Crust Is a Canvas for Pizza’s New Wave

First burgers, now pizza:

The flashiest restaurateurs want in on pizza; so do some of the most classically trained, critically acclaimed chefs. Stephen Starr, the owner of Buddakan and an owner of Morimoto, two of the grandest and gaudiest Asian restaurants in downtown Manhattan, has lately spent much of his time in New York eating his way through the city’s older and newer pizza parlors, on a gut-busting mission to figure out what works best and how to replicate it in Philadelphia, his base.

Pizza is the latest fascination of David Myers, a celebrated Los Angeles chef who has turned from progressive cuisine at Sona to mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes at Pizzeria Ortica, which he opened early this year in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Pizza is the obsession of Mathieu Palombino, who once ran the kitchen at BLT Fish, an expensive Manhattan restaurant, but now steers Motorino, a modern pizza parlor in Williamsburg, that opened late last year. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, too, has gotten into the act. He’s an investor in Co., the Chelsea pizza place whose debut in January attracted the sort of food-world buzz once reserved for fussier fare.

New York Times