I hate to burst Wylie Dufresne’s pizza bubble, but the pioneering chef who invented deconstructed, cube-shaped eggs benedict at WD-50 has laid a total egg at Stretch Pizza, one of the year’s most-buzzed-over openings.
Dufresne, who once thrilled us with dishes like flattened oysters served with apples, olives and pistachios at his former Lower East Side restaurant, which closed in 2014, is really stretching it thin with his so-called comeback.
There may be a packed house, but there’s no creative spark at the full-scale restaurant, currently cramming them in at 331 Park Avenue South.
Stretch is the outcome of an earlier pop-up Dufresne created in collaboration with Breads Bakery, near Union Square.
Pizza is often over-complicated with baroque and wacky toppings and over-analyzed for “artisanal” dough and mysterious ovens.
But I expected something new from Dufresne — anything to set his twelve-inch round pies apart from Ray’s, Una Pizza Napolitana, Di Fara, Lombardi’s and the zillion other Big Apple spots that claim to be the best.
Stretch Pizza is a white-and red-trimmed, hard-edged but oddly cozy place with sixty-six seats, including a convivial bar and comfy booths — if you’re lucky to get one. Yummy, crunchy garlic bread and crackling, fabulous basil chickpea fries promised great things to come.
Affable Dufresne took up baking as a hobby during the pandemic, and later ran a doughnut shop in Williamsburg.
But alas, the pizza that came out of his, partner Gadi Peleg’s and chef de cuisine’s Josh Eden’s open kitchen on recent visits was so lacking the ooze factor or any moisture at all, they might have come out of a microwave.
Seasoning was as scant as you’d find in an airport lounge — when you care only about not missing a flight.
Dufresne uses dough which he developed on his own, and tweaked at Breads Bakery. The resulting crust for a “Classic NY” pie was pleasantly chewy but the excitement stopped there.
There was no bottom blistering, perhaps because the 515-degree oven temperature isn’t high enough. Tomato sauce and mozzarella and parmesan cheeses tasted generic.
A pie oddly called “The Stranger” came with sweet fennel sausage, roasted peppers and tomato sauce. It cost $26, compared with $22 for the Classic, and I want my four bucks back.
Even with those toppings and without cheese, it tasted nearly the same as the cheaper one. The thin-sliced peppers, which the waiter told us were abundant, were barely there.
The only hint of Dufresne’s old spirit is called The Yolks on You. The white pie combines asparagus and a squiggle of egg sauce that’s meant to suggest the yolk cylinders at WD50. It’s supposed to include shallots, too.
But they were so sparingly applied, I hardly knew they were there.
Stretch Pizza’s pop-up predecessor was so popular as to have a waiting list. The new spot is plenty popular, too.
Maybe with a little more time it will live up to expectations — and be worthy of Dufresne’s talent.
