Emmett Burke should know better.
After all, the Chicago native has been living in New York for 12 years — long enough to have realized the seriousness with which the city takes its thin-crust, easy-to-fold, eat-on-the-run pizza. But that hasn’t stopped him from opening a Chicago-style deep-dish joint in the middle of the downtown pizza belt, within sniffing distance of venerable coal-oven meccas such as Arturo’s, Lombardi’s and John’s.
“Right in the heart of New York pizza is where I want to be,” crows Burke, 31, an ex-Wall Street trader.
While the city has a few deep-dish joints scattered about — many of them part of the Pizzeria Uno chain — Emmett’s is notable for its prime MacDougal Street real estate and, according to Burke, its superior quality.
“[My pizza] has nothing to do with what you get at Pizzeria Uno. That’s the pizza equivalent of a McDonald’s hamburger,” he insists.
Emmett’s, which opened in late 2013, comes at a particularly heated moment in the ongoing rivalry between New York and Chicago: In November, Jon Stewart railed against deep-dish on “The Daily Show,” calling it a “f – – k ing casserole” and “tomato sauce in a bread bowl.”
Louise Cimineri, owner of 90-year-old Totonno’s in Coney Island, is no kinder when quizzed about Burke’s 2-inch-thick pies.
“From Chicago?” she sniffs. “It sounds more like lasagna. Why not add pasta and call it that?”
It’s been a longtime dream for Burke, who grew up in the Windy City suburb of Lake Forest.
“Opening a Chicago-pizza restaurant in New York was at the top of my list of things to do before I die,” he says. But in 2007, he took a job trading interest-rate derivatives, looking to make a different sort of dough. He quit in 2011 to study the art of the crust.
“I spent two years in my apartment, figuring out how to do it and perfecting my recipe,” he explains. “I’d like to meet somebody who’s eaten as much pizza as I have over the last three years.”
Despite their ingrained snobbishness about pizza, New Yorkers are nevertheless packing into Emmett’s. On a recent Friday night, there are some quibbles about the pies “being too saucy,” but those are in the minority.
“It’s awesome,” enthuses 31-year-old Hal Kestenbaum. “So different from New York pizza that you can’t compare the two.”
Midwesterner Scott Muldoon, 32 and a hotel manager in Manhattan, agrees. “It tastes a lot like Chicago,” he says.
Jon Stewart has yet to eat at Emmett’s, but Burke says he harbors no ill will against the comic for his on-air deep-dish bashing.
“I once saw him walking out of John’s on Bleecker Street with Bruce Springsteen. I stopped and asked Jon Stewart if he could take a picture of Bruce and me. He did,” Burke recalls. “We’d love to have him here!”