Anthony Mangieri, one of New York City’s premier pizza makers, will return to his New Jersey roots, opening a branch of his Una Pizza Napoletana this summer in Atlantic Highlands, N.J.
“It’s definitely happening,” Mr. Mangieri said in an interview on Thursday, confirming rumors that he was considering the move.
He has run four locations of Una Pizza Napoletana over the years — in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., the East Village of Manhattan, San Francisco and for the last year, the Lower East Side — but never two at the same time.
Mr. Mangieri, who hails from nearby Beachwood, N.J., said that for now he does not intend to leave New York, where he lives with his wife, Ilaria, and their daughter, Apollonia. “My wife is from a big city, Naples, so she’s happy in New York,” he said.
He said he hadn’t yet figured out all the logistics of running two pizzerias at once, but noted that the commute between Lower Manhattan and New Jersey was an easy one. “Splitting my time seems possible,” he said. “I’m training people in New York.”
Plans for the new branch, to open in mid- or late summer at 91A First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands, were reported Thursday morning by The Asbury Park Press. On Tuesday, Pete Wells of The New York Times gave Una Pizza Napoletana two stars, in a review that declared, “Mr. Mangieri makes what is unmistakably the finest sit-down pizza in the five boroughs.”
“So,” the review continued, “when I heard a rumor that Mr. Mangieri was thinking of leaving the city and taking his pizza with him, I was unnerved, to put it mildly. Asked about it, he told me he was considering it but hadn’t made up his mind. Mr. Mangieri has left New York before, and I didn’t like it then, either. This time, I wasn’t going to let him get away without a fight.”
The chef, who is exacting when it comes to the ingredients he uses for his limited menu of pizzas (no slices), said one of the attractions of the New Jersey location was the water, an important component of the dough. As fine as New York City water is known to be, he called what comes from the local taps in Atlantic Highlands “miracle water” — so good that it attracted a new brewery, Carton Brewing, to the town.
But New York is just fine, too. For now. “I might eventually end up full time in New Jersey,” he said.
