Anthony Falco and business partner Mateo Vivas plan to open Pizzeria The Pantheon Bar at 276 Grand St., near Roebling Street in Williamsburg, this fall. Its name brings together Rome’s Pantheon and a surrealist film released in 1973.
Grand Street’s Retail Character
A NYC Department of City Planning neighborhood-character assessment identifies Grand Street among the area’s thoroughfares with substantial ground-floor retail, including food markets, restaurants and local shops: NYC Department of City Planning.
Falco’s New York restaurant career began at Roberta’s in Bushwick, where he started making dough when the restaurant opened in 2008 and went on to become pizzaiolo and director of pizza operations, Grub Street reported. After leaving Roberta’s, he consulted for pizzerias in more than 23 countries, including projects in the Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Taipei and Mongolia, and became a partner in Brazil’s Bráz Elettrica, according to the outlet. His 2021 cookbook, Pizza Czar: Recipes and Know-How from a World-Traveling Pizza Chef, published by Abrams, recounts his move from Bushwick to international consulting.
A One-Location Plan for Falco’s Return
Falco told Grub Street he is drawn to sit-down pizzerias and wants to make pizza with his family. He plans to open one restaurant, not build a scalable chain, the outlet reported. Born in Austin, Texas, Falco moved to New York in 2007 and worked at a dive bar before joining Roberta’s.
Falco’s New York experience also includes slice shops. In January 2019, he and founder Noam Grossman launched Upside Pizza in Midtown Manhattan, a 1990s-themed shop centered on 72-hour naturally leavened sourdough, according to Resident Magazine. He later provided early development consulting for Norm’s Pizza, a Brooklyn-nostalgia slice shop opened in Downtown Brooklyn in September 2019 by the same Upside Pizza team, PMQ Pizza reported.
A Williamsburg Site with a Past
Falco and Vivas met ten years ago, and Vivas spotted the Grand Street space while eating at I Cavallini in Williamsburg, according to Grub Street. The address had been occupied by the vacant storefront June’s House of Crystals. The space has a clean basement and a backyard with native grapes, the outlet reported. A 1950s Swedish-style dark timber bar, found in a Bushwick tortilla factory, is now part of the build-out.
An Electric Oven and Regional Ingredients
The kitchen will use a three-deck Moretti Forni electric oven, which Falco described to Grub Street as having “soft heat.” An electric oven also avoids the retrofit requirements for certain older wood- and coal-burning cookstoves: rules updated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection in April 2024 require pizzerias with stoves installed before May 2016 to cut particulate emissions by 75 percent or install scrubbers, according to the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. The agency estimates retrofitting older wood or coal ovens can cost owners $10,000 to $50,000 in equipment and engineering.
For mozzarella, Falco plans to source Caputo Brothers Creamery’s Fior di Pizza from Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. The creamery says the cheese is made from naturally fermented cow and water buffalo milk curds, hand-stretched to help keep crusts from getting soggy; details are available from Caputo Brothers Creamery. Falco is also sourcing stone-milled craft flour from Washington’s Skagit Valley-based Cairnspring Mills, according to Cairnspring Mills.
Pies, Focaccia and More on the Menu
Falco’s international consulting work has taken him beyond familiar Italian-American styles. Grub Street reported that he has made a smoked rib-eye pizza in Istanbul with paprika, sumac and pomegranate molasses, as well as Turkish lahmacun topped with minced meat and spices. Planned offerings at Pantheon Bar include the Bee Sting, with spicy soppressata and hot honey; the Speckenwolf, a tarte flambée riff with speck and mushroom; and the Millennium Falco, with spicy pork sausage and thin-sliced red onion.
Falco and Vivas are also considering Argentine fugazza, a double-crust, cheese-stuffed pizza topped with cooked onions, and may serve fainá alongside the pies. The thin chickpea-flour flatbread originated in Genoa as farinata and was carried by Italian immigrants to the Río de la Plata region, where it is traditionally stacked on a pizza slice as pizza a caballo, according to PMQ Pizza. Focaccia sandwiches with mortadella and muffulettas are also under consideration, Grub Street reported.
A Bar Concept with a Film Reference
Vivas’s bar plans include smoked-tomato negronis and guanciale-washed martinis, as well as Italian-leaning wines, Vichy Catalan sparkling water and 1.5-liter bottles of Ferrarelle from Campania, according to Grub Street. The name refers both to Rome’s Pantheon, where Queen Margherita of Savoy is buried, and to the Pantheon Bar in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain. In the film, the bar is a graveyard-side refuge where pilgrims pursuing enlightenment indulge in worldly pleasures before their final ascent, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the film; We Are Cult also examines the scene.
Landing in a Crowded Sourdough Scene
The opening adds another operator to Williamsburg’s competitive pizza market, where upscale sourdough pies and natural wine have become part of the scene. L’industrie Pizzeria opened in 2017, followed in 2020 by Leo, from the team behind Bushwick’s Ops; Hoodline previously covered Leo’s debut. Grand Street also has a long-running pizza presence: Williamsburg Pizza, co-founded in 2012 by pizzaiolo Nino Coniglio, set out to combine traditional Brooklyn rounds with sourdough technique, according to Tasting Table. Falco and Vivas say they intend to keep their project to a single neighborhood restaurant rather than pursue expansion.
