Pizza with Deep Red-Sauce Roots

Rubirosa on Mulberry Street fired up its oven just a few months ago, but its roots stretch back many years to Staten Island, home of some of New York's best under­discussed pizza. The new place is a younger cousin of Joe & Pat's, a longtime favorite in Castleton Corners, and its pizza shares the same DNA: "Super thin crust, slight char, no tip sag, light sweet sauce and good cheese," as stuartlafonda pegs it.

Rubirosa's kitchen fare is solid too, overseen by a veteran of the fondly remembered Olana—"mostly old­-fashioned, red-­sauce Italian," rrems says, "but of very high quality." He recommends cheese­-filled rice balls ("light as a feather") and tender fried calamari or zucchini. Pastas excel, he adds. Try cavatelli with broccoli rabe and sausage; manicotti with ricotta, mozzarella, and tomato; or, if they're making it, a special of chocolate ravioli with eggplant and duck ragout ("may sound odd but it was really delicious," rrems swears). And DavyTheFatBoy loves delicate ricotta ravioli in a butter sauce with squash and Parmesan—"simple, understated, and what I would expect in Italy. For a pizza place the pasta was amazingly refined."

Rubirosa [Nolita]
235 Mulberry Street (between Prince and Spring streets), Manhattan
212­-965­-0500

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