Verde Coal Oven

On chilly mornings more than 100 years ago, you could see steam coming up from a stretch of sidewalk along Irving Avenue, a sign that the bakery above was getting ready to open for business. It's no longer winter (thank goodness), but after a century-long hiatus, the oven is back to baking. When Charlie Verde bought the Bushwick building, he was delighted to find a forgotten, dormant oven in the basement and decided to open an eponymous restaurant serving sandwiches, cannoli, and thin-crust, coal-fired pizzas like the simple, serviceable Margherita and anchovy-covered I’Lich we tried. The pies were a bit crisper than we prefer, but  you gotta love the backstory.