Pizzetteria Brunetti—Neapolitan Style Pizza

Ever heard of pizza topped with fresh-shucked Long Island Clams on top of a garlic and herb sauce? Well now you have. The Vongole pizza is Pizzetteria Brunetti’s signature pizza, and customers are raving about it everywhere. From the classic Margherita to the signature Vongole, Pizzetteria Brunetti offers exquisite pizzas that will make your taste buds water.
Pizzetteria Brunetti is a pizzeria founded by Michael (father) and Jason (son) Brunetti, and is the face of Neapolitan Pizza. Located in Westhampton Beach and the West Village, Pizzetteria Brunetti has customers going wild over pizza. After speaking with Michael about his business, his passion and knowledge for Neapolitan pizza was evident and I could see why so many people appreciate and love Brunetti’s pizza.
Michael began by telling me about his start in the pizza business. He and Jason were both into business and always wanted to do something together with it. After Michael started reading about places that showed Neapolitan pizza, he decided, “I’m gonna do pizza.” Michael tells us he made Jason “an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Jason and Michael attended Neapolitan Cooking School and together fell in love with the new wave of Neapolitan pizza, calling it, “so cultural and so artisanal.”
If you ask any customer of Pizzetteria Brunetti, they will tell you that their pizza is unlike any other, but what makes it so special? Both Michael and Jason started with a basic understanding of what is needed to produce good pizza and Michael says finding the perfect recipe “took a tremendous amount of experimentation.” After spending months and months of writing recipes down and throwing them out, they finally discovered a recipe with “just the right flavor and consistency in the dough.”
The dough is not the only thing that makes the pizza so unique; the sauce is special as well. It is made from San Marzano tomatoes, tomatoes only grown in Naples, Italy in rich soil near Mount Vesuvius, where they are kept separate and not homogenized. Brunetti’s cheeses are also imported from Italy. Their amazing mozzarella di bufalo, mozzarella from water buffalo milk, is tradition for pizza in Italy, and Brunetti’s brings it here.
Even the ovens are made from materials imported from Italy! They’re made of tufo brick and stone from volcanic soil found at mount Vesuvius. These ovens are very particular; they are made very specifically from that stone, have to be a dome shape, and can only be wood fired. Michael says, “It’s an ancient technology but there are 3 kinds of cooking. Conduction heat on the base of the oven, radiant heat from the flame of the wood, and convection heat from the flame coming up.” While a gas fire pizza oven usually heats to 600 degrees, brick ovens heat to about 1,000 degrees. Michael tells us, “the faster you cook pizza, the better it tastes.” At Pizzetteria Brunetti, their pizza cooks in 60-90 seconds, leaving a nice puffy edge and all of the flavor trapped in the dough.

For all the pizza lovers out there, Pizzetteria Brunetti should be your next stop. Located in Westhampton Beach and the West Village, Brunetti’s will leave you astonished at the endless possibilities for pizza.

Image from Pizzetteria Brunetti