Kitchen confidential

New York-based chef Mathieu Palombino reveals why Motorino’s pizza gets an A+ on any report card.

MANILA, Philippines - Who in the world doesn’t like pizza? It’s simple, delicious, and if you’re crazy like us — handy enough to stuff in your pocket. The great thing is, you can get a slice of it almost anywhere, but a good pizza, a really good one, doesn’t come along very often. Right out of the streets of Brooklyn and straight to Manila comes pizzeria Motorino, perhaps as a bid to answer our prayers. With Neapolitan pizzas that taste so good you might want to marry them, it’ll come as no surprise that it can turn any pizza cynic into a pizza sinner. So just what is it about these pizzas makes them so damn good? Young STAR finds out through Motorino founder and chef Mathieu Palombino during his visit to Manila, where he schools us on making pizzas, eating well, and getting gloriously drunk.

YOUNG STAR: Hey, Mathieu! What brings you to Manila?

MATHIEU PALOMBINO: Training, training, training. Making pizza, making pizza, making pizza.

Motorino claims to offer something different to local diners. What makes your pizza so special?

There’s nothing special. It’s just a well-made pie with good ingredients. The dough, which makes us different from others, is down to the specifications we like: light, crusty, and soft at times. It’s very digestible, pleasurable, fun to eat. Just like (the pizza) in Napoli… soft, not fighting. Fun pizza to eat.

Is that where you learned how to make pizza?

Yeah, but I didn’t learn by making it there, I learned by eating there. When I went to Napoli, I realized, “This is the pizza for me.” And then I went back to New York, I set up shop… and I made a lot of dough. A lot of dough. It takes two days to make the dough. It’s a very complicated process.

Aside from your restaurant, what are you favorite places to eat in New York?

I like Peter Luger for steak… I like the old school guys. There’s so many of them, it’s so hard to choose. For Chinese, I like to go to Chinatown. For Italian food, there’s Aurora in Williamsburg near my house. And I like Marlow and Sons. It’s an amazing restaurant.

So what about great places to get sh*t-faced?

There’s a place called Blue and Gold, it’s a dive bar on 7th Street. They have four-dollar whiskey and a great jukebox. When you go in, you’re never going out. (Laughs) I think I can say, every single time I go to this place, I left with the bartender at four in the morning.

Do you have a favorite drunk-in-New York story?

I used to work at a restaurant, and I was dating the hostess who eventually became my wife. One night we went out in a bar, and it was Marlon, my line cook. The hostess was very drunk, and she was sitting on his lap, she was being very rowdy, and messing with her hair. Then her hair caught on fire! Nobody noticed besides the guy next to her and the guy threw the glass of water at her. My line cook punched the guy in the face, and the whole thing turned into a huge fight. Half her hair was burned out. I was like, “This is f*cked up.”

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Get a taste of Motorino Pizza, 3/F Greenbelt 3, Makati City. —Margarita Buenaventura