own thing.” Today, Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Anthony Mangieri, owner of Una Pizza Napoletana in NYC. Mangieri is considered a pioneer of Neapolitan-style pizza in America and his dedication to the craft has landed Una the number one spot in the world.
Director: Gunsel Pehlivan
Director of Photography: Carlos Araujo
Editor: Morgan Dopp
Featuring: Anthony Mangieri
Director of Culinary Production: Kelly Janke
Senior Creative Producer: Mel Ibarra
Line Producer: Joe Buscemi
Associate Producer: Justine Ramirez
Production Manager: Janine Dispensa
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Camera Operator: Justin Newman
Assistant Camera: Lucas Young
Audio Engineer: Z Jadwick
Production Assistant: Ryan Coppola
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Filmed on Location at: Una Pizza Napoletana
Director, Creative Development : Maria Paz Mendez Hodes
Senior Director of Content, Production: Ali Inglese
Senior Director, Creative Development: Dan Siegel
Senior Director, Programming: Jon Wise
VP, Head of Video : June Kim
Director: Gunsel Pehlivan
Director of Photography: Carlos Araujo
Editor: Morgan Dopp
Featuring: Anthony Mangieri
Director of Culinary Production: Kelly Janke
Senior Creative Producer: Mel Ibarra
Line Producer: Joe Buscemi
Associate Producer: Justine Ramirez
Production Manager: Janine Dispensa
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Camera Operator: Justin Newman
Assistant Camera: Lucas Young
Audio Engineer: Z Jadwick
Production Assistant: Ryan Coppola
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Filmed on Location at: Una Pizza Napoletana
Director, Creative Development : Maria Paz Mendez Hodes
Senior Director of Content, Production: Ali Inglese
Senior Director, Creative Development: Dan Siegel
Senior Director, Programming: Jon Wise
VP, Head of Video : June Kim
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The Pizza Napoletana was voted number one in the world twice,
00:05number one in America twice.
00:08Our style of pizza is rooted in Neapolitan, but it's our own thing.
00:12I've made every single pizza dough since 1996.
00:16We've sold out every day since we've opened this location.
00:20Regardless of the accolades, every day I try to be better at what we're doing.
00:24You have all these elements that you're dealing with every day
00:27that are constantly changing and influx.
00:30The ethos of what drives the place is the idea of truly never compromising.
00:48Hi, I'm Anthony Mangieri, owner and pizza maker of Una Pizza Napoletana.
00:52We're here in the Lower East Side, New York City.
00:54Come on in, I've got to start making dough. We've got service tonight.
00:58So this is our dining room. We've been open at this location for six years.
01:02The reason we're open three days a week is because I'm 53 years old,
01:06and this is extremely physical, and I'm here for like 15 hours a day or more.
01:11So we come in every day around 8 or 9 in the morning.
01:14Every single thing we serve is prepped every day, so we've got a lot to do today.
01:18And if we don't get all this done, then we can't open at 5.
01:21How's the dish machine going?
01:24Okay, yeah, tell them it's like a super emergency.
01:26It needs to be fixed before we open tonight.
01:28The dish machine broke. That's normal restaurant.
01:30That's the stuff that you don't see on chef's table.
01:34Everything we do happens right back here.
01:37Here we have Henry and Desi. They're banging it out back here with prep.
01:40And then this is the dough room, and this is where I'm going to be making dough
01:43for the next couple hours.
01:45I think of this as fine dining, but at the same time, it's also pizza,
01:49so I don't want to wear like a chef coat and look like I'm trying to be something else.
01:53So this is what I do every day for the last 30 years.
02:02I make dough. This is, to me, the most important part of the business.
02:05It's what I go to bed thinking about, and I'm always trying to find a way to make it better.
02:09It's no joke. It starts here.
02:11I change the recipe every day.
02:13I don't use the exact same mixtures of flour every day, and I'm always micro-adjusting.
02:18Making dough is like such a living thing.
02:20Every environment's different.
02:22It's just every little thing changes what you're going to end up with.
02:26Every day I use anywhere between 4 to like 8 different kinds of Italian flour
02:31because they all do different things.
02:34I've experimented with every kind of flour I could find over the last 30 years,
02:39and I'm still experimenting.
02:41I didn't want to always be a pizza maker.
02:43I wanted to be a professional skateboarder and BMX racer.
