Cucina Alba, an Italian restaurant in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, is using the law of scarcity to great effect. Each Monday night, chef Adam Leonti makes 15 Margherita pizzas—and that’s it. The restaurant plugs them on social media and alerts customers that they are first-come-first-serve until all 15 pies are gone. The promotion has helped turn a traditionally slow night at Cucina Alba into a rather busy one.
“I would say the crowd has over doubled on Mondays [as a result],” Leonti told the New York Post.
The Post said Cucina Alba offers “the city’s most exclusive pizza,” noting that they typically sell out in about an hour. One customer who was lucky enough to snag one said he “[hopes] they make more pizzas,” adding, “I’d come every Monday.”
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The pizzas served at Cucina Alba are small, at just 12”, and will run you $28. They are, rather notably, served on a Versace platter that, according to the Post, retails for around $500. The Versace-of-it-all is meant to evoke pizza’s Neapolitan heritage, but make no mistake: Leonti’s pizza, even if it’s just 12”, is as New York as it gets. (Leonti told the Post he is partial to Sal & Carmine’s on the Upper West Side, which served as inspiration for his own pizza.)
A well-known bread baker, Leonti’s pizza-making process starts with an “ultra-hydrated” version of the sourdough recipe he’s perfected across 15 years. His tomato sauce is made from fresh tomatoes, and each pizza is topped with three different types of mozzarella cheese. The pies are also twice-baked in a Roman-style Castelli oven to stave off any floppiness.
“I was thinking about my favorite pizzas, [which are] pizzas by the slice,” Leonti told the Post. “If you get pizza to order, a whole pizza, it’s never as crispy as pizza by the slice because they get that second bake. So I wanted to bake a pizza twice, whole, so that it wouldn’t dry out. So I had to make it super high hydration.”
As good as the pizza is, Leonti said he has no plans to start cooking more than 15 pizzas, or serving them a different night of the week. For one thing, setting a limit is obviously working—as was noted, his Monday sales have doubled.
“We talked about the idea of pizza and how fun it is to have something that you can’t always have,” Leonti told the Post. But he said it wouldn’t really be possible to make his pizzas at volume considering how time-intensive the process is.
To ensure customers coming in for pizza don’t leave with a side of FOMO, Leonti has begun taking reservations for the following Monday. After all, it was meant to be something fun that people could enjoy once per week—not some massive money-making scheme, he said.
“In New York, luxury is everywhere—I think it is interesting for luxury to be something that’s not expensive … we’re not trying to do a $50 pizza here,” he said.
