Pizza in the 'Point: Paulie Gee’s

Mar 18, 2010 by Juliet Linderman

Everyone knows that Brooklyn has some of the best pizza in the city. From Bushwick to Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay to Crown Heights, the Gowanus Canal to Newtown Creek, there’s something about this borough that makes those three cardinal ingredients—cheese, dough and fresh tomato—into some kind of holy trinity. And now, thanks to Paul Giannone, Greenpoint has an authentic (and delicious) wood-burning oven pizza shop to call its own.

Just one week ago Giannone celebrated the opening of his coal-oven pizza restaurant Paulie Gee’s on Greenpoint Avenue, and was met with tremendous community support. After all, neighbors have been hotly anticipating its opening for more than a year.

“I used to say, the date has been set, I just don’t know what it is yet,” Giannone joked. Small in stature and bespectacled, Giannone sports a baseball cap with the infamous G-train insignia emblazoned on the forehead, and is constantly doing three things at once, from sampling thick slices of fresh mozzarella to receiving packages to meeting distributors. It’s not easy running a brand new restaurant, but for Giannone, it is a dream come true.

“I always used to dream about making pizzas, but I thought I needed a million dollars to do something like this,” Giannone said. “This is the most fortunate thing to happen in my life.”

One taste of a Paulie Gee’s pizza—topped with ingredients like prosciutto, arugula, fresh-squeezed lemon juice and grated parmesan cheese—you’d never guess that Giannone made his first pizza just two and a half years ago, in his kitchen. “It was awful,” Giannone said. “It tasted alright, but it looked like an amoeba. Nothing like the pizzas I make now!” For the majority of his life, Giannone was not a pizza man, quite the opposite: he worked with computers.

“For thirty years I masqueraded as a computer geek. But my heart wasn’t in it,” he said. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Giannone grew up eating pizza all around the borough. A lover of food, Giannone developed an affinity for cooking and a talent in the kitchen, but never thought anything of it.

“People always encouraged me to open a restaurant, but I had no interest. The thought stressed me out to no end! It just seemed so completely overwhelming,” Giannone said. “But then, 15 years ago, I developed a passion for pizza.”

Giannone considers his first visit to Totonno’s Pizzeria near Coney Island to be a specifically significant moment in his own pizza history: It was the first time he tasted a wood-burning oven pizza—he was immediately hooked. And so began Giannone’s personal pizza journey.

“I started going with my two sons on trips for coal-oven pizza,” Giannone said. “The flavor of the sauce and the cheese…the crust…it’s all so unique. After a while I realized, hey, I really like pizza. I’m going to build my own pizza oven.”

In September of 2007, with almost no previous knowledge of the mechanics of a wood-burning oven, Giannone purchased a set of plans from Fornobravo.com and set to work building his own. Shortly after he started he got word from his son, who had since joined the military and moved away, that he would be coming home for Thanksgiving. And he expected home-made pizza.

“I always used to tell my son that nothing is impossible, you can do anything you set your mind to. Then, he really turned the tables on me,” Giannone said. “He said ‘you told people you were going to do this, now you have to do it.’”

Giannone rose to the challenge, and began making his first homemade pies the night before Thanksgiving. The year that followed was filled with pizza: Giannone befriended local pizza shop owners and masters of the craft, and after many trial runs, finally began inviting friends and fellow pizza lovers over for tastings.

“Pizza is simple, but it’s a huge challenge.” he said. “I started inviting people from the pizza enthusiast community who might be interested in blogging about it.”

Giannone then took the next step: He began seeking out a storefront. Initially, he thought about opening a pizza shop in New Jersey, but was deterred by fellow foodies who urged him to launch his venture somewhere in the five boroughs. Almost by accident, Giannone discovered Greenpoint.

“I was picking up my son from the airport and I discovered Franklin Street,” Giannone said. “I love this community, and I must be doing something right because they seem to like us, too!”

After signing the lease on the perfect location, Giannone linked up with a master wood-burning oven maker from Naples, Italy, and recruited him to make the Paulie Gee’s pizza oven, which has a blue stripe, a bright yellow sun and two pairs of lemons (to signify Giannone’s love for Lemoncello. In fact, he makes his own from scratch).

“The more I look at that oven the more beautiful it becomes,” Giannone said, gazing lovingly at the massive stove. But Paulie Gee’s hopes to be more than just another Greenpoint-based restaurant: Giannone wants to become part of the fabric of the neighborhood. He uses local ingredients from the likes of Tom Mylan at the Meat Hook, vegetables from the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm and honey from a local beekeeper.

“I never just wanted to make pizza to make money,” Giannone said. “I want to make something really special. And you’ve got to be a part of the community.”

Paulie Gee’s is located at 60 Greenpoint Avenue between Franklin and West Streets.

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