This fall, Anthony Falco will open Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar in Williamsburg, his first pizzeria of his own after a decade advising operators in more than 23 countries. Falco, the former pizzaiolo and director of pizza operations at Roberta’s in Bushwick, is building the restaurant with Mateo Vivas in the former June’s House of Crystals space, where a three-deck Moretti Forni electric oven will sit in a back-right nook off terrazzo floors (Grubstreet1).
The first Williamsburg pizzeria Anthony Falco has seen under his own name opens this fall. Falco was ready to scout spaces a decade ago, then became the traveling consultant other operators called when they needed help with dough, ovens, toppings, and the hard arithmetic of a pizzeria that has to work in its own city. He helped open places in the Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Taipei, and Mongolia, among other locations, and became a partner in Bráz Elettrica in Brazil. Falco will open Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar in Brooklyn this fall.
Why the Anthony Falco Pizzeria Williamsburg Opening Lands Now
Falco is returning to the city where he moved in 2007 and began making dough at Roberta’s in 2008. He moved to New York in 2007, worked at a dive bar, then began making dough at Roberta’s when it opened in 2008. Nate Appleman hired Falco on the spot, and Falco became known as pizza czar at the Bushwick pizzeria (Grubstreet1).
At Roberta’s, Falco worked as pizzaiolo and director of pizza operations. The Bee Sting, the Speckenwolf, and the Millennium Falco mixed familiar heat, cured meat, sweetness, and smoke into Brooklyn pies.
In 2015, Falco became a pizza consultant. He is an American chef, author, and pizza consultant, and his book Pizza Czar: Recipes and Know-How from a World-Traveling Pizza Chef put that road work into print. Wikipedia.2
“Ten years on the road got a little old,” he says. “I want to be making pizza with my family.” Falco will make pizza at the new restaurant.
Mateo Vivas Finds the Room, Falco Brings the Bench
Mateo Vivas, Falco’s business partner, is an industry veteran Falco met ten years ago. Vivas found the Williamsburg site while dining at I Cavallini. It had a clean basement, reasonable size, and a backyard.
Native grape vines already trellis the outdoor space, and Falco hopes they will grow into something like a pergola. Native grape vines already trellis the backyard. The backyard is in Brooklyn, and the vines are growing slowly.
Inside, Falco and Vivas brought in a Swedish-style dark timber bar from the 1950s, found in a Bushwick tortilla factory. The drinks will include Italian wine, smoked-tomato negronis, and guanciale-washed martinis. Vivas also wants sparkling waters on the table, including Vichy Catalan’s salty Spanish bubbles and Ferrarelle’s 1.5-liter bottles from Campania (Grubstreet1).
Anthony Falco's Williamsburg pizzeria opening is planned as a sit-down restaurant.
The Oven, the Flour, and the Domestic Base
Falco has helped install these ovens in other pizzerias, and he speaks about them as a cook who has watched heat behave across projects. Falco says it has really nice soft heat that allows you to do what you want.
A three-deck electric oven lets a pizzaiolo manage multiple bakes at once, with deck heat and recovery shaping the bottom, the rim, and the finish.
The base ingredients will be domestic. Falco plans to use Caputo Brothers Creamery mozzarella from Pennsylvania and Cairnspring Mills flour from the Pacific Northwest. Falco plans to use mozzarella from Pennsylvania and flour from the Pacific Northwest. The method can nod to Naples, New York, Istanbul, or Buenos Aires, but the flour and mozzarella have named producers behind them.
Flour determines absorption, fermentation behavior, and the way a crust colors against the deck. Mozzarella determines melt, salt, moisture, and how the surface of the pie holds fat.
The menu may move beyond round pies. Falco has floated focaccia sandwiches with mortadella and muffulettas as possible extensions of the same bench.
What the Road Taught the Menu
Falco’s consulting decade gives Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar menu references from beyond Brooklyn. In Istanbul, during one consulting job, he made a pie with smoked rib eye seasoned with paprika and sumac, then finished it with pomegranate molasses. He has also made Turkish lahmacun, thin and crisp, with minced meat and spices.
The Istanbul pie used smoked beef, paprika, sumac, and pomegranate molasses to bridge local seasoning and a form Falco understood. Lahmacun gave him another angle with thin dough, fast heat, minced meat, spice, and crunch.
Vivas’s Argentine heritage may enter the menu through fugazza, the cheese-stuffed double-crust pizza with cooked onions on top. Falco and Vivas are also considering fainá, chickpea fritters similar to Sicilian panelle, which Argentines put on top of slices.
The name Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar holds its own set of references. Rome’s Pantheon is part of it, and Queen Margherita of Savoy, linked by name to the Margherita pizza, is buried there. The more direct reference is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain, where a group searching for enlightenment is distracted by the Pantheon Bar, a place of worldly delights. Falco’s room lets multiple pizza styles enter, but the project stays anchored by New York and the domestic ingredients he has named (Grubstreet1).
Falco is a former Roberta’s operator, a consultant shaped by more than 23 countries, and a partner with Mateo Vivas in a Williamsburg room found by Vivas with an oven selected by Falco.
A Sit-Down Pizzeria Instead of a Scaling Exercise
Falco has said the plan is to open only one restaurant. Falco says they are not looking to optimize and scale and calls it a neighborhood restaurant. Falco has said the plan is to open only one restaurant. One oven stack, one room, one backyard, one bar, one partnership.
The sit-down pizzeria lineage Falco cites is New York’s older one: Patsy’s, Grimaldi’s, Juliana’s, John’s of Bleecker. Falco has said he finds sit-down pizzerias inspiring, and he points to that lineage as part of the city’s pizza foundation. The slice is central to New York now, but Falco is reaching toward the room where a whole pie lands at the table and the meal has a slower pace.
The opening is in Williamsburg this fall.
Falco has spent years seeing how pizza mutates when it meets local products and local habits. Now he has to make those lessons work under his own name, with Vivas beside him, in Brooklyn, under the pressure of neighbors who know Roberta’s, know the slice, and know when a room has been built for the long way. The first pies out of that Moretti oven will show which of the road styles survive the discipline of a neighborhood service.