02:47I spent the majority of my youth living with my grandmother,
02:50and then throughout my teens and into my early 20s,
02:53I was really playing a lot of music and trying to figure out
02:56if there was a way for me to be a jazz musician.
02:59Then I realized at one point that I kind of sucked,
03:02and I started leaning into making bread and pizza instead.
03:07I grew up in New Jersey, the Italy of America.
03:10I don't think of what we do as New Jersey pizza or New York pizza.
03:14It's our pizza, and it keeps evolving.
03:16I'm not trying to adhere to any strict idea or anything else.
03:19There's no rules for me.
03:23I'm weighing out the water for making dough,
03:25and we're using world-famous New York City tap water.
03:29The water is only going to really be a catalyst in your dough making
03:33if you're making a naturally leavened dough product.
03:35With what we're doing, it's pretty critical
03:37because there's water, flour, salt.
03:40That's the only thing in our dough.
03:41There's no commercial yeast, there's no other ingredients,
03:44there's no sugar, no malt, nothing.
03:46So the water's a big component of the flavor.
03:49This is my fancy machine.
03:52Telling me what temperature the water is.
03:55We're going to add our starter.
03:57This is what makes the dough raise.
03:59This is, in Italian, it's the madre.
04:01It's sourdough, naturally leavened.
04:03It's the way leavened products were made
04:05for thousands of years before commercial yeast.
04:08This is flour and water that we keep refreshing every day.
04:10You're letting a lot of the parts of the wheat
04:12that are hard to digest burn out in the fermentation,
04:15so by the time you cook it and eat it,
04:17it's much easier to digest.
04:19In the mixer is all the flour that I measured,
04:21and then I'm going to put some water in here.
04:24I don't weigh how much I put in.
04:26If the starter is looking really strong and healthy,
04:29I'm going to use a little less.
04:30Same with depending on the temperature.
04:32If it's cold out, I'll use a little more.
04:34It also depends on the time of the day that I'm making the dough.
04:36That's the precision.
04:37It's more just like kind of adjusting from what I'm seeing.
04:40This is Sicilian sea salt.
04:42This is made in a very old-fashioned, ancient way, though,
04:45where they take it from the sea,
04:47and they make the big piles in Tropony,
04:49and they let it sit in the sun,
04:51and that's how the salt comes out of the water.
04:53It's beautiful.
04:54I like to let the dough start to come together
04:57and develop some of the gluten before I add the salt,
05:00because the salt, it inhibits the growth of the dough,
05:03so I want to add it towards the end of the mixing cycle.
05:06I'm adding the salt now, and now some water,
05:10and you can see when I add the water,
05:12it kind of breaks the dough back down,
05:14and it's making it kind of come all apart again,
05:16and I'm going to mix it to bring it back together.
05:19Originally, this was, I believe,
05:21like kind of a French bread baking technique
05:23in a way to be able to get a lot more water into the dough.
05:26So the idea for me is, like,
05:28I want to try to produce a really highly hydrated dough.
05:31The water in the dough is kind of like
05:33where a lot of those bubbles will come from,
05:35and that structure that's super interesting,
05:37it also becomes a lot more difficult to handle.
05:40There's like a fine line.
05:41If you can push it right to the line,
05:43that's where the pizza can be really amazing.
05:47Okay.
05:54It is physical, this is an extremely physical job.
05:57It's like being, it's total manual labor.
06:00I'm going to do the whole thing all over again.
06:02So I make two batches for tonight.
06:05The reason I do that is because I'm one person,
06:07balling and weighing,
06:09and I don't want the dough to be sitting once I mix it
06:12and have it start developing gluten and everything
06:14before I can ball it.
06:16Now I'm going to weigh out all the dough,
06:18and I have to work pretty fast now, too,
06:20because I don't want the pizza to sit too long at this state.
06:22You want to hurry up and get it balled and in the tray.
06:25It starts to get where the gluten starts really getting activated,
06:28and it starts almost doing its first proofing,
06:30and I don't want it to really proof before I ball it.
06:36What I do is a quick fold to kind of just get them organized.
06:40The shaping and the way that I handle them comes out better
06:43if you do this little quick fold.
06:45It's also a really old-fashioned technique
06:47for when a baker works alone,
06:49and it's giving it a little bit of a push towards the next raise,
06:52and then I'm going to go back and ball them all,
06:54and then they'll go in the trays.
