Domino’s In Brooklyn? Fuhgeddaboudit

You needed the Dining Section to tell you that Domino’s new “Brooklyn Style Pizza” tastes like dookie? Apparently:

At Totonno’s in Coney Island, pizza has been made the same way since 1924. Along with its Brooklyn pizza brethren Di Fara’s, Grimaldi’s and Franny’s, Totonno’s is considered among the best in the country by people who have dedicated their lives to the subject.

We purchased our Domino’s pie just a few blocks away from Totonno’s on Neptune Avenue. That it was handed to us over bulletproof glass turned out to be the most authentically Brooklyn part about it.

Domino’s, which began selling Brooklyn Style pies at its 5,100 United States stores last week, designed the pizza to mimic what most New Yorkers get when they go for a slice. The crust is stretched thinner than that of a standard Domino’s pizza, and the cornmeal cooked into the crust gives it certain crispness. The pieces of pepperoni and wads of sausage the company suggests as toppings are freakishly large.

The slices are so big you can fold them, which, it seems, is the Brooklyn-y part.

. . .

Domino’s uses its standard sauce and a blend of mozzarella and provolone on the Brooklyn Style Pizza. At most slice stores in Brooklyn, you won’t find cornmeal on the crust, and the cheese is usually a blend of shredded part skim and whole milk mozzarella. The typical sauce is usually not as sweet as Domino’s, but it doesn’t compare with Totonno’s.

Brooklyn boosters seem to have a thin skin* about Domino’s new pizza, resorting to trotting out old tropes about the company:

As part of the marketing of [Brooklyn pizza eating] culture, Domino’s has started a couple of contests. One is a drawing for a vintage New York taxi, even though everyone knows it’s almost impossible to hail a cab in Brooklyn.

The rest of the marketing blitz rests on television ads and on a Web site, www.brooklynstylepizza.com, which features characters purchased at the Brooklyn Stereotype Store.

An older Italian woman yells out of a brownstone window. A man with the look of an extra from “The Sopranos” pumps iron on the roof. A Rosie O’Donnell lookalike berates a taxi driver for not folding his slice like a man. And there’s an African-American guy. You can’t hear what he’s saying because the rap music pouring from his car speakers is too loud.

That kind of imagery just grinds at Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president.

“It’s a multinational right-wing company, mass marketing the Brooklyn attitude with obsolete ethnic stereotypes, not to mention flimsy crusts,” he said through a spokesman.

*In this respect, Brooklynites still lag behind Staten Islanders, who are still upset about their recent MTV exposure.