Relocated to a newly-built Tuscan-style villa in Armonk 10 years ago, brothers Joseph and Mark Mazzotta’s 30-year old Amore pizzeria was full to bursting as we entered through the carry-out section on a recent Wednesday lunchtime. Servers scurried from the kitchen past diners crammed in at the marble-top bar, pizza and pasta dishes held aloft, with no room to swing the poor, proverbial cat as we waited on line for a table.
In the main dining room – a sun-dappled room with a handsome brick wall at the rear – the atmosphere was Rat Pack meets harvest festival with a soupçon of “La Dolce Vita” as we admired sheaves of dried corn, wall-mounted pizza paddles and old black-and-white photographs and Old’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin crooned away on the sound system. Across the room, I saw a dad lip-syncing to his daughter, all of 10 years old as Dino sang “Everybody Loves Somebody”: “If I had it in my power / I would arrange for every girl to have your charms….”
On the table, we found a flask of filtered iced water, heavy silverware and butcher’s napkins. And then came the pizza itself — a magnificent Margherita “bianco,” which is to say no red sauce, served piping hot, the crust thin, the mozzarella swirling like cream and the San Marzano plum tomatoes actually tasting of something. Well, tomatoes. You know a pizza’s grand when it’s finished and you’re left wanting more, and this was such a one.
With the owners on the premises and the waitstaff attentive, Amore does plenty besides – hearty soups, signature salads (with a choice of 11 homemade dressings,) all manner of pastas with all manner of sauces (including a once-tried, always remembered dish of spaghetti with Little Neck clams in a white clam sauce), in addition to wings, burgers and a panoply of entrées. But frankly, there’s not much point in having anything else at Amore, their Margherita is so good.
And at Patsy’s, Harrison
Founded in East Harlem in 1933 and with a franchise on the water in New Rochelle, Patsy’s has a new location on Purdy Street in Harrison on premises that were most recently Curry on Purdy. You enter via the bar room, where the granite-top bar, all 47 feet of it, is said to be the longest in Westchester. Deft bartenders mix racy cocktails like an Amalfi Breeze (Blanton’s bourbon, pineapple, Braulio and Prosecco) and an on-tap Garden Martini – The Botanist Gin with St. Germain, cucumber and basil.
We started with drinks here. In addition to that rather delicious martini, I asked for a Diet Coke chaser. Alas, it had a pronounced medicinal tang, as if some of the botanicals from the gin on top may have contaminated it. A case of crossed wires, perhaps.
In the parallel dining room, the comfortable booths would be the choice for a group of, say, four but you’ll also find banquette seating and large square tables. Decoration is fashionably spare, with some circular raffia mats on the wall and some intricate brass ceiling lights that look like antique astronomical ring sundials. There are a couple of small rectangular mirrors that seem a little lost on the large expanse of walls. Think minimalist, anodyne hotel lobby with a large window frontage on the street and you just about have it.
Despite the restaurant being close to full and arriving without a reservation, the two of us were immediately seated at a generous four-top, the two redundant covers immediately removed without so much as a groan or grimace from the genuinely welcoming host.
While Patsy’s is primarily a pizzeria, Chef Amilcar Bonilla, who has previously worked at Port Chester’s Tarry Lodge as well as Pulpo in Greenwich, doesn’t confine himself to pizza. He does chicken Parmesan, orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage, spicy rigatoni alla vodka and a terrific gnudi pasta with taleggio cream, (which I tried on a subsequent occasion).
But it was the Margherita we were here to sample, and it was solid. Served hot if not “oven-hot,” the tomato sauce was tangy and the crust, while crisp, had a bit of a chew – not exactly doughy but a little earnest. Truth to tell, we got along better with a black truffle pizza with guanciale and a sunny side up egg, a prince among pizzas, proving perhaps that while there are no substitutes for the perfect Margherita, there are always alternatives.
For more, visit amorearmonk.com and patsyspizzeriaofharrison.com.