06:56You know, my technique for balling these doughs
06:58is always changing,
07:00and then I kind of just do this,
07:02and I develop the shape,
07:04and then I set it back down,
07:06and I just finish it for a second like that,
07:08so it's very loose.
07:10The shape on it is very loose.
07:12Today I think we're going to have like 135 pizzas.
07:15It depends on how much water I use
07:17and which flour I'm using and where I mix,
07:20because some days I make it weigh a little less,
07:22and I end up with more dough.
07:25So I'm done balling dough.
07:27I'm going to go light up the oven.
07:29We've got to get it ready.
07:31It's about noon, and we've got to be ready to go
07:33by 5 p.m. tonight, so let's do it.
07:39So we have a handmade oven from Italy.
07:41It's the same family who's been making this oven for me
07:44for almost 30 years.
07:46I'm getting the oven ready for lighting.
07:48I'm going to put the coals from last night into the center.
07:51I use a mixture of woods,
07:53just kind of experimenting and seeing which one we like best.
07:56Right now I'm using birch and oak.
07:59The flow of the flame kind of circulates around the oven,
08:03so the fire, the flame, and the smoke
08:05never go below about 5 inches.
08:08So there's a chamber of space where there's no smoke
08:11that ever touches the dough,
08:13so it doesn't really affect the flavor.
08:15It's more just for the burn quality.
08:17It's not like you're smoking the pizza.
08:19I've always used a wood-fired oven,
08:21because from the beginning when I was a kid,
08:23I was super into history,
08:25and I wanted to try to just recreate
08:27as close as I could to the way pizza and bread was made
08:30like 2,000 years ago.
08:32So it also adds like 50% of the difficulty
08:35every night when you're working.
08:37But when it works right, it's magical.
08:40I'm peeling some bark off of the wood
08:43to just help light it.
08:45It's basically like I'm on a camping trip every day.
08:48This is going to light pretty easily
08:50because the bricks in here are still hot from last night.
08:53And we start the oven like 3 or 4 hours before we open.
08:57One of the things that's like actually
08:59a really old baker's technique
09:01is that if you guys look inside the oven,
09:04the entire dome, all the bricks were white
09:06from burning it last night.
09:08Then as soon as you start it, all the bricks turn black.
09:10Everything is covered in soot.
09:12A basic old-school way of knowing like,
09:14oh, the oven's hot enough to cook in
09:16is when all the stones burn off all the soot again,
09:19and you can see the stone again.
09:21So that's going to be our basic way of knowing.
09:23So right now, we're just going to keep feeding it with wood.
09:26And we're going to do it in a gentle way.
09:28So we're going to go slow and let the heat
09:30actually penetrate the stones, especially the floor.
09:33Because once we open, all this wood
09:36is going to live in the left corner for the entire night.
09:39So whatever we can do right now to get the floor hot
09:42is going to have to sustain the floor for the entire evening
09:45when we make like 130 pizzas or 150 pizzas.
09:49And here's our mozzarella.
09:51We get it from the same family
09:53since the beginning of the business, basically.
09:56And buffalo mozzarella is a pretty wet cheese.
09:59If you're going to cook with it, you have to drain it.
10:02So we cut ours in half.
10:04We let it drain for three or four hours
10:06before we cut it into the size
10:08that we want to use on the pizza.
10:10This has been draining for just a few hours,
10:12and look at all this liquid that's underneath it.
10:14Imagine this releasing on the pizza
10:17when we're cooking them.
10:19You're going to end up with like a soggy pizza
10:21just covered in water.
10:23It's a little bit of a process, but the cheese is incredible,
10:25so it's worth the effort.
10:27So the oven's starting to get going now.
10:29Once it does, I can't put my arm in the oven,
10:31so I'm going to use this tool.
10:33This is a pizza peel.
10:35There's a metal one like this that we use
10:37for actually moving the pizzas around in the oven
10:39and taking them out.
10:41I could just grab it, do it, drop it back,
10:43get back to what I was doing.
10:45I came up with all these things
10:47that were just to make it function
10:49for a one-man operation,
10:51and I saw this in the store,
10:53and what it is is, you know, it's funny.
10:55It's a Christmas wreath hanger,
10:57and the same with like this whole cutout too.
