For this we can thank the State Legislature, which passed a law last year allowing licensed vendors, including pop-ups, to sell food at breweries. Beer makers had been urging the change for years, said Ann Reilly, the executive director of the New York City Brewers Guild. In most of the state, the vendors are often food trucks stationed just outside the building. In the city, though, trucks have a harder time finding parking, and breweries have been quick to realize the advantages of booking a tabletop pizza oven for their busiest days.
The upside for the rest of us is just as clear. Craft brewing in the city has come a long way over the past decade or so as the vogue for ornery, tongue-curlingly bitter I.P.A.s faded. The beers can behave themselves at the table; in fact, they come into their own when there’s something to eat.
Naturally, the more popular a pop-up gets, the more likely its baker is to think about settling down. Ms. Weiskind hopes to open a place of her own next year; she will do fewer events this spring and summer while she works in a Chicago pizzeria to study how sit-down restaurants work.
Mr. Russo has been looking for a permanent space, too. I asked him whether the routine of making pizza in the same place every night might not put him in a creative rut. He said he thought he’d have more time to invent, and started talking about the membrillo he made during quince season and was thinking of putting on a roast-duck pizza.
I’d go to his restaurant to eat that, but it would leave a hole in the pop-up landscape. Whenever I start to worry about how empty the breweries will be if all the pizza makers graduate to the next level, I comfort myself by thinking about all the Oonis and Brevilles in apartments and backyards around the city. At least one of them has to be owned by somebody who has a great dough recipe and wants to take it out on the road.
Traze, trazeus.com.
Tiny Pizza Kitchen, instagram.com/tinypizzakitchen.
The Za Report, thezareport.com.
Happy Bull Pizza, instagram.com/happybullpizza.
Wizard Hat Pizza, instagram.com/wizardhatpizza.
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