Paulie Gee's Visited 3/18/2017 4.5 Forks

Paulie Gee's    60 Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11222

Paulie Gee's is legendary and been on my list for years.  But it's in Greenpoint, which even though is super close to me mile wise, still takes a bit to get to so I never got around to going.  But this was on my double brunch date with Amy and Anuja and we got to the area just around 4:45pm, which is 15 minutes before it opened.  We figured we'd kill some time at Ovenly next door and get a cookie and walk back.  Lo and behold, by the time we walked back at 5:04pm there was already 20+ people in line.  Crap.  Unfortunately they wouldn't seat an incomplete party and we were still waiting for Aarti, so we had to wait around for another 45 minutes for a table, which actually wasn't so bad considering we had just come from Aita not too long ago. The one thing that was kind of annoying is that they are old school - no reservations and no texting or calling you when you're table is ready.  You have to be there when they yell out your name or else they move on to the next group. 

When we finally got seated, I could kind of understand why they don't seat incomplete parties - it's mostly communal tables and it's tight seating, so they really try to maximize the seats there.  In any case, we had been reviewing the menu while we were waiting, so we knew exactly what we wanted to order by the time we sat down.  Considering it's kind of a fancy artisanal place, they have a TON of options and they even have a bunch of vegan options.  Hey - it is Brooklyn after all.  We decided on the Sake Mountain Way as the veggie option ($16) and the Hell Boy ($17) as the meat option with half of it with real meat and the other half with vegan meat and we started with the Gates of Eden salad ($10). Similar to Roberta's, it's thin Neapolitan pizza cooked in a huge wood fired oven in the plain view of the kitchen.  The pizza comes out pretty quickly and the sake mountain came out first - it's got fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato sauce with garlic, onion, olive oil, basil, sake reduction and heavy cream.  It's it's a bit like a twist to a vodka sauce and it's just as delicious.  It's got a hint of sweetness to it and the crust on this pizza was oh so delicious.  I am usually not a crust girl at all unless I'm really hungry or really like it and here I ate almost every bite of crust.  The dough was just the right texture of chewiness but it's still soft and elastic.  But the winning pizza for me was the Hell Boy - everyone had mentioned this before we went there that this was their favorite and I can see why.  It's got fresh mozzarella, soppressata, parm and Mike's hot honey.  It was the perfect combination of sweet, salty, meaty and cheesy without it being overwhelming or confusing on the palate.  It kind of reminded me of when I used to put maple syrup on my breakfast sausages in college.  We were so anxious for our pizza that we forgot that we didn't get our salad but our waitress actually noticed it and was very apologetic and offered to give it to her for half price.  Now that's what I call service!  The salad was a nice combo of well dressed greens, pecans, cranberries, pear and gorgonzola cheese. 

But the best part of the night was when Paulie himself came around and talked to almost everyone in the restaurant.  You could tell that he was still super proud of his place and excitedly asked everyone what they were eating and what their favorite was.  So cute and sweet - even though this place has clearly blown up, it's nice to see the original owners still caring enough to interact with their customers. 

I left super happy and quite full from my two meals that day - clearly one was better than the other. Now that I see what the wait situation is at Paulie's I wouldn't hesitate to come back again at 5:00pm on the dot or even actually around 7:30 when we left, there was no line (granted it was raining too) as that's when the 1st round of people who came in had stared to leave.   Apparently they have an entire secret pizza menu online, so now I have to go back and try some of those pizzas out!  Who's with me?  Total bill:  $21/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp