Anthony Falco will open his new spot in Williamsburg. Illustration: Berta Vallo
A decade ago, Anthony Falco abandoned his life as the “pizza czar.” It was the made-up title he was given in his role as pizzaiolo and director of pizza operations at Roberta’s in Bushwick (and the name of his latter cookbook). Falco was ready to branch out on his own and began to actively scout restaurant spaces. Instead, he became a global pizzeria consultant and advised “dozens and dozens” of establishments in more than 23 countries. He’s helped open places in the Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Taipei, and Mongolia (among many other places) and became a partner in one, Bráz Elettrica, in Brazil. This fall, he’s finding his way back home and will open the first pizzeria of his own, Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar, in Williamsburg. “Ten years on the road got a little old,” he says. “I want to be making pizza with my family.”
Falco was born in Austin, Texas, and moved to New York in 2007. He worked at a dive bar, then began making dough at Roberta’s when it opened in 2008. The pies were not quite Neapolitan in style and known for their then-unusual topping combinations from the jump: The Bee Sting was spicy soppressata and hot honey; the Speckenwolf, a speck and mushroom pizza inspired by Alsatian tarte flambée; and Falco’s namesake, the Millennium Falco, featured crumbles of spicy pork sausage and thin-sliced red onion.
He took that same flair around the world, but, with a wife and two young kids, says, “I want to be making pizza with my family.” The same is true for his business partner, Mateo Vivas, an industry vet Falco met ten years ago. It was Vivas who eventually found the site for the new pizzeria while dining at I Cavallini in Williamsburg. Vivas pointed out that the former June’s House of Crystals was sitting vacant and appeared to check many of the boxes the pair were looking for: a clean basement, a reasonable size, and a backyard (this one trestle’d with native grapes; Falco hopes the vines will someday form into some sort of pergola, but they feel pseudo-Italian in the meantime).
The interior space was completely empty before construction got underway. Falco and Vivas brought in a Swedish-style dark timber bar from the 1950s, which they found in a tortilla factory in Bushwick. This is where they’ll serve an Italian-leaning wine selection; Vivas also wants to make smoked-tomato negronis and guanciale-washed martinis, offered alongside a selection of the best sparkling waters including Vichy Catalan’s salty Spanish bubbles and Ferrarelle’s 1.5-liter bottles from Campania.
Terrazzo floors lead to a nook in the back right where they’ll nestle in a three-deck Moretti Forni electric oven. Falco helped install these kinds of ovens in other pizzerias at other project and remains a fan: “It has really nice soft heat that allows you to do what you want.”
The name is inspired by Rome’s Pantheon — Queen Margherita of Savoy, the one that the Margherita pizza is named after, is buried there, after all — but it’s a more direct reference to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 surrealist film, The Holy Mountain, which follows a group of people searching for enlightenment; they are distracted in one scene when they come across the Pantheon Bar, which offers all worldly delights. This Pantheon Bar could, given Falco’s travels, feasibly offer all worldly styles of pizza.
While in Istanbul during one of his consulting gigs, Falco made pie with smoked rib eye seasoned with paprika and sumac that he finished with pomegranate molasses. (“It almost ate like a BBQ pizza — familiar to them, familiar to me,” Falco recalls.) He’s made Turkish lahmacun, too, thin and crispy, with minced meat and spices. And Vivas’s Argentine heritage might prompt the duo to make the famed fugazza, double-crust cheese-stuffed pizza with a pile of cooked onions on top. (They’re toying with serving fainá on the side — chickpea fritters similar to the Sicilian panelle, which Argentines put on top of their slices — as well.) But Falco says domestic ingredients — Caputo Brothers Creamery mozzarella from Pennsylvania, Cairnspring Mills flour from the Pacific Northwest — will be the foundation of his pies and maybe more, like focaccia sandwiches with mortadella, or muffulettas. “I’ve done so many styles of pizza,” says Falco, “so I’m giving myself some options here. But at the end of the day, we’re in New York.”
His plan for now is to open only one: “We’re not looking to optimize and scale — it’s a neighborhood restaurant.” It is also, he hopes, a spot that moves at a slower pace than many of the nouveau slice joints that draw the majority of the city’s pizza lovers these days. “I find sit-down pizzerias inspiring,” Falco says. “Patsy’s, then Grimaldi’s, then Juliana’s, John’s of Bleecker — New York has become known for the slice for sure, but it started with simple sit-down pizzerias.”
