Some said it would never happen: Five years after first announcing they would expand to Dumbo, the owners of L&B Spumoni Gardens have finally opened their second location, conspicuously, across the street from those other famous Brooklyn pizzerias. L&B is one of the most famous names in New York pizza, which is, of course, the most famous name in pizza. It’s home to a sauce recipe that was, maybe, once stolen, which led to a mob confab in a Staten Island Panera. Going there is a summertime rite of passage in southern Brooklyn. But this is their first expansion after 85 years of business, and I needed to know: How does the pizza at the new shop compare? To find out, I hit both spots in the same day.
Yesterday morning, I took the subway down to Gravesend. Despite the dreary weather and midweek timing, there was a small and happy crowd: A worker in his DSNY clothes, another in a Verrazzano Bridge sweatshirt, a trio of guys loading half a dozen pizzas and more food into an MTA van, someone taking a business call and talking about CEOs. Of course, no one was eating the regular slice, which is a trap, roughly on par with what you’d find at any East Village counter at 1 a.m. after too many beers.
Before going on, I’ll confess that I have recently described L&B’s famous Sicilian slices as “bricks,” but it was a lot better than I remember. Still, it’s dense and bready, with that gummy layer toward the top where the cheese melts into the bread that has never worked for me. (It still doesn’t.) The crust of my corner slice was cooked well and a bit blackened, and very crunchy. There’s nothing bad to say about the sweet tomato sauce, which spills over the edge, and almost caramelizes with the sprinkling of Parm on top. You understand how this sauce could inspire stories of mafia infighting.
Satisfied with the comprehensiveness of the research I’d conducted in Gravesend, I hit the road again and made the hour-long subway trip to Dumbo. Trudging through the rain, I arrived at Old Fulton Street and found a much tonier space than in Gravesend, where a security company’s office is across the street. There’s no outdoor seating at the new restaurant, and it’s a bit more refined inside, with small black-and-white photos on the walls, a long counter and row of pizza ovens upfront, with white marble tables. (The menu is more limited for now as the shop is in soft-open mode, but it includes essentials like chicken-Parm sandwiches and mozzarella sticks.)
But what about the pizza? To my tastes, there was hardly any difference between the two shops. Down in Gravesend, the slices were baked a little harder, with a crunchier crust. Both had that gummy layer; both had that great sauce. Both feel like relics of an earlier era in New York pizza, before talk of dough fermentation became big. (The technique would help to lighten slices like these.) Yet there’s an obvious appeal to the Dumbo outpost if you don’t live near Gravesend. Still, there’s something to be said for a schlep.
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