Motorino

Motorino is one of those over-hyped pizza joints that non-native New Yorker’s think is a great New York pizza. Let me preface this review with this though: I did enjoy the food – ate every last scrap of it (I was starving). However, I felt that the crust was a little too soft. Th router edges were crispy and burnt, which was nice, but ultimately it was a floppy pizza. The sauce was weak (needed herbs or salt or something), and the cheese was sparse. My wife tried a no sauce-based pizza, with mushrooms, cheese, garlic, olives and soppressata. I found myself liking that better than my margherita pie. That’s a bad sign. When you are eating a pizza for the toppings and not for the basics of the pizza pie, then you are in the territory of “go somewhere else.”

Here’s the margherita pie. It’s mostly bread – very sparse on sauce, herbs and cheese. That may be fine for some people, but we needed to order a side of sauce just to dip the bread into. Despite generally liking the flavor of the bread/crust, I though the center of the crust (under the toppings) was way too wet and soggy. Perhaps they should pop this in the oven atop a grill so that the heat can get underneath the crust a bit, and make for a more solid foundation. When I make my pizza, I use a perforated pizza pan that allows for heat to directly hit the bottom of the pie, and I elevate the pizza off the surface of the heat.

Here’s the other pie – much better, but only because it had interesting toppings:

The highlight of the meal was the appetizer, an octopus salad with capers, potatoes, red onion, lemon and parsley. The octopus was really tender and flavorful.