Roberta's Cookbook

by Carlo Mirarchi, Brandon Hoy, Chris Parachini

The Brooklyn destination the New York Times called “one of the most extraordinary restaurants in the country”—which began as a pizza place and quickly redefined the urban food landscape—releases its highly anticipated debut cookbook. When Roberta’s opened in 2008 in a concrete bunker in Bushwick, it was a pizzeria where you could stop in for dinner and stumble out hours later, happy. It’s still a down-the-rabbit-hole kind of place but has also become a destination for groundbreaking food, a wholly original dining experience, and a rooftop garden that marked the beginning of the urban farming movement in New York City. The forces behind Roberta’s—chef Carlo Mirarchi and co-owners Brandon Hoy and Chris Parachini—share recipes, photographs, and stories meant to capture the experience of Roberta’s for those who haven’t been, and to immortalize it for those who’ve been there since the beginning.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Rachael · Rating 3 out of 5]

My husband I took a pizza making class with the guys from Roberta's and we still use the same dough recipe on the same piece of paper years later on a fairly regular basis (in the winter). Clearly I was excited to read this cookbook and expected more of the same- recipes that would become staples in our kitchen. I was disappointed that almost every recipe in here includes at least one ingredient that would be difficult to track down. Wild trout roe, shichimi togarashi and pig tails are just some of the ingredients that I glanced at and these were listed in the veggie and pasta sections. Even though I ended up not making any of the recipes, I thought the story of Roberta's was one that was well told. It's an interesting look at how a neighborhood has changed and the highlight is the photos which nicely match the feel of the book. They are not beautiful or professionally shot- just regular people starting a restaurant, cooking food... and having dirt bike track parties in Bushwick. Overall a nice book, but I'm glad I got this out of the library and I may have to check it out again to make an attempt at the parsley cake.

[Kate]

Good pizza recipe, although I'll stick to Jim Lahey's (which is quite similar anyway). Interesting info, art, and photos. The non-pizza dishes are great. Making the duck ragu soon. Purslane salad is basic but tasty.

[Dray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very original, and uses a lot of unique flavor combos. Not all of it works but hey..what does? The pasta chapter was my favorite and made me head to the kitchen.

[Jen D'Angelo Gürcüoğlu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve heard of this trendy hipster place in Brooklyn with good pizza. I mostly borrowed this book to check out Italian recipes, so was a bit disappointed to find so many labour-intensive artisanal fusion recipes that I would probably never make at home (though they all look very delicious and would love to eat them at the restaurant). Will definitely try out the margherita pizza recipe (sans wood-fired oven), though it can easily be found online. The accompanying photos and stories of how they got started were interesting, though predictably Brooklyn-pretentious, such as: giggle, giggle, we are such amateurs and had no idea what we were doing, got a warehouse space in ungentrified Brooklyn in 2007, cooked on a camping stove, we have underground dirt-bike parties on our topsoil delivery for our rooftop garden (by the way they weren’t trendy when we did it), oh and by the way here is this amazingly unapproachable recipe. I would definitely try the restaurant, but pass on this cookbook...

[Sarah Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winner of the 2014 Piglet, there is really only one or two recipes I want to try. I tried the "Pizza Dough with Store-Bought Yeast" and it is quite good. The tips for making pizza are also solid. The rest of the book is variations on pizza, vegetable recipes and very complicated dessert recipes.

I definitely want to try the pizza sauce and the pizza dough with sourdough starter.