When it opened on a quiet block of Carroll Gardens in 2006, Lucali’s generated incredible word-of-mouth buzz for its pizza. Celebrity sightings were common and wait times for a table in the intimate, bring-your-own-bottle restaurant stretched for hours.
Now, 15 years later, Lucali’s owner Mark Iacono has confirmed to Time Out that the reports, initiated by the website The Infatuation, are true: he’s opening a slice shop a few blocks away.
Baby Luc's Pizza is opening soon on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Baby Luc’s still doesn’t have an opening date, but the outdoor seating set-up is constructed in front of the small restaurant space. Iacono tells Time Out that the slice shop will be “more accessible” than Lucali’s, which is even more popular now than its early days, and where a pie with toppings can easily soar past the $30 mark. Before the pandemic, crowds would line up to request a table hours in advance of opening; recently, with the return of indoor dining in New York, the long queues returned.
All the attention is for good reason too. The Lucali pie is a thing of beauty, chewy in the right spots, served out of the wood oven hot and touched by sprigs of basil, with a tangy sauce and plentiful cheese. It’s like a Neapolitan pie on steroids. The restaurant, candlelit and oozing Brownstown Brooklyn ambiance, also serves calzones, essentially a flipped and folded pie, and that’s it.
Lucali Pizza has been open since 2006 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
At Baby Luc’s, Iacono tells Time Out he’ll serve slices from pies cooked in a gas oven and that he’ll even have a liquor license; he floated news that he’ll feature a beer collaboration with fellow Carroll Gardens business Other Half Brewing Company.
The new slice shop will turn this stretch of Court Street into a New York pizza slice destination, given that it’s mere blocks away from F&F Pizzeria. That slice shop opened in 2019 with a supergroup featuring Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli of cult Italian favorite Frankies 457 Spuntino, and pizza guru Chris Bianco and Chad Robertson, the mastermind behind San Francisco’s Tartine.