Giancarlo Villa, owner of the spanking new La Flor on Classon near the Brooklyn Museum, has spent a lot of years working in a lot of different pizza places around the city. When Villa was 18 he helped open Pronto Pizza in the Bronx, and then went on to pound the dough in spots you’ve heard of (Roberta’s, Upside) and spots you probably haven’t (Stan’s, Baker’s).
But while he’s grateful for everything he learned about pizza in all those places — and, equally important, about running a pizza business in this city —Villa’s La Flor Pizzeria is all his own.
Photo by Scott Lynch
“I grew up in New York eating pizza,” he tells Brooklyn Magazine. “So to open my own place, and be a part of the fabric of this city, and its culture, and the food people are eating … this is like a dream come true.”
La Flor is a classic NYC slice shop. “Obviously pizza comes from Italy,” he says. “But I would call what I’m doing here New York cuisine.” The crust is thin and crisp — “no oil, no flop,” is how he puts it — and the toppings are laid on with an attentive hand. And the oven is a beauty, a rare old Frank Mastro original, built down on the Bowery way back in the day.
The straight-up cheese slice at la Flor is excellent, one of the best in the borough right now. Villa doesn’t shred his mozzarella like they do at a lot of places, opting instead to plop on small blobs of the stuff and letting them melt and spread across the saucy, lightly charred landscape. It creates a very satisfying balance.
No flop detected (Photo by Scott Lynch)
There are other expected slice options here as well, including a pepperoni with a bit of basil, and a good-looking one with mushroom and onions upon which Villa heaps fresh fungi that he’s blasted for a minute in the Mastro. This latter slice is vegetarian, and there’s also a no-cheese vegan one, which Villa calls the “brushetta” and goes heavy on the tomatoes.
My two favorite slices at La Flor are less conventional, and maybe even a little controversial, here in Brooklyn. The “spicy Hawaiian” is loaded with fresh-cut (not canned) pineapple, thinly sliced capicola, and jalapeno. Some say fruit doesn’t belong on pizza. I say they are wrong.
Also sacrilege in certain circles but undeniably delicious to the rest of us: the housemade ranch dressing Villa drizzles on his spicy pepperoni slice. The fire of the jalapeños, the funk of the pepperoni, combined with the creamy, cooling tang of the ranch? Come on man, this pizza rules.
If you prefer to eat your dough, cheese, tomato sauce and pepperoni in a more tubular package, Villa makes a mean stromboli as well. And sandwiches are coming soon, he says, starting with a meatball parm on what he hopes will be bread baked on the premises.
Stromboli, $8 (Photo by Scott Lynch)
“This is my first restaurant,” Villa says. “I didn’t have a budget so I did all the work myself: the floors, the tiles, the mirror, all the painting, I built this whole counter. I just wanted something small that I could start with. I think every neighborhood should have a good slice shop. I’m just doing it the way I like my pizza to be.”
La Flor is located at 766 Classon Avenue, between Sterling and St Johns Places, and is currently open on Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.
The post La Flor on Classon is instantly one of Brooklyn’s best pizzerias appeared first on Brooklyn Magazine.
