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Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Nino Coniglio, owner of Lucky Charlie in Brooklyn. A world champion pizza maker, Coniglio's newest venture focuses on making New York-style pizza in the city’s oldest coal oven from the 1890s.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Great coal-fired pizza, it's got to be a thick crust, it's got to have a snap to it,
00:04but then you also get like the char. We happen to be the steward of the oldest coal oven in New
00:09York City. There's like a lot of like weird stuff that comes with the coal oven where it's like
00:13custom tools and the crazy vacuum cleaner. I'm the owner, I'm the chef. What's going on America?
00:21We knew coming into this we are never going to make money on it. The devil comes to me and says
00:26Nino, sign this paper right now. I'll guarantee you you never lose another penny in this place,
00:32but you're not allowed to make a penny. I'd sign the paper tomorrow.
00:40Hey, wake up dad, wake up. Hey, what's going on guys? Nino Coniglio, we're lucky Charlie's.
00:48Believe it or not, you're in a restaurant right now. Give me five minutes, I'll be right out,
00:52I'll show you guys around. Okay, we're ready. We're at Lucky Charlie's. It's 1pm. We're sitting
01:02in the grandma apartment right now. This is where I've been living and my wife's been visiting to
01:07get this store open. I went to bed at 7am last night. We're working about 18 to 19 hour days over
01:14here. So come to the back, crash out, get back up, do it all over again the next day. This is my daughter,
01:21Penelope Luciano Coniglio. She's adorable. So let me show you the dynamo.
01:31So this is Lucky Charlie's.
01:36First thing we do over here at Lucky Charlie's is go check her oven.
01:42So we're in the kitchen over here. We got sheeted some pasta. We're doing a bunch of clams,
01:48but this is the real thing over here. This is 1890 coal fire oven. Goes all the way underneath the
01:55street. This thing is crazy. It's 17 feet by 14 feet. You got different heat zones on here. Right
02:03now it's 700 down the middle. So it says too hot to even read on this temperature gauge over here.
02:10And then over here, we're at 672. So over here, we got our big thing of coal. This is not what you
02:18used to cook your hot dogs with. This is the stuff that your parents give you when you're a bad kid
02:25and the 1980s for Christmas. You don't see the Titanic and uh choo-choo trains back in the day
02:31running on wood. You know, it runs on this stuff. I've been cooking pizza since I'm 12 years old.
02:36I've done it in every single way you could possibly think of from old school Bowery ovens,
02:41Neapolitan wood-fired ovens on Fuerte d'Alenia, a steam tube ovens from Italy. Baking pizza is all
02:48about the thermal mass of the oven that you're using. The bricks here go all the way to the sidewalk. So
02:54there's nothing like it. Also because of the different heat zones, we can move a pie around
02:59that it started off at 650, goes to 500, goes back to 700, crisp up. Something that you couldn't do
03:07really in any other oven that I've ever worked with. Fire is doing amazing. 2 p.m. Now it's time for the dough.
03:17We have a empire spiral mixer. This creates, as opposed to a planetary mixer over here, where you
03:25get like a lot of friction and banging around. Heat is the enemy of gluten development. Once you get
03:30too hot, you're breaking the gluten strands. So this allows us to get where we got to go in this world.
03:36There's Gregorio. He's a Sicilian Omedagon. He's the only guy that speaks Sicilian dialecto in this
03:44whole thing. This neighborhood was the largest Sicilian community in the world outside of Sicily
03:50for about 40 years. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it.
03:55So we just dumped the Poolish. Right now at Lucky Charlie's, we're doing about 70 doughs a day.
04:01We could be doing a lot more, but with the size of the restaurant and the fact that we're not doing
04:07deliveries and DoorDash and all the other things, it just is what it is. There's only so many tables.
04:12This dough from today will be used 72 hours from now. The reason why we're doing it so long, so you get
04:19different tasty notes depending on warm and cold fermentations. What we're doing here is slowly
04:28incorporating everything. This is like where we kind of, you know, not sit and twiddle our thumbs, but
04:36moral of the story, don't stare at the dough. You'll get lost. It's like a DMT trip or something. It's
04:42like, you know what I mean? You'll lose your mind. While we're waiting for this dough to continue mixing,
04:46this is our Bolognese for our Analetti Al Forno. Analetti is a very old school Sicilian pasta. You
04:55won't find it really anywhere else in Italy. It's a very hard thing to find in New York City. It's a
05:00baked pasta. So Analetti's are like little SpaghettiOs and then Analetti Al Forno is the pasta, Pecorino Sardo,
05:08Cacio Caballo, Roasted Eggplant, Peas, Primo Sally, and a breadcrumbs. And it's all kind of layered up.
