![]() ›› Inferno Pizza 12207 Darnestown Rd., Gaithersburg, 30. Located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in a former bakery, Best Pizza utilizes a century. I’ve been to pizza heaven, and its name is Inferno. Best Pizza was opened in the winter of 2010 by pizzaman Frank Pinello. ![]() “I’ve been known to eat two of them myself,” Conte told me. With its beautifully crunchy dough and satisfyingly fresh toppings, it begged for another bite, and maybe another order. The kid in me couldn’t help but poke at it as I eyed a piece of the pie that offered a healthy mix of San Marzano tomatoes, Fior Di Latte mozzarella, olive oil, and basil. In between was the main event: My margherita pizza bore a huge, trademark Neapolitan air-bubble blister. Chef-owner, Tony Conte keeps the menu strictly seasonal and based on the local agriculture of neighboring Frederick County. (We’re still talking about the house-made ricotta cheesecake and affogato.) The backbone of authenticity for our pizza the dough, the crust, and flavors that fall in line with Neapolitan values. We started with a healthy sampling of flavorful and seasonal, locally sourced appetizers-roasted cauliflower, a beet salad, and burrata-while drinking Brookville IPAs and white wine, and we ended with an equally fantastic dessert. On Saturdays, this area is used for special tasting parties, and it overlooks the small open-concept kitchen, where Conte takes 45 seconds to build each 11-inch artisanal pizza, and where his assistant fires the pies in a wood-burning tiled oven at about 900 degrees for as long as the nearby large plastic containers still have risen dough in them. On a recent Friday night, our party of two sat at the six-person counter. Marinara, smoked prosciutto and black truffle are among six choices on the menu, and locals know to add organic egg topping to any pizza they order. ![]() The thin, light, crispy-bottomed pie is a true elevation of the pizza form. This year, Conte earned a distinction that all chefs covet-he was nominated for his profession’s highest individual honor-for making mostly $10 to $13 pizzas, no less. We don’t normally review restaurants in Gaithersburg, but all we can say is, make the hour drive southwest and you’ll get it. (He got his start in the restaurant business in high school, making New York-style pizzas in Hamden, Connecticut.) It’s part homage to his heritage (his father and grandparents hail from Pontelatone, north of Naples, in Italy), part practicality (he lives with his wife and two children two miles away), and primarily a passion project. In 2015, seeking a departure from the fine-dining world, Conte decided to take on this new challenge. There’s a reason Inferno’s hours are Wednesday to Sunday, 5 p.m.-“until the dough runs out.” “Neither of those make any sense to me,” says Conte, a self-described perfectionist, even if that means turning customers away if capacity is reached. He then spends an hour after close making the dough, the restaurant’s one-of-a-kind flour included, for the next evening. This is Tony Conte’s place, where the 46-year-old former head chef of the multi-starred Oval Room, located near the White House, hand-makes no fewer than 140 certifiably authentic Neapolitan-style pizzas five nights a week, serving them to a steady stream of customers in a laid-back 40-seat space. But what’s happening inside Inferno Pizzeria’s suburban storefront is far from ordinary. Our consumer base really enjoys them too.If you’ve never had the pleasure of eating food cooked by a James Beard Award-nominated chef, chances are you wouldn’t expect your first experience to come from a neighborhood pizza joint in a Gaithersburg strip mall. I love playing with pasta in its many guises, so it makes for a great evening. Right now I’m doing a pasta only tasting menu program that occurs once a month on Tuesdays. I wanted Inferno to be a casual pizzeria, so our tasting menu program allows for an exciting creativity. It gives me the opportunity to play with new dishes we don’t work with on our current menu. On tasting events - You could say it’s like paying homage to the Oval Room, where I worked with small plates and occasional tasting menus. That’s definitely an influence from my past. And, of course, we put them together with a little flare, so they’re beautiful, too. They need to be different, packed with flavor. You could say it’s just pizza, but it’s my bread and butter. I want to put out the highest quality product possible, and I certainly think that’s a reflection of where I’ve been. In every dish I create at Inferno, I want precision. Both restaurants utilize small plates or tasting menus, and the dishes are like works of art. where I was executive chef at the Oval Room. I got my start at Jean-Georges in NYC before heading to D.C. I’m always at Inferno, so it’s a very hands-on experience working together. It’s a really tight-knit group, we spend so much time together. Inferno is a 42-seat eatery, but we work with a relatively small staff.
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