ALLEN – How do you bring Brooklyn to Dallas' far-reaching northern suburbs? With some difficulty.

Photos by VERNON BRYANT/DMN

A margherita pizza

Grimaldi's Pizzeria is an offshoot of the hallowed original underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Now the proprietors keep trying to clone this shrine of Neapolitan-style pies, with outposts in Arizona and Nevada as well as Texas.

If the original Texas location in Dallas' West Village was a little out of focus compared with the New York mecca, this newer one in Allen is blurrier yet. The Dallas store has continued to get better in the months since it opened, so we can hope the same for this one.

Inside, it's a Disney-fied version of a New York hangout, with subway signs over the bar. It's hard to maintain even a semblance of illusion, though, in the trendy new mixed-used development Watters Creek, with valet parkers out front and a balcony that overlooks a little concrete-locked pond. (That waterfowl and her babies are sculpture, not nature: Nothing's quite real in this cross between a new downtown and a shopping mall.)

Already, the Allen locale seems busier than the Dallas one. That's because the pizza is very likely the best for many miles around. It's still not always as good as it ought to be, though.

The style of pie that made Grimaldi's famous adapts the classic Neapolitan recipe only slightly to Italian-American tastes. Baked in a coal-fired, rather than wood-fired, oven, the pizzas are built on a thin crust that should ideally be crisp but not tough. The slightly charred surface should smack of the fire without tasting burned. The dough should have the rich flavor that comes from long, slow rising of the yeast.

At the Allen location, the crusts look perfect and hold just the right amount of slightly spicy tomato sauce and beautiful house-made mozzarella, adorned with a few scorched leaves of fresh basil. Sadly, most of the pies we sampled tended toward the limp and soggy – and it wasn't as if we went all out in piling on the toppings. Mostly it was just the tangy little rectangles of pepperoni or the Italian sausage (spiked with a little too much fennel in typical fashion, one concession to Americanized tastes). Even when we asked for a pizza cooked extra-crisp, the thing wobbled a bit. We kept ogling slices at neighboring tables that seemed closer to the ideal of firmness and tender crunch.

The regular pies with the house-made tomato sauce remain our favorites here, though the white pizzas (cheese and garlic) and the pesto versions are good for their kind. (We found the grilled chicken cubes on the pesto one dry and tasteless, however.)

The only real competition for the standard variety is the calzone, which is a round of dough folded over a filling of mozzarella and marvelously creamy ricotta (plus whatever extras you want to spring for). They bring these dark half-

moons to the table already sliced, with a dish of tomato sauce you can add to taste. The molten insides are so rich you'd swear besciamella sauce is part of the mix – but apparently, not so. Best of all, the crust doesn't get soggy at all, and there's so much of it to chew on.

The pies are pretty much what there is at Grimaldi's. A simple antipasto includes rolled slices of salami, a hunk of that fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, green and black olives and some greens. Both Mediterranean and Caesar salads are fresh and huge; even the small sizes spill over the platters and can feed two or three.

The most pleasant surprise at Grimaldi's comes from the small selection of desserts, all worth the substantial intake of calories. Best are the fresh-

baked New York-style cheesecake, with that authentic texture that's slightly dry and cakey, and the cannoli, with its brittle fried shell and moist ricotta filling, sprinkled with tiny chocolate chips.

One last word about the service: In many good suburban restaurants, the hosts and servers seem too young and inexperienced for the establishment's ambitions. Here the personnel look decidedly fresh-faced, but appearances can be deceiving: Some of these folks are among the savviest and most helpful around.

Food {star}{star}{star}

Service {star}{star}{star}

Atmosphere {star}{star}

Price: $-$$ (pizzas $9 to $17, plus toppings)

Address: Watters Creek,

836 Market St., Allen

Phone: 214-383-9703

Web site: www.patsygrimaldis.com

Hours: Sunday-Thursday

11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday- Saturday 11 a.m. to midnight

Credit cards: All major

Wheelchair accessible: Yes

Smoking area: No

Alcohol: Full bar