For their foray into the NYC pizza scene, two of the city’s favorite chefs enlisted some decidedly un-New York help.
Restaurateurs and Queens natives Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, the fixtures behind Frankies 457 Spuntino and Franks Wine Bar in Carroll Gardens, opened F&F Pizzeria last week at 459 Court St. They collaborated with baker Chad Robertson of San Francisco’s cult-favorite bread mecca Tartine, as well as Chris Bianco of Phoenix’s Pizza Bianco.
That’s right, they got a Californian — and maybe worse, an Arizonan — to tell them how to make pizza.
“Regardless of where they’re from, we got the best of the best,” Castronovo tells The Post, rather defensively.
And besides, “I think of myself as a student of world, not a Californian,” says a very Californian Robertson, who you’ll find surfing when he’s not tending to his international sourdough kingdom.
He even flew in his sourdough starter — a gloopy mixture that gets bread to rise with natural bacteria instead of yeast — from the West Coast to help “the Franks” complete their foodie empire on Court Street. It results in a wheat crust that’s crackly, chewy and almost focaccia-like in its bubble-to-crumb ratio.
F&F is already drawing long lines of stroller-toting Brooklynites, who apparently don’t care one bit which coast these slices come from. In the first few days the shop was open, the Franks ran out of dough by afternoon, closing the storefront’s garage doors on waiting customers. By the following weekend, the line continued to spill down the block.
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