10:59Originally, people would just have two people,
11:01so you'd stand like this,
11:03and somebody would slide it on,
11:05but since I was alone, I was like,
11:07I need to have this thing supported
11:09and have it be flush,
11:11so I started always cutting out the counter
11:13to match the thickness of this peel
11:15so I could just slide the dough right on,
11:17turn around, grab it, go in the oven,
11:19set it back, grab this,
11:21and move it around and set it on the plate.
11:23That's how it all came together like this,
11:25so that's the story of this little setup in here.
11:27The oven's going.
11:29We got to get in the kitchen,
11:31and we're going to make our sorbet dough
11:33and our ice cream that we make every day for service,
11:35so we got to keep it moving.
11:37♪
11:43So now we're going to spin our sorbet dough.
11:45Every day, we juice a fruit.
11:47Don't get any of my measurements on camera.
11:49I don't want anyone trying to make this.
11:51Tonight, what we're going to serve our guests
11:53is Asian pear
11:55that are locally grown.
11:57My grandfather was an ice cream maker,
11:59and that's what he did for a living,
12:01so I'm kind of like always been obsessed
12:03with ice cream,
12:05and I feel like it's a little bit of a nod to him,
12:07but I take a lot of pride in this,
12:09and I love when people order it.
12:11We just juiced our Asian pears, locally grown.
12:13These are from Pennsylvania,
12:15and then some lemon
12:17because it acts almost like a stabilizer.
12:19If I did straight Asian pear,
12:21it would texture like baby food.
12:25I think after you eat a pizza,
12:27it's nice to have something that isn't
12:29carb-based or wheat-based.
12:31It's nice to have something that's lighter
12:33that cuts it, and it's a great way to end your meal.
12:35I can't wait for you guys to try this.
12:37So that's it, and then it's going straight
12:39into the machine. It's an Italian machine.
12:41Carpagiani.
12:43So this is all refrigeration
12:45around it, so it's freezing it
12:47as it's spinning it, and then the design
12:49of the paddle and everything is perfect,
12:51and that's how it's able to spin it
12:53and put just enough air into it,
12:55and it makes an incredible texture.
12:57You guys can see, so that's what we just poured in,
12:59and it's still total liquid
13:01right now. So we're going to use that little
13:03air valve to open it and keep
13:05checking and see when we get to the right
13:07consistency. Now it's turning into
13:09what looks like an ice cream or a sorbetto.
13:11So now it's pretty much ready.
13:13Every fruit gives you a little bit different
13:15consistency, so we don't use any
13:17stabilizers.
13:19So here it is, making
13:21it every single day fresh. That
13:23really goes a long way in the texture of it
13:25and the taste and the experience for the
13:27guests. So now we're
13:29going to make the cremolata. So this
13:31is, again, so simple. It's almost
13:33like an in-between, texturally,
13:35of, like, American
13:37ice cream, gelato, and
13:39Italian ice. It's, like, a little bit lighter,
13:41a little bit more milky. There is
13:43no egg in it. I like simple flavors,
13:45and then I like to keep pushing
13:47on that and figure out how to make it better,
13:49cleaner, simpler, and still
13:51be, like, really amazing, and people love it.
13:53Same thing with as a
13:55sorbetto, directly in the machine.
13:57So it's almost
13:59ready. We're about to finish up our cremolata.
14:01We're going to get it out of the machine.
14:03This is the consistency that I'm
14:05looking for, and the texture is
14:07really good. So here I have
14:09some finely ground Sicilian almonds,
14:11and it just gives it a really cool texture,
14:13and then we serve it with, like, our
14:15house whipped cream and a tiny little
14:17slice of orange peel from Café
14:19Sicilia in Noto, which is, like,
14:21he makes the best candied orange peel
14:23on earth. It basically tastes like
14:25the best vanilla soft serve ever.
14:27That's it. Ice cream's done.
14:29Now we're just going to put this in the freezer.
14:31One of my team members is going to roast the peppers
14:33in the oven, and then our front of the house
14:35is going to show up pretty soon, and then they're going to
14:37start setting up the dining room, and then we're going to do
14:39pre-shift around 4.30.
14:41Alright, time for my burrito. See you later.
14:47Okay, it's 4.30.
14:49We're going to do pre-shift real quick before we open at
14:515.00. Come on.
14:53Hey. How are you guys doing?
