Serious Eats
Deep-Fried Pizza
Deep-Fried Pizza at
THE ATLANTIC CHIPSHOP
Address: 129 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn NY 11201 [map]
Phone: 718-855-7775
Cost: $3 a slice
The Skinny: Inspired by the Scots, who have a penchant for deep-frying just about anything, the battered slices at the Atlantic ChipShop taste like a combination of a pizza roll and a mozzarella stick. Very good, if you're into those things.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and video is priceless, especially when it comes to the wonder of deep-fried pizza. Take a peek.
Yes, that's right. Deep-fried pizza, long the exclusive domain of the Scots, has landed Stateside. Slice noticed it on the menu of the Atlantic ChipShop not so long ago, and after some pestering on our part, chippie owner Chris Sell allowed me and Matt Jacobs into his kitchen to film the process. Matt shot the footage above while ChipShop kitchen manager Randy Carpenter fried up a couple slices for us.
Here are some stills from the video shoot, along with relevant info, in case you can't watch videos at work.
Deep-fried slices at the Brooklyn Heights restaurant are $3 each and begin their lives as plain pies from My Little Pizzeria on Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn.
The pizza is refrigerated first because, as Mr. Carpenter points out, if it's fresh and the cheese is already melted, it won't hold the batter.
Cool slices are dredged in flour then dipped in batter before taking a 2- to 3-minute dip in a bath of hot oil.
A bright-yellow battered slice is dropped into the deep-fryer, dives below the surface for just a moment, and resurfaces with a light-golden tint. The oil around it hisses and bubbles while the shell puffs up noticeably. After a minute or so on one side, Mr. Carpenter flips the slice with a shallow wire strainer and weights it down with a large fryer basket so it cooks evenly.
Cooking time is only as long as it takes for the batter to "brown out," achieving a dark golden color.
The slice is cut in half, to make eating easier, plated over a smattering of greens, and sprinkled with parsley for a prettier appearance (above).
The batter forms a light, crisp, puffy shell around the pizza (above), the interior of which is quite hot.
The overall effect is that of a mashup between a Jeno's Pizza Roll and a mozzarella stick. It's actually quite tasty, if you're into pizza rolls and mozzarella sticks (which I am).
Here's the patented Slice Upskirt shot, taken more for fun than for serious crust evaluation, of course.
Deep-Fried PIzza: Stills from the Set [Slice's Flickr photostream]