Sullivan St. Bakery Pizza @ Dean & Deluca

I should probably have my head examined trying to eat lunch near Rockefeller Center in December… but I found out that Dean & Deluca has Sullivan St. Bakery Pizza- and had to check it out.  The actual Sullivan St. Bakery is on 47th st. btw. 10th & 11th, right around the corner from where I live. (The name comes from the original storefront on Sullivan St. in the West Village).  The current location on 47th is where they make all their bread… and delicious flat bread pizzas.  Unfortunately, 10th ave. is a little far to walk for lunch- so when I found out they’ve got the pizza at Dean & Deluca I was pretty excited.

Unfortunately, the closest and best known Dean & Deluca is smack dab in the middle of Rock Center (in clear view of the Christmas Tree).  Ah… the wonderful tree.  You find me someone who works in Midtown, that doesn’t hate that tree… and I’ll prove to you that that person doesn’t work in Midtown.  It’s almost like the tree has this magnetic force that only pulls at “I Love NY” sweatshirts, and really bad fanny packs.  Lucky for me, I found a hidden Dean & Deluca, for those of you who work on the West Side of Midtown, far enough away from the tree to get your Sullivan St. bakery pizza fix in December.

Pics of the pizza, the hidden location and +/- after the jump…

 

 

I shouldn’t really call the pizza from Sullivan St. Bakery pizza… it’s more like a small rectangle of flat bread (covered in delicious toppings.)  There’s mushroom, zucchini, plain and my personal favorite- and the one worth traveling for, the potato.  The rest of the slices are just ok (especially for the price)… but the potato one is clearly the stand out of the bunch.  Great Sullivan St. Bakery flat bread, covered in these thin, oily slices of fried potato.  Delicious! 

You can head to Rock Center, or check out the “secret” location on 46th St. btw. 7th & 8th in the Paramount Hotel.  Unfortunately, it arrives at these Dean & Deluca locations before lunch, and sits there all day- so it’s not as fresh as it would be if you got it direct from the bakery.  They offer to heat it up, but they only have a microwave, which destroys the slice.  I do not, I repeat, do NOT recommend putting it in the microwave.  I’d rather eat it cold… or take it back to work and heat it up in a toaster oven (if you work has one of those).  If you’ve got not toaster, and the slice you get is too stale to eat cold- and you must nuke it, do it for as little time as possible.  (You would think Dean & Deluca would be able to invest in a toaster oven!)  

It’s also not cheap… $3.75 a slice in Rock Center, $3.95 in the Paramount Hotel.  And the slices aren’t that big.  Come to think of it, maybe it is worth it to walk to 10th Avenue!  (Not much cheaper, but at least it’s fresh!)

THE +  (What people who like this place would say…)

  • Umm… It’s delicious Sullivan St. Bakery Pizza.  In Midtown.
  • I don’t mind paying a little extra for food, when the ingredients are top notch, and it’s something you can’t get everywhere.  (This ain’t your average slice!)

THE –  (What someone who doesn’t like this place would say…)

  • I’d rather pay $2.00 and have a slice of regular New York cheese pizza (translation:  “I don’t need no fancy pizza!”
  • It’s expensive  ($3.75 to $3.95 for a small slice)
  • It’s not fresh, and they only have a microwave to warm it up

Dean & Deluca, Multiple Locations in Midtown

  • 9 Rockefeller Center (49th St. and btw. 5th & 6th, Above Ground), 212-664-1363
  • 235 W. 46th St. (btw. 7th & 8th), 212-869-6890 

5 Comments

  • This sounds horrible. You are now telling me the best I can do is overpriced cold pizza. Can you please find some decent eats East of Madison? I haven’t eaten lunch for weeks….

  • Mmm…. fried thin slices of potato.

  • I live and work near the original SSB – I met Jim in the early days of the store, and I took a bread-making class from him before he decamped for the uptown site.

    The problem with the pizza @D&D is not the cold – it was always sold cold, and still is, at both bakery sites (downtown has changed owner and name, but the original Jim hires are still working there) – it’s a matter of freshness not heat. If they bake it at 4AMt or so, and deliver @ 7-8AM, there’s no way it stays really SSB fresh. Jim’s bread dough (and the pizza dough is essentially his bread dough) is slow-rise (15-18 hrs) with NO fresheners, and prolonged exposure to air (after baking) is tough on it IF it’s thin (the pizza), but not so tough on the bigger breads (except for the exposed end you leave after the first slice – if I go back to the pugliese loaf after a few hours, I always cut off a thin slice and use it for breadcrumbs, which are needed for baking the next loaf). As a result, at the bakeries the pizza is baked every few hours during the day in small batches.

    Jim is still teaching the courses uptown, and they are well worth the $$$ to take if you are interested in baking your own bread, simply, without appliance buys – his is 4 ingredients, all readily available, and mixed either by hand or with a spoon – that’s it. You need a few cotton towels (thin) and a La Crueset-type covered pot to bake it in – no steam oven or oven tricks. The Times took the class a few months ago and wrote up the recipe if you want to get it without hearing it from Jim.

  • Homemade pizza is v. fine heated up in a small frying pan.

  • I’ve never eaten the Sullivan Street Bakery Pizza at Dean & Deluka, but I did used to work far enough west in Midtown to semi regularly trek to the Sullivan Street Bakery proper. I don’t know if they just don’t travel well, but I think you’re selling the zucchini a little low. Also, I personally am not a big mushroom fan, but my buddy Steele called theirs the best he’d ever eaten.

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