14:55Good? Okay. Try to make
14:57your movements through the room as
14:59efficient as possible. If you're going to
15:01the back to get a fork, make sure on your way
15:03you're clearing a table, you're engaging
15:05with a guest, you're just maximizing
15:07those kind of movements. Every single
15:09thing in the restaurant is your responsibility
15:11from the front door to the back door, other than
15:13making pizza. The whole restaurant is yours
15:15to worry about, okay? And that's it. If you have
15:17any questions, just always ask me.
15:19Cool. Thank you, guys.
15:21We just finished our pre-shift.
15:23It's 5.00. We have a line outside.
15:25I'm going to go get changed, and we're going to start making some pizzas.
15:33So we're back here
15:35in the pizza station. Our system
15:37is designed as I'm opening the
15:39pies and building them, and Sean is
15:41putting the pizzas in the oven and taking them out.
15:43It's just the two of us back here tonight,
15:45and it's really all about, like, just efficiency
15:47and being able to move in this
15:49space together and have everything in its
15:51right place. Because as you can see,
15:53we have to move really quick, or the dough
15:55is going to stick to the counter, and then they're going to
15:57rip, they're going to get holes in them, he won't be able to
15:59get them in the oven, so we need to be
16:01really fast. We have
16:03our spulvero, which is this special
16:05flour that's like a semolina, but
16:07it's milled specifically for working
16:09on the counter, and that's what we use to help
16:11slide this super wet dough in and out of the oven.
16:13The dough is extremely
16:15delicate. You can't slap it around.
16:17I'm never going to touch the edges,
16:19and if you push on it, you're going to deflate the air
16:21out of it, and it might not come back in the oven.
16:23I always want to create
16:25as much air in the dough as possible
16:27and have it really come out looking wild
16:29like a piece of nature.
16:31So I have all my ingredients
16:33lined up in bowls in the order
16:35of kind of the way that I top the pizzas,
16:37and I just work down
16:39through the line. So the toppings are
16:41really basic and really focused
16:43on the highest quality ingredients,
16:45super simple. These tomatoes
16:47are like three times the price of what
16:49people think good tomatoes are.
16:51They're hand-harvested. They're sweet,
16:53but they're also acidic. They taste
16:55a little bit like a green fruit.
16:57This is the spoon that we've made
16:59every single pizza with in 30 years.
17:01Sauce is nice today.
17:03Yeah, cheese is really nice.
17:05Everything's nice.
17:07Today, I think we're going to have like
17:09135 pizzas.
17:11We've never not sold out, and it's been six
17:13years. So we opened up
17:15about a half an hour ago, and we've almost already
17:17made 20 pizzas.
17:19To open it and top it,
17:21just one is probably
17:23like a minute. And to bake
17:25it, it's like max two minutes.
17:27We don't have a kitchen printer back
17:29here, and I did that purposely
17:31because I want the servers
17:33to come back and engage with us
17:35because the idea is we want to know what's going on.
17:37We want them to know what's going on, and so there's
17:39a lot of communication.
17:41We only cook three pizzas
17:43at a time maximum ever,
17:45and then once we start, and we start
17:47landing them, that becomes the spots for
17:49the night, and that's where you always land them.
17:51But then once they set, we pick
17:53them up and move them a little bit around
17:55to kind of get the bottom even.
17:57The flakes that we throw in that we keep under
17:59the oven is a really ancient
18:01technique from Naples, and what it does
18:03is it creates a boost in the temperature
18:05in the oven, but a very slight boost.
18:07It's kind of like a little bit of like
18:09a thermostat adjustment for the oven.
18:11The goal being that we cook the pizza
18:13as fast as possible
18:15with it still being fully cooked.
18:17So when Sean's sliding the pizza in,
18:19and you're going to set it down like that,
18:21and then you quickly pull it out from under it,
18:23and the idea is to get it out so that
18:25the pizza goes on in a completely
18:27perfect circle. It takes a lot of
18:29practice. The nuances
18:31of when it comes out great is connected
18:33to these movements.
18:35So, I think
18:37that's kind of it for tonight. I have
18:39another six hours of making pizza.
18:41I hope you guys enjoyed spending the day
18:43with me and seeing a little bit of what it's like
18:45to be a pizza maker here
18:47at Una Pizza Napolitana, and come and
18:49see me sooner, right? I'm always here.
18:58Not bad for an old guy.