Sorbillo

January 18th, 2018

Manhattan, NYC

One of the biggest pizzeria openings of this past year was the opening of Gino Sorbillo Pizzeria in NoHo in late November. Gino Sorbillo came to NYC straight from Naples, where his family has owned and operated the original Sorbillo in Napoli via Dei Tribunali since 1935. We knew that New York certainly has its share of good Neapolitan-style pizzerias, and also boasts a fair number of pizzerias that are run by pizzaiolis who worked in Naples, but we were excited because this is the first opening of a restaurant we could go to with a TRUE Napolitan Pizzaioli at the helm.

We finally had a chance to go to Sorbillo this afternoon for lunch. We also had the pleasure of being joined for lunch by Arthur Bovino, one of our “pizza heros” as the creator of the Daily Meal lists. So not only did we get to enjoy great pizza, but we got to pick his brain about pizza around the country and the fine details of how the list was created. We were especially excited to meet him so that we could ask him about his recommendations for pizza (among other food) in Buffalo, since we are currently planning a quick road trip up there in the next few weeks. He is the expert on restaurants in that area, and even has a book coming out in May, which will sadly be after our trip. In any case, it sounds like we will be eating a lot that weekend.

Now, let’s chat about this pizza. We tried three pizzas here. First, the traditional Margherita con bufala, because it is a classic and we always seem to order one margherita. We also tried the Calzone Napoletano, which was recommended to us by our server, and the Vecchia Roma. The calzone seems to have a growing following, so we needed to check it out.

Overall, we thought the pizzas were great.They definitely had a bit of soup in the middle, and were a bit heavier on the cheese than some other Neapolitan pizzas that we’ve had. They are also slightly bigger in diameter, which didn’t stop us from finishing all three pizzas (well, the two pizzas and the calzone, if we are being technical). And honestly, it was mostly me and Eric doing the eating. The only non-traditional thing about them was that they cut the pizzas for you. The calzone was good too, although we were a bit underwhelmed since we had heard the hype about it. We are always fans of ricotta stuffed dough, and we did like the char that was on the crust.

At the end of the day, though, we couldn’t say that we liked it any better than Kesté, or some of the other Neapolitan-style pies we’ve had around the city. It does have a good location, though, being close to Eric’s office, so we’d probably go again. It also wasn’t too busy for lunch and is pretty spacious inside, which was great.

We will have to come back again anyways to try some of the rest of the extensive menu. We probably didn’t give the pizza all of the attention that it deserved, as we were caught up in telling Arthur our (super exciting) stories from our pizza travels (we hope he didn’t get too bored) and getting some feedback on our future pizza adventure plans.  It’s pretty clear that we will have to get over to Italy at some point…and Alaska…

To visit:

Sorbillo Pizzeria
334 Bowery
New York, NY 10012