First of all, word may not yet have reached the owners of Co.
(pronounced “Company”) that the days of 10-inch artisan pizzas for
$17 are behind us. Then again, maybe economic woes have yet to
impact the clusters of Chelsea fashionables who mingle in the
entrance and stand restlessly on the sidewalk. At the southernmost
corner of a Ninth Avenue strip mall, Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street
Bakery has opened a kind of pizza canteen done up in a style that
evokes a dining hall from a Sixties boarding school. There’s a
communal wooden dining table furnished with straight back refectory
chairs—and a menu that serves as the placemat. The staff is as
young as freshmen, and every bit as earnest and eager as Reese
Witherspoon running for office in “Election.” There’s a nice enough
baby artichoke salad, prepared with sublimely fresh arugula—although
for nine dollars, you might expect more than four bites. As for the
pizza, the dough is blissfully charred, thanks to the 700-degree
wood-burning oven imported from Modena—and let’s face it, the pie’s
delicious, especially the stracciatella, with a haystack of arugula
atop the eponymous runny white cheese and sweet crushed campari
tomatoes. Delicious—and yet again, gone in six bites. Still
hungry? Either pony up another twenty—or head down the street for
an old-fashioned New York slice.
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