Introducing Kesté Pizza & Vino

Neapolitan-style pizzas are on the rise.

Lucky for you, there’s a new artisanal piemaster in town.

Say hello to Kesté Pizza & Vino, opening this weekend, on Bleecker Street. In recent years pizza fanatics from Naples, where the dish was invented, have made it their mission to rescue this country from pineapple-bacon-stuffed-crust pizza abuse.

That would make Roberto Caporuscio, the pizzaolo behind Kesté, the Obi Wan Kinobi of Neapolitan pies. The official stateside representative of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers, he’s spent the last few years training young Skywalkers (in Denver, St. Louis, Chicago) the true pizza art – and was a consultant to Mario Batali’s Italian restaurant in the new JetBlue Terminal at JFK.

Caporuscio’s first New York restaurant will double as a professional training center, but mostly it will sell exceptional thin-blistered pies. Purist pizza, like top-notch sushi, is about less, not more – a few pedigreed elements doled out with restraint. At Kesté that means dough made only with 00 flour from Naples and sauce made purely of San Marzano tomatoes.

You’ll want to try The Mast’nicola, a luscious, twelve-inch pie topped with pecorino, lardo and basil, or a superb Margherita that arrives swimming in a pool of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and extra virgin olive oil.

Until the wine and beer license arrives, decant your best Chianti at home…

… And order your pie to go.


Kesté opens to the public this Sunday. Preview the menu here.


Kesté Pizza & Vino
271 Bleecker Street (near Morton Street)
Tel: (212) 243-1500
kestepizzeria.com