A New Haven walk down Wooster St.
Glam Italian in DC
The Jersey thin crust light test
New Haven is undoubtedly an Italian-American heavy hitter. I was passing through this week and grabbed a bite at Gioia, a newer spot on the famed Wooster street, but alos did an evening stroll end to end so you could see just ho wthis famous block lays out the Italian-American.
L'Ardente calls itself glam Italian, and the room backs it up, gold-plated pizza oven, Murano chandeliers, built atop Capitol Crossing's freeway deck at 200 Massachusetts Avenue NW. French chef David Deshaies blends Italian technique with Italian-American instincts, most visibly in the 40-layer lasagna, short rib and truffle mornay served on its side instead of stacked. Three blocks away sits Holy Rosary, DC's actual Italian national parish, which nearly lost its building to the same highway L'Ardente now sits above.
We visited a few months a go whne the mercury was MUCH lower and finally got this one edited and added.
Hold a slice of Emma-style up to the light at Mario’s and you can see through it. Not char-crisp thin, not cracker thin. Supple thin. The kind that bends before it breaks. Lay a dollar bill next to it and the bill looks thick by comparison. Emma Barilari liked her pizza that way, thin enough to fold, sturdy enough to hold a topping, and for decades it existed as her personal order before it became the house’s most requested pie. That’s the whole story of Mario’s in one slice. Somebody’s specific, stubborn taste became a neighborhood’s default.
Mario and Emma opened the place on Van Houten Avenue on July 4, 1945, and it wasn’t supposed to be a pizzeria at all. It opened as a bar. Pizza got added within months, then a full Italian-American menu came after that, and the building kept growing to match, four separate additions over the decades until a corner bar became something big enough to host a banquet. Ken Barilari, their grandson, eventually ran the place, keeping it in the family the way these things are supposed to go. Then in 2010, he sold it to a guy from Ridgewood named Alberto Molina, and the bloodline that opened Mario’s stopped having anything to do with who owned it.
Here’s the part that could have gone wrong and didn’t. Molina wasn’t a Barilari. He didn’t inherit a recipe or a claim to the neighborhood’s trust, he negotiated for it, reportedly closing the deal at one of the restaurant’s own tables after a waitress served him a meal that convinced him he could do this and be proud of it. He kept the staff, including a pizza chef who’s now logged decades on that same oven. He trimmed a menu that had gotten too big for its own consistency. He didn’t touch the crust. An outsider took over an Italian-American institution and the smartest thing he did was leave Emma alone.
Eighty years on, the photos of Mario and Emma still hang by the entrance, and the pizza still gets held up to whatever light happens to be nearby, still thin enough to see through. The family that started it is gone from the deed. The taste they built is still running the place.
A monthly gathering around red sauce, tradition and family.
This map is filled with recommendations from people just like you. If there’s a red sauce joint, pizzeria, or Italian-American institution you love — click here to submit it.
Spread the love. Forward this email to that one Italian who knows all the spots OR send it to your foodie friend who’d love a peek.
More stories coming soon.
More pins every week.
-Janello
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.