Pizzaiolo Anthony Falco Opens a Williamsburg Pizzeria-Bar

In the temperature-controlled dough room at 276 Grand Street, Anthony Falco keeps a 10-year-old sourdough starter close to the work. Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar opens Friday, November 20, in Williamsburg, with Mateo Vivas beside him and the dough room below. The address sits between Roebling and Havemeyer streets, close enough to the old Brooklyn pizza conversation to be watched from the first night. Falco, an American chef, author, and pizza consultant, started making dough at Roberta’s in Bushwick when it opened in 2008; Vivas comes from Roberta’s front of house. Falco and Vivas own the room outright (Eater NY) (Eater NY¹).

Since 2015, Anthony Falco has worked as a pizza consultant, written Pizza Czar: Recipes and Know-How from a World-Traveling Pizza Chef, and worked in 22 countries, with a recent summer stop in Mongolia. His business card reads “global pizza consultant,” a title he has explained with a line that fits the job’s strange authority: “I mean, I made the job up, but it is very real.” At Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar, Falco works with one station, one oven stack, and one Brooklyn service (Wikipedia²).

Anthony Falco Opens Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar

Falco was born on July 29, 1979, in Austin, Texas. He worked in a drugstore at 14 and moved into restaurants by 15. Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar is Falco’s own room after years of helping other operators build theirs (Eater NY).

Roberta’s gives the opening its Brooklyn lineage. Falco started at Roberta’s in 2008, when the Bushwick restaurant opened, and worked there for years. The restaurant’s rise made its pizza bench one of the city’s watched stations, and Falco’s later consulting work carried that experience across borders. Falco has installed pizza systems in places including Mongolia and India, and the Moretti electric oven in Williamsburg was chosen for repeatable heat (Eater NY).

Vivas gives the project its second Roberta’s thread. As a front-of-house alum, he brings the floor-side discipline that pizza rooms often underplay: pacing, drinks, the bar’s posture, the way a walk-in guest gets held between the door and the first plate. Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar is walk-in only for now, open Wednesday through Sunday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. For a new Williamsburg pizzeria-bar carrying Falco’s name, that matters. The first weeks will be shaped by who gets a seat, how the bar absorbs the line, and how the kitchen handles a room built around expectation (Eater NY¹).

The Dough Room, the Starter, and the Moretti Oven

The dough at Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar uses Cairnspring Mills flour from the Pacific Northwest and Falco’s 10-year-old sourdough starter. He has carried that starter around the world; in Williamsburg it lives in a temperature-controlled dough room in a large basement prep kitchen. Sourdough pizza needs daily attention. Feed it wrong, hold it too warm, let service rush the proof, and the pie records the mistake (Eater NY¹).

Pizzas bake in a three-deck Moretti electric oven, the sort of oven Falco has installed in other pizzerias during his consulting years. The three-deck oven matches the method he has taught elsewhere. Three decks let the station separate rhythm by heat demand and service pressure. A busy night does not depend on one chamber taking every pie. The three-deck oven acts as the pass for the whole project (Eater NY¹).

The team stretches mozzarella to order from BelGioioso curd, and occasionally from Caputo Brothers, using a hot-water dispenser set to 200, 190, and 188 degrees Fahrenheit. The mozzarella will be served with olive oil from the first pressing of the season, shipped from Italy by Falco’s cousin. Falco told Eater his cousin warned him, “Are you sure you want this? It’s a little strong for most people.”

Falco’s cousin ships the olive oil from Italy. It is meant to have force. The oil is strong, and Falco wants it on the table.

What the Opening Menu Puts on the Bench

Pizzas will cost in the $20s range. Falco told Eater, “We don’t want people talking about the price,” followed by, “There are no $40 pizzas.”

The opening lineup includes a sour-cream-and-onion pie with Vermont creme fraiche, onions, and chives from the Greenmarket. Falco was also developing a mushroom pizza when Eater visited.

Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar serves focaccia. It will be sold by the slice or whole, filled with mortadella, salami rosa, or cherry tomatoes and olives. A double induction burner will let the restaurant serve sides such as beans and greens. It also serves beans and greens. Guests can sit for a pie, or build a table from focaccia, greens, wine, and water. That format gives Vivas and Falco more room to pace the night than a single-product slice counter would allow.

