Courtesy of La Montanara by Forcella

The rumors are true — a restaurant dedicated to deep-fried pizza is set to open in New York City today.

Bar-goers in Manhattan's Lower East Side already have a carnival of late-night eating options, from Middle Eastern rotisserie shawarma sandwiches to mile-high pastrami-on-ryes and the regular old slice, but now they can add deep-fried pizza to the list.

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La Montanara by Forcella opens tonight at 5 p.m. with a menu that includes four 9-inch fried pizzas (Montanara, Salame Piccante, Funghi, and Marinara), two fried pizza sandwiches (Porchetta and Tartufo), and a small selection of fried appetizers. The pizzas cost between $6 and $8 and the pizza sandwiches cost $10 and $12, respectively.

And this isn't purely a way to capitalize on the American obsession with fried food — pizza fritta is actually an authentic delicacy in Naples, the birthplace of La Montanara chef/owner, Giulio Adriani. In Italy, fried pizza typically comes in two varieties:

1. Two rounds of dough sandwich a filling of sauce, cheese, and toppings before being fried until fully cooked.

2. One round of dough is fried before being topped with sauce, cheese, and toppings and baked like a regular pizza.

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By all accounts, deep-fried and then baked pizza is incredibly light. Chef Jamie Oliver compares the texture of fried pizza crust to the Indian fried lentil-flour chips known as papadam, which taste almost greaseless. Adriani attributes the lightness of his pizza fritta to the cooking technique in general and to the sunflower oil he uses.

Adriani already offers deep-fried pizza at one of his other NYC restaurants, Forcella, but La Montanara will be the only restaurant in the city that exclusively offers up the the deep-fried version.

Are you intrigued? And do you believe a fried pizza could actually be lighter than traditional oven-baked?

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