PIZZA REVIEW: Pizza Moto

My search for the best pizza in New York continues….

Earlier this year, the Neapolitan Express pizza truck shot onto the street claiming to serve authentic Neapolitan pizza. I found their pizza tasty and all, but it was missing a key component for authentic Neapolitan pies: a wood oven.

Granted a mobile wood oven is not an easy venture. However one company has been doing it and they’ve been doing it since 2009.

Pizza Moto (meaning mobile pizza) does not have a truck or a cart, but they have an oven. And what else do you really need? They’ve been setting up their hand-built wood fired oven at food festivals and markets like Smorgasburg, Brooklyn Flea, and Central Park’s Summer Stage. I had many opportunities to try them (if I was game for waiting in lines) this summer and previous summers, but it never happened.

Until Smorgasbar in the South Street Seaport was shutting down for the season and I realized this was one of my last chances before the weather got cold. The good news is they’re sticking around for a few more weeks on Fulton Street. Plus they’re still at Smorgasburg in Brooklyn every weekend and will be opening up a brick-and-mortar pizzeria in Red Hook later this year.

This is all good news because the pizza is excellent. The Margherita pie had that unmistakable crisp char that can really only come from a wood oven. While I thought the bottom could use a bit more blackened color, it tasted great. The ingredients on top were also full of flavors. I got a little sharpness from some pecorino cheese mixed-in with the heavenly buttery mozzarella globs.

All the ingredients were top-notch, including the sweet and tangy tomato sauce, just enough basil to add some herby hints, and a drizzle of clean, light olive oil.

So if Pizza Moto can drag a 1500 pound wood-burning pizza oven around, then I expect a little bit more from all the other pizza trucks on the street.

Is Pizza Moto the best pizza in NY? They crank out some solid crispy pizza slices from just about anywhere they can fit their oven. It might not be up there with the best of the Neapolitan, but it’s pretty darn tasty. 8 out of 10.