While the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana maintains its own certification system for standards-observing restaurants across Italy and abroad, jet-set foodies have long upheld that the very best Neapolitan pizza in the world comes from Tokyo. This may sound like heresy to New Yorkers who are used to the world understanding that our pizza — whatever the style — is the best, but even the most jaded among us have to admit there may be something to this line of thinking.
Until now, the only way to know for sure was to book a ticket to Japan, but thankfully it got a little easier to see what the fuss was about this winter, starting with a two-night pop-up at Moody Tongue Pizza on St. Marks Place from Tsubasa Tamaki, who has also announced plans to turn Moody Tongue into the first American location of his Pizza Studio Tamaki. On top of that, this week sees the American arrival of Tamaki’s old teacher, Seirinkan’s Susumu Kakinuma — a.k.a. the godfather of the Tokyo pizza scene — at Tao Group’s Lower East Side spot Sake No Hana, which is where I dropped in on Tuesday, the first night of the pop-up, to see whether this Tokyo pizza lives up to the legend.
The dark, clubby dining room feels like a throwback to Sex and the City–era NYC, so the Beatles songs blaring from the speakers felt a little incongruous, but they were in keeping with Seirinkan’s Fab Four theme back home and matched the Yellow Submarine–inspired lettering on the menus that listed three pies: A margherita, a marinara, and a white, each of which runs $45 with a written request that couples share pies. (This wasn’t the case the night I went, but it seems to be an effort to increase efficiency: Demand was so high during my meal that wait times, as you’ll see, stretched to absurd lengths.)
Our server — an ebullient Zendaya look-alike — had nothing but praise for Kakinuma. “His aura screams passion for his work,” she said while going into his process for selecting a blend of wheat to mill every year because of seasonal differences in the grain, bags of which had been imported from Tokyo via the restaurant’s Bluefin supplier, Yuga. The pizzas, she pointed out, “are not all perfect circles — it’s more about highlighting the natural ingredients.”
We ordered one of each and a few antipasti to hold us over until the hand-formed main event. It took 90 minutes for the first marinara to arrive, a puffy-crusted fortress surrounding a lake of pulpy tomato and a single basil sprig baked into the center. It was, as promised, shaped like a rough-edged O. The aroma from a ring of dried oregano sprinkled on the crust was the first thing I noticed as I raised a slice to my mouth. It mixed nicely with the juicy tang of the tomatoes, while the hydrated dough held onto its steam, giving the interior crumb its “mochi mochi” bounce beneath the golden-brown crust.
Marinara.
Photo: Courtesy of Seirinkan
Any delay we’d encountered didn’t continue: The second pie landed before we’d finished our first: the white pie garnished with a couple of preserved cherry blossoms and presented with a side of freshly grated wasabi. I asked our server about the best way to add it. “Take one bite,” she explained, “and then on the next one, mix it in.” The first mouthful was gratifyingly cheesy and salty, and thanks to the small nuggets of Pecorino throughout the fior di latte, they melted into a combination that seemed like a different cheese altogether, and all of the dairy fat nearly tamed the fiery wasabi.
The margherita was an appropriate denouement, offering some of what made both of the previous pizzas work while satisfying my primal urge for tomatoes and cheese. The blobs of melted mozzarella swirled with the tomato and sprinkled basil leaves like tie-dye. Lifting a piece, I was able to see the char marks underneath: as perfect as pizza gets.
During the wait for our pizzas, we were invited into the kitchen to see Kakinuma at work. Tao Group’s chef, Ralph Scamardella, who is Neapolitan himself, had reached out to Kakinuma after visiting Seirinkan and proposed the collaboration. He attributed the wait times to the fact that the restaurant’s wood-burning oven can only fit one pizza at a time. Meanwhile, Kakinuma never looked up from his corner where he was bent over, stretching a pizza in every direction. A single assistant stood nearby, giving each of the pizzas a pour of olive oil before they went into the oven, while everyone else kept a distance from the master at work.
A margherita.
Photo: Courtesy of Seirinkan
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