05:19Yeah, got our little Analetti's over here. And then we bake it in our coal oven after we put them all
05:24together. Stick a little pizza dough on top. That creates like a little Mount Etna. Bolognese is,
05:31uh, it's from Bologna. So I wouldn't be right to say we're making a Bolognese Bologna thing when we're
05:37making a Sicilian thing. So it's just a little bit different. I don't want these, those Bolognians
05:42coming out to whack me out. You know, they, they got that Bologna money. It's three o'clock,
05:48dough's finishing up, but we got a lot of to do. So this is, uh, our hand sheet pasta. This is for our, uh,
05:55cannelloni, which is kind of like a man of God. So this is, uh, an egg pasta dough. So,
06:01farm fresh eggs, imported several liter flour, put it together, let it hydrate for 30 minutes,
06:07finish kneading, sheet it out, let it rest, boil, blanch, you're done. It's not that hard.
06:15Yeah, we're not going to bite sheets of pasta because that's gross. You got to do the hard
06:20thing in this world. Otherwise, what are you waking up in the morning for? Most of the stuff on the menu,
06:25we kind of landed on because everything's got to be able to be cooked in this oven over here,
06:29except for the cold stuff. We don't, we don't cook the cold stuff.
06:35We don't cook the salads. I mean, I don't know. Maybe we should.
06:39So we're on the cannelloni prep. Gregorio's knocking these things out before service.
06:43We have a whipped spinach regatta with pecorino sardo, which is pecorino from Sardinia.
06:50These are Italian terracotta stoneware dishes that, I mean, they're baked at thousands of
06:57degrees to make these things so they can survive almost any temperature. I got to go throw out a
07:03chef coat because I got to pull this dough out. I don't want to mess up my Uncle Charlie shirt.
07:08Charlie Verdeo got really angry with me.
07:16It's 315, dough's done. We're going to pull this out, get it ready. I had to put on the sunglasses
07:22because, you know, they go with the chef coat and I got blinded by the light. You know what I'm saying?
07:33What's going on, America? Yeah, now it's got a bench rest for 20 minutes.
07:37The bench rest is basically where it sits on this table. You're just creating more strength and
07:42everything so that when we start dividing and rolling, like, the whole thing's not going to fall apart.
07:48We're going to cover it up so it doesn't dry out. Big and bong and boom.
07:53Dude, this is my breakfast. Bro, I got six grains of protein. I got vitamin C in here.
07:59You know, it's fresh squeezed Campania lemons. We're going to start building our
08:03analogy over here. So one thing you'll find out if you start, like, looking into, you know, Sicilian
08:08cuisine is 80% of everything has eggplant in it. It's eggplant on top of eggplant on top of eggplant
08:15and a lasagna. So this is the Pecorino Sardo from, uh, Sardinia.
08:20You don't normally portion this deal? No. Are you out of your mind? Listen, if I portioned all
08:27this stuff every day, what's Gregorio going to do? He's going to do nothing. Jesus. What,
08:33you want to see if I can do it? You think I can't do this? As much of it seems like not in my character
08:40and whatever, like, I do like to just put my head down and knock stuff out. You put your head down,
08:47you start banging out pizzas. You know, five hours, it goes by in two seconds.
08:554 p.m. over here at Lucky Charlie's. The dough is finally ready to shape. So Gregorio's weighing out
09:00all the dough. Um, I'm rolling it. So you see how it's smooth over here and you got a little bubble.
09:06If you do this too tight, you see the gluten ripping. That's what you don't want to do. You
09:10got to get it tight enough to where, you know, it's going to ferment properly without collapsing,
09:15but without ripping the gluten apart. So I started making pizza when I was like 11, 12 years old.
09:20When I was 20 years old, I went to a pizza competition at the Java Center. Won first place for
09:29pizza acrobatics, which is like throwing pizza around. Got on the United States pizza team. Got to travel
09:35around the world for free. Italy, France, China. So the U.S. pizza team is, oh, it used to be very
09:42focused on acrobatics. Now it's more culinary focused. Since then, I've won almost every pizza
09:48competition, international pizza competition in the world. I've won Chopped. Yeah, I'm like DJ Khalid.
09:54All I do is win, win, win no matter what. Even with six whiskey sours. I got another 15,
09:5920 minutes to service. Kind of knocked this out real quick. See who's on the other side.
10:05515. Already got orders rolling in. We're going to make some pizza right now. Come see how it's done.
10:13How you doing? We got three pies on the menu. We got the classic, the red, and the white. That's all
10:19you need. You want toppings, we'll throw them all for you. Classic pie. It is fresh mozzarella. It is
10:24DLP San Marzano tomatoes. There's basil in the sauce, but we're not going all like tricolori over here,
10:31because trying to keep it as close to what I remember from when I was a youth. You know,
10:38cold oven pizza. Usually I've always stretched though, and I've been like very militant about it.
10:45My entire career is never touching the crust or the quarter chone and pushing the air into it. So,
10:53you see how I'm stretching it, but I'm never touching this end. So, over here,
11:01we're doing it all a little different. So, and this is the only place I've ever done this. And I even
11:06press it out so it doesn't have a crust because, I don't know, that's what I remember. And I think
11:17Gennaro Lombardi and Mr. Totono and the late, great Andrew Bellucci, you know, they'd be proud.
