Anthony Falco, the pizzaiolo who helped make Roberta’s a breakout pizza destination, opens Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar on Friday, November 20, at 276 Grand Street, between Roebling and Havemeyer streets, in Williamsburg. Falco started making dough at Roberta’s in Bushwick
when it opened in 2008; for at least a decade, he has consulted for pizzerias around the world. Now he and his business partner, Roberta’s front-of-house alum Mateo Vivas, own the restaurant outright.
The name comes from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain, in which seekers on the road to enlightenment are distracted by a place called the Pantheon Bar. “Psychedelic influences have been a really big part of my life,” Falco tells Eater. It’s also a nod to the Pantheon in Rome, where Queen Margherita, the namesake of the margherita pizza, is buried, Grub Streetreported.
Pizzas will cost in the $20s range. “We don’t want people talking about the price,” Falco says. “There are no $40 pizzas.” The opening lineup includes a sour-cream-and-onion pie with Vermont creme fraiche and onions and chives from the Greenmarket. When Eater visited, Falco was developing a mushroom pizza.
The dough is made with Cairnspring Mills flour from the Pacific Northwest and leavened with Falco’s 10-year-old sourdough starter, which he has carried around the world and which now lives in a temperature-controlled dough room in the rather large basement prep kitchen.
Mozzarella is stretched to order, from BelGioioso curd and, occasionally, from Caputo Brothers, at a station with a hot-water dispenser set to 200, 190, and 188 degrees Fahrenheit. It will be served with a fashionably grassy olive oil from the first pressing of the season, which Falco’s cousin is shipping from Italy. “He was like, ‘Are you sure you want this? It’s a little strong for most people,’” Falco tells Eater.
Focaccia will be sold by the slice or whole, filled with items like mortadella, salami rosa, or cherry tomatoes and olives. A double induction burner will allow the restaurant to serve sides like beans and greens.
Pizzas bake in a three-deck Moretti electric oven, similar to the kind Falco has installed in pizzerias from Mongolia to India. Falco is also inviting collaborators from abroad to bake with him, starting with a Turkish pizza collaboration with Defne and Emre Kasrat of Gusina in Istanbul. They will be in the kitchen on Wednesday, November 25, to launch the pie, which will stay on the menu for a month. Brent Young of the Meat Hook is smoking a rib-eye rubbed with Turkish thyme and Aleppo pepper. The beef will be shaved thin over mozzarella and onions and finished with pomegranate molasses. “It’s been their number one seller since I consulted on that space,” Falco says.
The bar pours Italian-leaning wines, and Vivas plans to serve cocktails like smoked-tomato Negronis and guanciale-washed martinis, alongside sparkling waters such as Spain’s salty Vichy Catalan and Ferrarelle from Campania in 1.5-liter bottles, Grub Street reported.
The room feels like a Roman pizzeria: terrazzo floors, wainscoting, caned chairs, and a long bar. The space had been a crystal shop with concrete floors and cinder blocks when Falco and Vivas found it. They spotted the for-lease sign while waiting in line for I Cavallini down the block. “I’ve been looking at spaces for 10 years,” Falco, who has lived in Williamsburg for nearly two decades, says.
The centerpiece is a solid oak bar, at least 60 years old, that their builder found at a tortilla company in Bushwick; it was disassembled and rebuilt here. The first painting on the wall is of a Roman sculpture by an artist in his 90s who lives in a retirement home on Powers Street. There’s also a colored-pencil piece of a pizza slice by Australian artist Bella McCormick and a photo of Vivas’s wife’s grandparents making zeppole at New York’s Feast of San Gennaro.
The kitchen is built for Falco’s workflow. He mocked up the pizza station in cardboard at home and had it designed in Detroit. A steel fabricator around the corner from his apartment built the rest. The backyard patio with a tree that frames the back of the restaurant is phase two.
Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar is open Wednesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. It’s walk-in only for now.
