On a warm spring evening in New York City, the temperature in Gabriele Lamonaca’s apartment sizzles, topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. From his small but mighty oven in Harlem, he has cooked Roman-style pizzas every day for a year, and he’s at it again tonight.
Lamonaca is a rising star in New York’s pizza scene, nearing 10,000 followers on his Instagram profile, @unregularpizza, and attracting lifestyle media coverage on local NYC television, websites, newspapers, and even from the Italian channel Rai Tre. What is unusual—or rather, unregular—about his pizza is that he doesn’t sell it. He barters it.
Gabriele Lamonaca's Unregular Pizza is built on the bartering system.
Since launching a few months back, his idea has become so successful that potential barterers have to wait up to a month for a chance to taste his pizza. He can only barter once every few days because he lets his dough mature for 72 hours—sometimes 96—to make it digestible and fluffy. He personalized the recipe he learned at Associazione Pizzaioli Italiani, a pizza-making school where he studied in Rome, his hometown.
On a barter day, the dough is ready to be baked, but preparation can take up to an hour depending on the daily selection of toppings. There may be vegetables to roast, or pesto to blend. The dough is made with Polselli Italian flour and Sicilian extra virgin olive oil. For the sauce, classic Mutti tomatoes, and the mozzarella comes from Lioni, a historic American purveyor based in Brooklyn.
Every pie is crafted with thought and becomes an avenue for Lamonaca to get creative with toppings, which range from classics like mortadella and cherry tomatoes to the more experimental fried bucatini. “Roman pizza has to be loaded with toppings,” he says. “Roman people love to eat, so I make sure I cover every inch.” His signature recipe includes burrata. If a pizza has six slices, he uses one burrata per slice. “I want each person to be able to play with burrata the way they want,” he says. “And no fighting over it.”
His Roman-style pizza is of course cooked in a well-traveled pan. “It's important to never wash the pan,” Lamonaca says. “It’s like a moka pot. If you wash it, it gets rusty, and it spoils the taste.” Each pie bakes at maximum temperature for 15 minutes. Toppings are added halfway through, so they are cooked, but not burnt. Nothing is left to chance: Lamonaca is rigorous in the preparation. And most of all, he doesn’t want to let his clients down. One night, after cooking the pizza halfway, he realized the oven wasn’t hot enough. “I’m so mad, it was such a stupid mistake,” was his reaction. “Alright, the dough won’t be perfect, but I’ll put extra toppings to make up for it.”
When the pizza’s ready, Lamonaca sets off to meet his barter companion. He commutes to all areas of the city, be it his neighborhood, Harlem, or Rockaway Beach in Queens. For this, the pizza box is crucial. It has to be sturdy, with just enough holes to let the pizza breathe, but without drying it. Most American boxes, Lamonaca says, don’t follow these criteria, so he uses a specific kind, which follows the Italian model. It has more holes than average, and it’s small, easy to carry.
Gabriele Lamonaca and Bilena Settepani recently bartered pizza and baked goods in Harlem.
The barter process is informal, fun, and it feels more like an exchange with a friend than a business transaction, even when it involves strangers. One evening in March, Lamonaca met Bilena Settepani, the manager of a family-run namesake restaurant in Harlem. She prepared cannoli, bomboloni, and panettone, and they hung around for an hour, sharing anecdotes, bread recipes, and plans for the future. The passion and thought they put into their cooking sparked an instant friendship. “This is like Christmas. I’ve been waiting all day for this barter,” Settepani said. They promised each other they’d meet again soon for aperitivo.
Now, Unregular Pizza is on its way to becoming a restaurant, set to open in May. Paola Sinis, Lamonaca’s girlfriend and manager, says bartering was a catalyst for attention on their project. “The response we had was incredible,” she says. “Even Batali didn’t get as much press when he opened Eataly in downtown Manhattan.”
And the idea, it seems, is here to stay. Drawing inspiration from Lamonaca, other people are giving bartering a try. Davide B., an amateur pizzaiolo from California, is exporting the concept to the West Coast. Greg Muller—@pizzaiolo_project on Instagram—employs bartering to help his local community, exchanging pizza for non-perishable goods to distribute to neighbors in need. “Bartering is really contagious,” says Lamonaca. “It was the best idea I’ve had in years.”