The collaboration plan starts quickly. Defne and Emre Kasrat of Gusina in Istanbul will be in the kitchen on Wednesday, November 25, to launch a Turkish pizza collaboration scheduled to remain on the menu for a month. Brent Young of the Meat Hook is smoking rib-eye rubbed with Turkish thyme and Aleppo pepper. The beef will be shaved thin over mozzarella and onions, then finished with pomegranate molasses. Falco told Eater, “It’s been their number one seller since I consulted on that space.”

Defne and Emre Kasrat bring the Gusina connection from Istanbul, Young brings the Meat Hook’s meat bench, and Falco brings the oven and dough. The collaboration puts three working lines into one pizza.

Mateo Vivas Builds the Bar Around Italian-Leaning Drinks

The bar at Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar pours Italian-leaning wines, with Vivas planning cocktails such as smoked-tomato Negronis and guanciale-washed martinis. Tomato smoke and guanciale fat belong near dough, cheese, salt, and char. Vivas gives the drinks their own station.

Vichy Catalan, the Spanish water known here as salty in the opening plan, will pour alongside Ferrarelle from Campania in 1.5-liter bottles. A 1.5-liter bottle serves a table. The bottles suit a room where pies, focaccia, wine, and sides share space.

The front-of-house apprenticeship at Roberta’s gives Vivas a direct line to Brooklyn pizza service under pressure. The long bar, the walk-in format, and the opening hours put him at the hinge between appetite and flow.

The Roman Room, Rebuilt From a Bushwick Bar

The name Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar comes from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain, where seekers on the road to enlightenment are distracted by a place called the Pantheon Bar. Falco told Eater, “Psychedelic influences have been a really big part of my life.” Grub Street also reported the Roman nod: Queen Margherita, namesake of the margherita pizza, is buried in the Pantheon in Rome.

Terrazzo floors, wainscoting, caned chairs, and a long bar give the space its Roman pizzeria register. Falco and Vivas found a former crystal shop with concrete floors and cinder blocks after spotting the for-lease sign while waiting in line for I Cavallini down the block. Falco has lived in Williamsburg for nearly two decades and told Eater, “I’ve been looking at spaces for 10 years.”

The centerpiece is a solid oak bar, at least 60 years old, found by their builder at a tortilla company in Bushwick. It was disassembled and rebuilt inside the restaurant. That detail gives the bar a predecessor.

The walls carry named hands, too. The first painting is of a Roman sculpture by an artist in his 90s who lives in a retirement home on Powers Street. Australian artist Bella McCormick made a colored-pencil piece of a pizza slice. A photo of Vivas’s wife’s grandparents making zeppole at New York’s Feast of San Gennaro brings another family line into the room. The backyard patio, with a tree framing the back of the restaurant, is phase two.

The kitchen was built around Falco’s workflow. He mocked up the pizza station in cardboard at home and had it designed in Detroit. A steel fabricator around the corner from his apartment built the rest. Falco’s bench-side planning affects the pace of service. Cardboard first, steel later. Then the dough.

Why Williamsburg Pizza Watchers Should Track the First Month

Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar arrives with a clear first-month reason to pay attention: Falco’s own sourdough pies, Vivas’s Italian-leaning bar, and the November 25 Gusina collaboration with Defne and Emre Kasrat. Falco has moved his last decade of pizza work from other people’s kitchens into his own.

The address at 276 Grand Street places the restaurant inside a Williamsburg dining corridor where a walk-in-only room can become a nightly test of patience. The useful details are plain: pizzas in the $20s range, focaccia by the slice or whole, mozzarella stretched to order, a three-deck Moretti oven, cocktails from Vivas, and service Wednesday through Sunday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. The first month will show how those pieces hold under Brooklyn demand.

Falco has spent years teaching other cooks how to build pizza systems; at Pizzeria the Pantheon Bar, the system belongs to him and Vivas, and the next signal comes when the Kasrats step into the Williamsburg kitchen with Turkish thyme, Aleppo pepper, smoked rib-eye, and pomegranate molasses.