Don Antonio by Starita

To kick off our World Cup eating challenge this summer, we started with Italy and some Neapolitan pizza from Don Antonio by Starita. We've been there a number of times but have never finished writing up our post about their delicious pizzas. Might as well write about all our visits now!

For our World Cup eats visit, we decided to get two pizzas. We have gotten the signature pizza there - the Montanara Starita - on every visit, but also wanted to try something new this time.

The Montanara Starita ($13) is one of the best pizzas we've ever eaten, and it's no wonder why it's their specialty. They take lightly fried pizza dough, add their signature Starita tomato sauce, imported smoked buffalo mozzarella and basil, and finish the whole thing in their wood-fired oven.

It is truly an amazing pizza. The crust is a nice mix of crispy and soft, the tomato sauce is rich with tomato and herb flavors, and that imported smoked mozzarella is absurdly tasty. The pizza is so balanced as there is a perfect amount of smoked mozzarella to pair with the tangy and sweet tomato sauce so as to not overpower it. As good as the other food there is, a bite of this pizza makes you forget about everything else you're eating. The only thing we can think of that would make it better is more basil. But that is such a minor suggestion.

On this visit, we also ordered the margherita pizza with sausage and mushrooms ($17). Every margherita pizza includes tomato sauce, homemade mozzarella, pecorino romano, basil, and extra virgin olive oil, and our variation topped that with a mix of sausage crumbles and mushrooms.

The pizza was a little on the salty side from the sausage and mushrooms, but it was still quite good. The crust is much doughier and softer than the fried Montanara, but M prefers softer crust so she doesn't mind at all. A prefers the bite of the fried dough, but he liked this pizza. This was a really good pizza and we're glad we tried it. But the Montanara Starita was still better.

On previous visits, we've tried Italian beers, like this pink pepper Italian pale ale ($16) made by Almond 22 Brewery and imported from Italy. You really tasted the peppercorns, but it wasn't so full of peppercorn flavor that you didn't taste the beer.

We've also gotten a bunch of appetizers during our visits, all of which were fried.

The potato croquet ($2.50) had lightly fried potato with mozzarella, bread crumbs and herbs. A little heavy, but tasty.

The arancini ($2.50) was your classic Italian rice ball, also stuffed with Italian ham. We really like rice balls, and this was a good version.

You can also get fried dough puffs as appetizers. The dough here is from the same mix and fried up in similar fashion as the Montanara Starita that we love so much. We've tried the Montanarine ($1), which tops the dough puff with their signature Starita tomato sauce and pecorino romano, and the Montanarine Genovese ($2), which adds onion, pancetta and pecorino romano. These were both tasty appetizers since that dough is excellent. A liked the classic Montanarine better, while M preferred the Genovese.

On past visits, we often just ordered the Montanara Starita with some appetizers and salads. We've tried two of their salads. This one is the Rustica ($10), which has spring mix, prosciutto di parma, artichokes, gaeta olives, lemon, and extra virgin olive oil. It's not the type of salad M usually goes for, since it has marinated artichokes and olives and prosciutto, but we wanted to try something different that day that didn't have fruit (like a lot of the salads). When you ate all of the ingredients together, everything was very complementary.

And this one is the Pontina ($7), which tops spring mix with homemade mozzarella, grape tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. This one is nice and light, but we could probably make this at home if we had the right mozzarella. It's not that hard to put together.

The one thing we've never tried at Don Antonio is dessert. We're not even sure what they offer there. We're usually just so happily full and content of fried pizza that dessert doesn't even cross our minds.

We've always had fantastic food at Don Antonio, no matter what we order, and it's definitely our favorite pizza place in Hell's Kitchen and Midtown. It was a great spot to start our World Cup 2014 journey!