Last weekend, I headed out to Gowanus with some friends to check out PARKED -- a food festival in BKLYN YARD featuring some of the boroughs most beloved food trucks including the Community Juice Truck, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, huaraches from Red Hook vendor Margarita, and my personal favorite: Pizza Moto!
I'd read a lot about Pizza Moto and I was excited to hear that they were going to be at PARKED. A New York Times article from Novermber 2008 (Pizza From Scratch: First, Get Bricks and a Trailer) initiated my intrigue about pizza on wheels. The article reads:
Dave Sclarow, has been spotted in recent weeks at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, toting a homemade brick-and-concrete oven mounted on a boat trailer. It’s a crude, lumpy, fire-blackened machine for a crude, lumpy, fire-blackened product: piping hot hand-size brick-oven pizzas.
I arrived at Parked around 12:30, shortly after gates opened. There were only about 10 people in line for pizza so I joined them as Sclarow worked on firing up the brick oven. This turned out to be a good move, as by mid-day the lined stretched to 50 people.
They were serving three pies: a Marghareita pie ($8.00), an Artichoke pie ($11.00), and a Ramp pie ($11.00). All three looked delicious, but I decided to get the Marghareita since this was my first Pizza Moto experience.
Before I talk about the pizza, I have to mention the oven. It's literally a giant oven on the back of a truck. A few logs were thrown in and once the fire was up and running, pizzas started being tossed in a few at a time. Sclarow manned the oven while one lady made the pies and another man took orders, collected money, and garnished every pie with cheese and olive oil. The oven temperature rose to a whopping 800 degrees according to the dial on the side on an already muggy spring afternoon.
The pizza was delicious. Very delicious. But it left me wanting more. For $8.00/$11.00, it wouldn't hurt Pizza Moto to step it up a bit and increase the size of their pies. I could have easily eaten a whole other pie and ended up devouring mine in a about a minute (okay, maybe a tad longer, but only because I was trying to savor every bite). I'd even be willing to pay more money for a larger pie, but a pizza should not leave you feeling satisfied, yet unfilled. I'd increase the diameter by 3 inches and hike up the price $3. Problem solved!
Marghareita Pie
Artichoke Pie
Ramp Pie
2 comments:
i still can't believe so many people can afford to spend $8 in this economy on what is basically a slice. it makes no sense that these hipster vendors all charge a premium over restaurants even though their overhead is so much lower. of course it's all supply and demand so i guess this means that there is still a lot of money to be separated from fools. apparently i should just shut up and buy a truck...
BB you obviously have no idea what you are talking about by saying that vendors' overhead is so much lower than restaurants. Clearly you have never tried to produce a high quality product without restaurant equipment or wholesale prices for the ingredients you used or you would not be complaining. The food vendors at the Brooklyn Flea are, of course, looking to make a profit and you have no idea what goes into bringing us customers the quality food that they deliver us every weekend - it is a labor of love and dedication to being the best at what they do in order for us to eat some pretty bangin' morsels. Perhaps you should take your own advice and "shut up."
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