New York’s Most Inventive Pizzas Are Cooked Upat Pop-Ups

I don’t know of a pizzeria with a fixed-position oven that regularly makes pies with that level of complexity. Mr. Russo has a habit of playing music for the dough while it rises, a two- or three-day process. The musicians who serenaded that night’s batch were named on the menu and included Townes Van Zandt, Cowboy Junkies, Genesis, Sonic Youth and about a dozen more. I don’t know a brick-and-mortar pizzeria that does that, either.

The crusts on most of the pop-up pizzas I’ve tried have far more flavor than what you find at a typical slice joint. Traze’s chewy, breadlike dough is made with sourdough, poolish and a small amount of yeast along with finely chopped herbs. “I thought, the more flavor the better,” Ms. DeSabato said.

Miriam Weiskind, who calls her floating pizzeria the Za Report, lets the dough for her round, 12-inch pies ferment for four days, during which the yeast breaks the starches down into compounds that give the crust a smooth, well-rounded taste and a texture more soft than crisp. At some of her pop-ups she serves only thick, cushiony Sicilian squares; that dough goes through a seven-day process and comes out with a graceful, light-footed texture unusual for Sicilian pizza.

The last Za Report pizza I ate, during a pop-up at Wild East Brewing in Brooklyn, was a round pie baked under a thin layer of hickory-smoked mozzarella, topped with soft red onions and dried cherries. Little ricotta rosettes, blooped out of a pastry tube, filled in the empty spaces. Luxardo cherry liqueur had been stirred into the ricotta, turning it pink and slightly sweet.

On my way out, I told Ms. Weiskind that cherry pizza was somehow exactly what I’d been in the mood to eat.

“I’m glad that I was able to fulfill your pizza dreams this evening,” she said.

They’d been fulfilled in short order, too, because I was one of the night’s first customers. Whenever Za Report or another pop-up draws a serious crowd, their single-deck tabletop ovens can become a bit of a bottleneck, and it’s not unusual to wait about 20 minutes for a pie that cooks in two minutes or less. For work-flow reasons, few pop-up pizzerias offer dessert, although Traze sells burly chocolate-chip cookies that Ms. DeSabato bakes ahead of time.

Single pies at these pop-ups start at around $15 and can go up to $25 or so. When I think about the energy it takes to lug multiple ovens, bins of wet dough and sauce, and multiple toppings, some of them cooked in advance, the prices don’t seem excessive at all.