Regional favourite will get a glow up with wealthy vodka sauce and contemporary mozzarella
With 4 places, Brooklyn Sq. Pizza is understood for its the wrong way up sq. pies. The proprietor, Brooklyn native Peter Grippo, says he brings the Avenue U pizza of his youth to New Jersey.
“It’s like a pillow,” Grippo says, including that he doesn’t par bake his sq. pies. “It’s crunchy, it’s fluffy, it’s contemporary. It’s actually good.”
Brooklyn Type in New Jersey
Whereas Brooklyn Sq. Pizza gives spherical pies, the four-sided pan pizzas are the most well-liked – because the title suggests – with Grippo calling the Upside Down Sq. Pizza his most-ordered menu merchandise. He calls the thick, pan pizzas “squares,” including: “I’m not Sicilian … so I don’t name any of my pizza Sicilian.”
Making squares in Grippo’s fashion entails mixing dough from unbromated, unbleached flour, chilly fermenting it for twenty-four hours, then letting the dough heat as much as grow to be workable once more. The pizza dough then is stretched right into a sq. pan, proofed and refrigerated till present time.
“It’s an extended course of to make the dough. That’s why you let the yeast do its motion, let it rise so it will get smooth and you’ll work it,” he says. “After we’re able to bake it, we simply take it out of the fridge, cheese it, sauce it and prepare dinner it,” he tells Pizza Right now, including that every pizza is cooked to order and never par baked.
As with many Grandma-style pies, cheese is utilized first on the wrong way up pizzas, adopted by sauce. Brooklyn Sq. Pizza buys loaves of contemporary mozzarella and slices them in-house. The contemporary cheese slices are laid down on high of the dough and coated in house-made tomato sauce. Lastly, the pizza is topped with a layer of imported Pecorino Romano.
“The cheese melts onto the bread and the sauce on high,” Grippo says of layering the cheese beneath the sauce. “It doesn’t burn the cheese; the cheese has time to prepare dinner beneath the sauce with out crisping.”
A Vodka Cocktail
If the Upside Down Sq. is the No. 1 pizza at Brooklyn Sq. Pizza, the Vodka Upside Down Sq. is No. 2. The pie is way the identical, however the house-made sauce is put collectively utilizing Italian tomatoes, heavy cream, onions, slightly butter and Tito’s vodka. Grippo says every of his places make new vodka sauce each day.
He warns that newbies to vodka sauce “should know the way lengthy to bake it so it doesn’t curdle” when the cream is uncovered to acidic tomato sauce and excessive warmth. Equally, the quantity of sauce to make use of on high of the cheese layer with out it turning into a sloppy mess is one thing Grippo has refined over many years of pizza making.
“It’s simply an old-school recipe we’ve been doing for years,” he says.
New Jersey Pizza in Florida
A Venn diagram of Grippo and Phil Solorzano would overlap neatly in a single key space: the the wrong way up vodka pizza. Discovering an the wrong way up slice outdoors of the New York-New Jersey space is a problem – and save the occasional limited-time supply, most followers of the fashion are out of luck west of the Mississippi.
A 3rd-generation pizzamaker and New Jersey native himself, Solorzano additionally goals to carry the pizza of his youth to a brand new viewers – in his case, to Florida. Solorzano is the proprietor and licensor of Solorzano’s Pizzerias, which operates a headquarters at Solorzanos Pizzeria and Poolside Bistro in Orlando.
“I make the common, old-school Jersey-New York pizzas – the skinny crust – however then I additionally do Sicilian pizzas, the sq. Sicilians,” he says. “I’ve acquired the spherical Sicilians, which is the thicker dough, and I try this with the upside-down vodka.”
On Solorzano’s Pizzerias’ menu, the pie is known as Phil’s Well-known Upside Down Vodka Sauce Pizza. And whereas many the wrong way up pies are served as-is, Solorzano typically recommends including fried hen or pepperoni.
The pizza maker lets his dough ferment for about 36 hours. Relying on the season, a few of his retailers will make dough twice per day. The other way up pizzas are successful with Salorzano’s viewers, making up 20%-25% of complete pizza gross sales.
“The best way that the sauce is on the highest … the crust cooks in a different way,” he says, including that the sauce can seem to have cooked off within the oven, so he additionally makes use of contemporary mozzarella atop of most of his the wrong way up pizzas after which provides contemporary basil post-bake.
Solorzano’s “Lambo Pizza” is an the wrong way up named after the Italian flag, because it rotates stripes of pesto, vodka sauce and marinara.
A New Idea
Most of Solorzano’s pizzerias function out of shopping center places previously housed by Sbarro. “I’m going into these dying malls and put my meals in there. And the following factor you already know, persons are coming to the mall and shopping for full pizzas,” he says, including that his third-party supply enterprise has ramped up as folks have grow to be extra acquainted with the idea, which launched in early 2025 and already has eight places.
Simply as Solorzano is introducing a brand new viewers to upside downs in Florida, Grippo believes Brooklyn Sq. Pizza was one of many first New Jersey pizzerias to supply the fashion.
“Whenever you’re biting into it, you get a full taste of all the things,” he says, “dough, sauce and cheese.”
KATE LAVIN is Senior Editor at Pizza Right now.
