Mr. Grimaldi's Back in Business


  Image courtesy of NY Times

After selling Grimaldi’s, the Dumbo Brooklyn pizzeria considered New York’s best pizza, to retire from pizza making six years ago, Mr. Patsy Grimaldi is back in business. However, Mr. Grimaldi isn’t planning on opening up shop in Dumbo again:

At a yet-unnamed stand in a former airplane hangar at Floyd Bennett Field in southeastern Brooklyn, Mr. Grimaldi is again making pizzas the way he was taught by his Uncle Patsy in East Harlem at age 10. His new venture is part of the Brooklyn Food Hall of Fame, a food court of sorts inside Aviator Sports and Recreation, a two-month-old sports complex that will also offer local delicacies like Junior’s cheesecake and Jacques Torres chocolate.

PMQ.com has a nice history of Grimaldi’s and the quote from Mr. Grimaldi, shows how much he misses making pizza:

“I sold it when I was 65 years old, but I am still involved in the restaurant. I trained all of the guys there and still go in at least once a week to make sure the quality is the same. I make sure the new owners do everything the way I did. It’s my name up there and I don’t want anyone to embarrass me – and they don’t. The pizza served there now is very close to what you used to get in my uncle’s place.”

I asked Patsy if he missed the day-to-day in the pizzeria. “I was 65 when I sold it and we worked long hours and I had to take care of my son. Do I miss it? Oh, very much – very much. I miss the celebrities and the people. I loved the attention I got. It was a nice feeling.”

We went to Grimaldi’s tonight and as always, the pie is fresh and hot, crispy on the bottom, and a bit chewy on top. This is the advantage of living in a neighborhood with the best pizza. Glad to see Patsy Grimaldi back in the pizza business.


 Patsy Grimaldi

{A Pizza Master, Back in the Twirl, NYTimes, 12/10/06}
{New York’s Landmark Pizzerias, pmq.com}
{Coal Miner: Patsy Grimaldi hangs on to nearly lost art of cooking with coal, Pizza Today}

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