I’ll let you in on a secret: Frankie’s Spuntino, a cozy spot for reliably delicious Italian fare, serves a pretty damn good brunch. Just a few doors down from where weekend hordes queue up outside Clinton Street Bakery, I had some of the finest french toast in town–without waiting for a table. When I heard Frankie’s was opening Cafe Pedlar next door, I dutifully marched down to Clinton Street to sit in a sunbeam and sample some pastries. Keeping up Snackish is a dirty job sometimes but someone has to do it.

Cafe Pedlar serves Stumptown coffee, a name I hear thrown around so much I’m starting to wonder if they’re trying to annex a little bit of Starbuck’s turf. No matter, as the barista coaxed a fine cappuccino ($3.75) from the La Marzocco espresso machine. The pastries were even better. I sampled a moist and spongey olive oil cake with lemon zest ($3.50) and the pièce de résistance, a slice of crunchy french toast ($4.00). This was french toast imagined as pastry, a piece of eggy bread encased in a crisp maple syrup shell, served room temperature and eatable on the go, if you don’t mind sticky fingers.

The room will feel familiar to anyone living on the Lower East Side–a narrow, ground-floor dwelling with brick walls and few windows. Spartan’s the word when your main decoration is a shelf of wine bottles. But the open tables and mellow Bob Dylan tunes on the stereo invited lingering, whereas many of my favorite coffee shops (sorry Think, Abraço, and Ninth Street Espresso) seem designed to hustle me back onto the street. Next time I’m bringing a book and trying one of their delicately-twisted soft pretzels.

Cafe Pedlar and Frankies Spuntino also have Cobble Hill locations.

Cafe Pedlar
17 Clinton St. between Houston and Stanton. 7am-5pm Daily

Would you wait for 35 minutes on the most touristy stretch of Bleecker Street to try real Neapolitan pizza? When in doubt about a new place, I scope out the people leaving the establishment. Do they roll onto the sidewalk looking food-stunned and satisfied? Are they sighing “oh wow,” and lovingly patting their swollen bellies as if they contained precious cargo?

Well then goddamnit I’ll wait. It’s not that long and after all, a pizzaholic’s work is never done. To Keste’s credit, they brought out fresh pies for people in line to sample, as if to allay any fears that your time and money might be better spent at long-established John’s across the street (where, on a Saturday night, the line looked just as bad).

What Keste has on John’s is buzz and authenticity. Real Neapolitan pizza adheres to certain guidelines that guarantee its character and its quality, and according to New York Magazine, Keste is leading the city’s Neapolitan pizza revolution. The pies I had at Keste made the fuss seem justified. The ingredients in my marghertia pizza ($12) were top-notch. The sauce was fresh and sweet and just a little bit tangy, complimenting the delicate richness of the generously-heaped bufala mozzarella. The had a distinctively smokey flavor from the wood oven along its edges, but got pretty soggy in the middle. For the sake of balance, I like a little more sturdiness and a little less smoke in my crust. I think Neapolitan pizza is supposed to be a bit wet, but compared to Una Pizza Napoletana (now regrettably closed) I don’t think the crust attained the heights capable by this kind of pie.

That was my only complaint, however, and I would definitely try Keste again, though maybe during a less hectic time. The salame pizza ($14) which came with fresh mozzarella instead of bufala, and prosciutto-thin cuts of salame, was also very good. My Menabrea beer was pleasantly more flavorful than standby Peroni, which is basically Italian Heineken.

Interestingly, Frank Bruni at The New York Times totally dissed Keste but liked ho-hum Veloce. Crust Is a Canvas For Pizza’s New Wave is required pizza fan reading.

More Snackish posts about pizza

Keste Pizza & Vino
271 Bleecker St. between Jones St. and Cornelia St.
Daily: 11:30am-12am
No delivery, takeout available

It’s a good time to be a pork-lover in NYC; not only do we have Momofuku Ssam’s famed steamed pork buns and a smattering of good barbecue joints (here’s looking at you, Fette Sau and Hill Country), but now there’s a new shop in the East Village specializing in the traditional Italian dish, porchetta.

Porchetta (pronounced pork-ET-ta) is a boneless hunk of meat and fat, rolled together with rosemary, fennel, and garlic, and slow-roasted in their crisp outer skins. At Porchetta, the meat is sliced and served with greens and beans ($12) or on a ciabatta roll ($9). The minimalist menu also offers sides: chicory salad with garlic dressing ($6), beans ($5) and “crispy potatoes” mixed with odds and ends of crunchy pork skin and savory meat ($5).

The porchetta itself is tender and well-seasoned and the sandwich travels well–it even tastes good at room temperature. But, despite a glowing review in NYmag, I was a little underwhelmed. First of all, in addition to some hard bits of skin, there were good-sized chunks of chewy fat throughout, which I ended up removing. Perhaps, not being raised on porchetta, I am a bit sensitive to gristle. Second, (agreeing with nycfoodguy on this) $10 doesn’t get you a lot of grub. I noticed that they’d recently switched from puffy ciabatta rolls to flatter bread, which serves the sandwich well. But the portions are small, consist only of bread and meat, and considering you’d spend half as much on similar-sized bhan mi at Nicky’s, it seems a tad expensive despite the obvious quality of the two ingredients.

The shop was a little claustrophobia-inducing on a Friday night, with seven or eight people jockeying for space on the black-and-white checked floor, waiting ten minutes or so for their orders. During less frantic times it’s a cozy space, with six seats and decor as basic as the menu–a swine stencil on the wall, and a tiny smiling crocheted pig dangling from the ceiling. For vegetarians, there’s a somewhat dry mozzarella sandwich ($7) as well as the beans and greens, but this is really carnivores’ turf.

Aside from a couple of complaints, if you love pork, Prochetta is worth a try. If arriving late, you may want to call ahead since, at least on the night I visited, they were running out of porchetta before closing.

Porchetta 110 East 7th St. between First Avenue and Avenue A
Sun-Thurs 11:30am-10pm, Fri&Sat, 11:30am-11pm
(212) 777-2151