11:24First, Pecorino Sardo. Cheese first, because that's how it was, and that's how it feels like it's coming
11:32out right at the same time. Leone Mozzarella. We're not shy. A couple stripes. We're doing stripes
11:39because I said so. We got different peels. This one's seven feet. That one's 20 feet. The other one's
11:4710 feet. All right. So, we're going in. You got this? All right. A little shake. So, we're starting
11:55right here. A little left to the middle. 600 on one side, 570 on the other side. So, then I'm going to
12:04let that pie set. I'm going to move it over to a colder spot. That's around like 550. And I'm going
12:10to finish it off at around 650. You hear a lot of like temperatures in pizza at 700, 800, 1,000 degrees
12:20going around. If you cook a pizza at a thousand degrees, legitly, it's going to be done in under 60
12:26seconds. It's going to be a soggy mess on the bottom, blah, blah, blah. I don't want that.
12:32I don't think most people want that. You know, you get some of these like Napoli 9 guys who are like,
12:39that's the way it's supposed to be. I'm like, it's supposed to be wet on the bottom. You need to cook a
12:43pizza like longer at a certain temperature to get it crispier. But like having the ability to
12:50switch temperatures also gives you that charrness, that, so you get the crispiness, you get like the
12:57New York and then you get like the cold high temperature all rolled into one beautiful package.
13:04So look, you see, you see, I got that. We call that Bella Burchard, beautifully burnt. See that?
13:12So you got your crispy, you got your char.
13:28Yeah, that's a crunch. A little 40 month age Parmesan Reggiano. Something else that's pretty hard to find
13:37in the world. So you're next to virgin olive oil, finito la musica.
13:49All right, so we got red pie next. Yeah, this piolo is ridiculous. This whole entire place is ridiculous.
13:55Us doing this is ridiculous. I got a wife and a two-year-old daughter that like come and visit me
14:00sometimes because I live in like a grandma apartment in the back, you know. I'm lucky today they're here,
14:08but tomorrow maybe not. A healthy amount of pecorino sardo, olive oil, also very healthy amount.
14:16That's Sicilian oregano off the branch. You see how it looks different? That's that's not what your oregano
14:22out of your thing and how your pizzeria looks like, right? Because that's a real thing.
14:26This one's actually the perfect one. This is a red half anchovy. I'm going to go find the people
14:33that ordered this and tell them I'm very proud of them.
14:47So we started off the first month and a half where I was literally making and baking every
14:56single pizza. These guys like standing right behind me and then you know eventually you got to get to
15:02a place where you know these guys can do it themselves. I'm watching every single pie come
15:08upstairs. I'm like you'll see me like walk up with like a fork to a customer and check out their
15:16undercarriage to make sure it's the right way. The perfect undercarriage is Bella Burchard.
15:22Beautifully burnt. It's 25% 27.7% more than GND, golden and delicious. This is Panko breadcrumbs.
15:33All right. Now I can't take credit for this. This is a 100% Mark Iacono from Lucali's genius invention.
15:45Basically what this does is you put the pie on it. It levels it up because the metal gets very very hot.
15:54So it keeps the pizza crispy and then any grease that comes from it gets sucked up by the Panko breadcrumb
16:01and it's like an all natural without like a crust saver thing a way to keep your pizza cool. If you
16:10don't like the Panko on the bottom you brush it off. Just brush it off. Who's that?
16:14You want to see me? You want to make pizza? Here you go.
16:24Yeah.
16:27Thank you. I love you, Penny.
16:29I love you, Penny.
16:33I knew it needed more coal because it needed more coal. The flame was a little low. You just
16:47got to constantly watch it. It's a crazy day. So I got to vacuum the oven. So on a regular pizza oven,
16:54you would have a brush. So you're only two pies deep. So you can brush out all the stuff.
16:59On here, if you brush it, because all of it's so big, it would just move
17:03dust and flour or whatever else around. So here we got a vacuum.
17:08Yeah, we're vacuuming like the flour, sevelina, coal dust in certain places. It's just like
17:16part of like any other maintenance is you got to brush it out every once in a while.
17:20Yeah. So we make a white pie because we don't believe in chasing waterfalls.
17:26Any pie that you order, you do any combination of toppings up to three toppings. We don't do more
17:31than three toppings because we're not making disgusting pizza over here. Stracciatella,
17:37panna, black pepper, crema. And put a little bit extra black pepper, real light oregano.
17:49There's a little Asiago. A little extra virgin olive oil.
18:02That's a white pie. Not too wet. Not too dry. A little basil. You got your black pepper.
18:24Deep cuts.
18:24Deep cuts. Boom. Service.
18:38Just got done with the first push. Kitchens in good hands with the team over here. I got to get
18:43upstairs. You guys got to get out of here. And remember, when you come to Lucky Charlie's,
18:48Bon Joviva Furtadini. Eat, drink, and who gives a about anything?
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