Pizza at Burch Steakhouse and Pizza Bar
Burch
Budget-sensitive food-heads, gather round, I've got big news. One of our top chef-restauranteur couples, namely Isaac Becker and Nancy St. Pierre, of 112 Eatery, Burch Steak and Pizza, and Bar La Grassa, are taking over the former Be'Wiched place down the street from Bar La Grassa for a slice focused pizza and wine spot called Snack Bar.
I just got off the phone with Isaac Becker. "Nancy and I were in New York about six months ago, we were running late, hadn't gotten dinner, stopped for a slice of pizza—and I was just thinking, what really makes it is when the slice gets reheated the crust gets really crunchy."
And so here we are. Snack Bar will be open from 4 p.m. to midnight, will have a counter-service slice area as well as a sit-down-full-service slice area. St. Pierre, who runs the wine program and service, will be creating a whatever-she's-into list, so nothing too locked down to any region or style. This is good news to this wine-drinker. I'm kind of sick of the something-for-generic-imaginary-customers wine list and more interested in personal wine lists than I ever have been.
The pizza will be different than that at Burch Pizza, obviously, as it won't be wood-fired and will come from standard American pizza-place deck ovens. It might have some kissing-cousin relationship in terms of Becker's fondness for better quality ingredients, and out-of-the-mainstream ingredients. (The Burch pizza with hazelnuts is a life-changer.) So think better salamis, maybe octopus on some of the slices. Bar La Grassa's lovely focaccia dough may leap down the street and feature in a focaccia or sheet-pan grandma pizza of the day, but that's still in the figuring-out stage. "My biggest concern right now is figuring out the dough and the sauce, that will determine a lot," Becker told me.
Target opening? They just signed the lease yesterday, so, hard to say, but soonish.
That's the news, folks: Pizza slices from one of the biggest-talent chefs and biggest-talent front-of-the-house managers we've ever had in town. That's a hot slice!
