First Look: Paulie Gee’s
Arthur Bovino — March 22, 2010
Clockwise from top: The E & O Pizza with Fior di Latte, Marinated Kale, and Guanciale; chef Paul Giannone; Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Brooklyn’s newest pizza drama is playing out in Greenpoint, just blocks from Metropolitan, in a space that was previously a restaurant of a former Top Chef contestant. The new chef is someone with considerably less airtime, a guy from Jersey named Paul Giannone— Paulie Gee.
Until weeks ago, Paulie’s pizza-making was mostly confined to the oven he built in his yard. Now pizza-lovers and aficionados are gathering to see if this former software quality assurance engineer can pull off dreams of joining the City’s elite pizzaiolos. It’s the kind of New York— er— Brooklyn story you can literally sink your teeth into. To learn more about his story, check out this interview.
Recently, we joined Slice’s managing editor, Adam Kuban, at Paulie Gee’s to sample some of this Brooklyn-born dreamer’s early efforts.
Hungry Chefs: Paulie Gee
Arthur Bovino — March 22, 2010
Hungry Chefs is Always Hungry’s series of featured interviews that bring you into the kitchen with interesting and noteworthy members of the culinary community. This edition is with Paul Giannone.
Paulie Gee hard at work at his eponymous pizzeria in Greenpoint.
You do your best every day to realize your dreams. But how many people get to see their dreams come true? And if and when they come true, how does what was dreamed measure up to reality? There’s man in Brooklyn making pizza who may be best suited to answer these questions, Paul Giannone. Or as New Yorkers are starting to know him, Paulie Gee.
As recently as February 2009, Paulie was profiled talking about a pizzeria as a ways off. Last week he broke from making Neapolitan pies to discuss Paulie Gee’s, his pizzeria in Greenpoint.
AHNY: Paulie, you’re living a dream here, aren’t you? How did this come to be?
Paulie: I always loved to cook, I’d invite people over my house just so I could cook for them. You know, for the past 25 years, people have been encouraging me to open a restaurant. What I did for a living wasn’t what I really enjoyed. But opening a real restaurant always seemed daunting.
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