At New York’s Best Pizza in Arlington, ordering a calzone comes with a dilemma, because the next question from behind the counter is: regular or giant size?
Owner José Mosqueda makes a giant calzone that takes the classic Italian idea of stuffed dough folded into a half-moon shape to the extreme. It’s big. Very big. This is the kind of food that arrives at the table and makes people pull out their phones before cutting into it.
“We started making this giant calzone this year, and a video on social media made this dish famous. Now a lot of people come in asking for it,” Mosqueda said. “Before, we barely sold any because I never promoted it, but now it’s gone viral.”
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The giant calzone measures 28 inches and is nearly impossible to lift without the weight ofits filling breaking it in half. Mosqueda makes it with pepperoni, beef sausage, mozzarella and ricotta, all wrapped in dough he makes from scratch at the restaurant. It goes into the oven and comes out golden brown before getting a generous dusting of Parmesan, ready for diners to dig in, preferably with some help.
The giant calzone costs $35.99 and can feed six to eight people. It would take about eight of Mosqueda’s regular calzones to reach roughly the same size.
The customers coming to try it don’t necessarily live nearby. Mosqueda remembers that when the video started going viral, he received a call from someone in San Antonio who wanted to make sure the calzone would be available and asked to make a reservation.
But New York’s Best Pizza doesn’t take reservations. You show up, find a table or wait for one, and order. After all, the giant calzone is still pizzeria food, so everything is ordered and cooked on the spot.
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Mosqueda said the idea of making food in exaggerated proportions came during a family trip to Galveston. His daughters wanted pizza, and when they walked into a restaurant, he discovered pizzas much larger than the ones he was making back home. So when he returned to Arlington, he ordered oversized pans online and started experimenting.
That led to the giant pizzas, also sold at the restaurant, and eventually, the giant calzone. And Mosqueda has another supersized creation in mind, though he didn’t disclose what it is.
“There are a lot of things you can do with this dough,” he said.
A decades-long story
Behind those experiments and oversized dishes is a story decades in the making. Mosqueda was born in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, considered the birthplace of Mexican independence.
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As a teenager, about 30 years ago, he immigrated to the United States without having finished elementary school. He started out in construction, but when the weather made outdoor work impossible, he found a job washing dishes at a pizzeria.
There he learned that the more he knew how to do, the more he could earn. Eventually, he learned food prep, then cooking, customer service, answering phones and taking orders. When he realized he needed to speak English, he taught himself by watching movies and talking to people.
He spent a decade working at the pizzeria and eventually became responsible for the entire operation. It was the customers who encouraged him to open a place of his own.
After hearing “you can do it” enough times, he decided to find out.
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New York’s Best Pizza opened in Arlington in 2014. Mosqueda credits the restaurant’s 12 years in business to his decision to stick with quality ingredients, even when that means sacrificing some profit. The cheese, for example, arrives in blocks and is shredded at the restaurant, rather than being preshredded.
“I’d rather spend a little more and have people keep coming back because the product is good,” Mosqueda said. “Because if a customer leaves satisfied, they’ll always bring more people back to eat here.”
New York’s Best Pizza is at 2107 Sherry St, Arlington. nybestpizzeria.com
