Staten Island Restaurant Tour, Part IV: Il Forno (Pleasant Plains)
I’ll start with a minor housekeeping detail: new phone cam! The Samsung A14 has better color than the A03 I formerly used. Thanks to the miracle of the panorama mode, which I’m starting to get the hang of, I’ve finally gotten the entire Staten Island Ferry terminal sign into one image (above). Maybe next time I’ll manage to eliminate the overhang. Even accounting for massive geometric distortion, panorama also gives a good sense of the plain but spaciously high-ceilinged ferry terminal on the Manhattan side (below). Those bright white rectangles are not the pathway into the afterlife but the actual spaces where the ferries dock and folks walk onto the boat that takes us across the water to New York’s “Forgotten Borough.”
Down to business. Episode four of the Tour takes us to the fourth-from-last stop on the Staten Island Railway, Pleasant Plains. If you want to go someplace pleasant when you die, consider this peaceful neighborhood near the water, where the dead rest in comfort and dignity at the Cemetery of the Resurrection, operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. It falls into two parts on either side of Sherrott Avenue. For the casual stroller, this offers a feeling of open space and tranquility rare in the five boroughs of New York.
The neighborhood as a whole is at the southern end of the island, along peaceful Prince’s Bay, which fades into larger Raritan Bay, which fades into the Atlantic. The views from this platform gave me the kind of big-sky feeling I got as a kid when my parents took us from New Jersey, a place not unlike Staten Island, out to the American West.
Pleasant Plains is not a big eating-out neighborhood, though you can get pizza from three different places, and there’s also a Wendy’s, if that qualifies as food. For a mad moment I considered revisiting Richmond Valley to reach the Z-Two Restaurant & Lounge, with its extensive and tempting diner menu, and calling that Pleasant Plains, though it is on the far side of the Korean War Veterans Expressway. Nearer to the actual Staten Island Railway stop, and probably a less intimidating walk, was the Hot Shotz Sports Bar & Grill, whose menu defined the word modest. But these were panic attacks, not well-considered choices. Given SI’s prominent Italian-American population, I decided it was time for a pizza joint.
Domino’s beckoned, as did the more interesting Amici’s Brick Oven Pizza, which I may get back to someday. But Il Forno Pizzeria was right next to the train station, next door to a smoke shop. While I support smoke shops and cannabis legalization in principle, and relish their gentrification-busting presence at home in Manhattan, I tend to put the phone cam away when four obviously stoned youths are hanging out in a smoke-shop doorway and potentially not well-disposed to strangers taking pictures. I went in to order and went back later to grab the exterior pic below.
This modest-looking establishment has serious chops, coming as it does with a compelling backstory populated by distinguished pizza guys Joe “The Big Guy” Ianelli, an exponent of the Brooklyn style for 40 years, and current owner John Caggiano. Both are associated with pizza-making procedures popularized in Brooklyn neighborhoods Gravesend and Bensonhurst. Though Ianelli is not directly associated with Il Forno, as the creator of a tradition, he effectively serves as a pizza muse. After operating in the tradition for seven years at a Brooklyn pizzeria, Caggiano has brought it to Staten Island, employing the same recipes, ingredients, and his own refinements.
As usual my bladder was complaining as I ordered and the counter server was the next in what may become a series of Staten Islanders taking pity on an old man, allowing me to access the employee washroom. I paid and used the facilities as my Grandma Slice and Upside Down Square, first and second from left above, were warming in the oven. The latter is like a Sicilian square with the cheese under, not atop, the sauce. Fresh flavors exploded in my mouth — way better than anything I can get in Upper Manhattan. I wondered if the sauce on Grandma was slightly sweeter. I could see the seeds from the tomatoes that went into it. Fresh or canned? I couldn’t tell but the result was so good, it made the distinction irrelevant. The new phone cam’s food mode took a better picture than the regular photo mode, so there’s another new tool in my toolbox.
At the Pleasant Plains SIR station I ran into man who was bent and grey and alarmingly conversational. I was wary at first, but he turned out to be a local hero — a member of the cleaning crew who keep the ferry terminals in good order. He said our train was late, and the countdown clock had lost the will to count, so he used the intercom to find out when it was due. While we waited he reminded me of a recent death aboard, or more precisely atop, an SIR train. Two teenage TikTok content creators were making a video of one riding the top of the train, a deadly game called “subway surfing.” There was a sickening thud. Blood ran down the side of the car, streaking the windows. “He ain’t doin’ TikTok no more,” commented my fellow rider, complaining that he was two hours late to work that day. There have been similar subway-surfing accidents in the other boroughs this year. SI kids on the trains are usually courteous and well behaved, surprisingly similar to kids in the Netherlands, where I recently spent a week riding the trams from one end of the city to another. The 15-year-old went to high school in Tottenville, where I started the Tour several weeks ago.
I don’t know how the conversation turned to hunting but he’s a deer hunter and showed me a picture of a prize buck he’d bagged while out shooting with his brother-in-law. They turned it into food and as an unrepentant carnivore (I’m going to hell!) I approved. The hero is retiring next year at age 67, and I wish him happy shooting and many tasty venison steaks.
Previously on the Staten Island Restaurant Tour:
Part I: Angelina’s (Tottenville)
Part II: Fina’s Farmhouse (Arthur Kill)
Part III: Laila (Richmond Valley)
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