Anna Pizza + Wine opens in Woodbury

Danny Aggelatos has been a student of pizza since he was 16 years old but now, at 39, he is the teacher. At Anna Pizza + Wine in Woodbury, which he and his wife, Angela, opened in October, he is using those decades of apprenticeship to create some of the best Neapolitan pizza on Long Island.

He pulls his own mozzarella and pickles his own long-hot peppers. His clam pie is made with a suave reduction of clam juice and cream; the mushroom pie is earthy, with roasted shiitake and maitake mushrooms laying atop a whipped garlic-confit cream and brightened by barely caramelized onions. No effort is spared with the toppings because they must meet the standard set by his dough. In defiance of the current trend for Italian flour, he uses American — a combination of high gluten, whole wheat and spelt — and his sourdough starter is based on rye. He also bakes at a slightly lower temperature than is traditional and the result is a crust that is tender but sturdy and never floppy. Individual pizzas range from $17 to $24.

Aggelatos’s first job was making pizza at his uncle’s slice shop in Bergen County, New Jersey. He went on to join his brother, Peter, at the latter’s wood-fired Milkflower pizzeria in Astoria where, he said, "I really started getting into pizza as a bread." He broadened his horizons when he moved to Nashville to work at Rolf & Daughters, named one of 2013's best new restaurants by Bon Appétit, and stayed there until 2019 when he and Angela started planning for a family and decided that proximity to family (Angela’s lives in Dix Hills) was critical.

Soon after moving back, he wandered into Bread & Salt, Jersey City’s cult pizzeria-bakery, and, after one slice of pizza, he told the owner, "I have to work here."

Anna, named for Danny and Angela’s daughter, takes up residence in what had been Pizzabar 141. The place provided a blank canvas for the couple’s design, which was achieved on a shoestring. The knotty question of which oven to buy, for example, came down to "what was the most affordable one which didn’t require a forklift or the removal of the front window to install it." (The winner: a dual-fuel Fiero Forni.) Furnishings came from Home Depot and thrift shops, but the overall effect is of simple elegance.

Even if there were no pizza, Anna would be worth the trip to Woodbury: The small-plates menu ($13 to $21) features ravioli simply dressed with lemon, Parmesan and butter, perfectly cooked broccolini with lemon and Grana Padano, a Caesar salad with radicchio and, drumroll please, head-on shrimp that taste mostly of the sea but also of lemon, chili and parsley. Anna’s wine list is another draw: a dozen interesting bottles, most under $55 and also available by the glass.

Aggelatos’s biggest challenge at Anna is clarifying what it is — and what it isn’t — to his customers. Yes, it takes over an old slice shop, but it doesn’t sell pizza by the slice. Yes, you can order a pie to go, but it’s infinitely better consumed fresh out of the oven. Yes, it’s a wine bar, but you won’t find any Santa Margherita pinot grigio or big California cabernet sauvignons. (You will find a bottle of petit verdot from Roslyn’s own Floral Terranes.) "Initially people can be confused," he said. "But they are coming back and that’s the important thing."

Anna Pizza+Wine, 141 Woodbury Rd., Woodbury, 516-240-2799, Instagram: @anna.pizza.wine. Open 5 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday.