THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Pulino's Bar & Pizzeria

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Pulino's Bar & Pizzeria Restaurant Review:

Keith McNally has managed to build a restaurant empire based on good food plus see-and-be-seen exclusivity. Perhaps his most casual restaurant in his cache is Pulino’s, anchored brightly on the corner of Houston Street and Bowery. McNally made news when he brought chef Nate Appleman (late of San Francisco’s A16) across the country to head the kitchen. It didn't work. Appleman is now gone but Pulino's still leaves a lot to be desired. The interior is a near carbon copy of McNally’s Lower East Side favorite Schiller’s Liquor Bar, with plenty of tile and bottle-clad walls. The main menu item, pizza, comes thin, more Roman than Neapolitan, and in both classic and non-traditional forms. There’s the margherita, lacking the bold tanginess of the tomato sauce, and the slightly better porchetta, tomato, onion and cheese pie, among a dozen or so others. The menu also features a small handful of pasta dishes and salads. With so much outstanding pizza competition in the city, Pulino’s barely registers. That is, unless you’re willing to eat mediocre pizza as a trade off for being seen there.