New Ocean City restaurant meets demand for Albert Levy's brick oven pizza, pasta and more

When he first started making pizzas from scratch, Albert Levy was at a laser tag arena, cooking the pies in a conveyor oven.

Levy's pizza was supposed be easy, something for the kids to enjoy, presumably after a few hours spent on the mini-golf course or weaving through infrared beams and neon lights at Game World on 146th Street. 

People would say of the homemade pies, “How do you do that?” “Arcade pizza, really?”

“It’s not arcade,” Levy would respond. “It’s fat Albert’s.”

Soon, Levy’s pizza was becoming famous — problematically famous.  

“I’m selling golf balls up there,” Levy said, gruff and jokingly. “I can’t get yelled at over the phone because I can’t do 20 pizzas.”

That pattern of creating food that went beyond the business’s scope also hit Levy's other Ocean City place, Crab Bag. He’d started offering breakfast there, changing up the Bag’s culinary tone.

And for a joint setup to do seafood platters and barbecued meats, the eggs Benedict and French toast were overwhelming. The pizza at Game World and the breakfast at Crab Bag subsequently ceased.

“I’m the only guy who started breakfast and started pizzas and closed them because they got too busy,” Levy said.

An egg-less, pizza-less void filled the space between the arcade and seafood joint. Levy's customers wanted them both back.

“So we took the breakfast out of Crab Bag, we took the pizza out of the arcade, and then we opened up Albertino’s,” Levy said, sitting in a pastel-red booth at the new brick oven eatery.

A marriage of pizza and breakfast, Albertino’s, which opened in January, renews its vows daily through a simple mantra: small, personal and quality.

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Albertino’s got its name from Levy’s penchant for good crab meat. Crabbers and his Bag employees nicknamed him the crab mobster. Since he always got the best quality crabs, they started calling him Albino.

“Call it Albino’s,” employees would say of the new restaurant.

“I can’t call it Albino’s,” Levy would respond, but he realized he could give the nickname a slight nod by combining it with his first name.

“Albertino’s Brick Oven Eatery,” Levy said. “Right on.”

Levy looked around the empty restaurant on a Monday, a weekend day for many restaurants in the offseason. Even though Albertino’s was closed, a light coat of hot pizza fragrance permeated the place.

A man of high standards (“I’m not going to just sell a piece of junk pizza,” he said), Levy experimented until he got the right combination of simple, from-scratch dishes.

“Have you ever heard people say, ‘Fresh dough made daily’?” Levy asked. “I can’t do that.”

No, he pressed, good dough must be left alone for two days. That’s when the “real Italian flavor” comes out.

“Then you get that tender crisp chew you want with a pizza,” he added.

And the sauce — a simple, unfussy marinara — starts with garlic crackling in olive oil until its sweetness comes out, then a little red pepper flake.

Crush San Marzano tomatoes into the fragrant bath, where basil leaves find a place to float, and let it thicken up a bit — 15-20 minutes, no preservatives, ingredients that “make you feel good,” Levy said.

Then pop the pie in the Albertino's brick oven, where deep brown bits bubble up through the cheese and crisp, chewy crust.

Six pizzas are offered, including the Albertino, topped with fresh mozzarella, fire-roasted peppers, pickled onions, Italian sausage and roasted garlic.

For fungus lovers, the Mushroom Rave offers a mix of oyster, shitake and cremini mushrooms, along with fresh rosemary, provolone, mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano (not pre-grated in a plastic container; it’s the kind of hard cheese that goes for $20 a pound, Levy said.)

There is a create-your-own option for those who do their own thing. 

The pasta, made with semolina flour, is also homemade.                

“I’m a foodie. I like good food,” Levi said. “I really care more about making sure everything is right and super fresh. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work. We’re not taking a dry spaghetti and throwing it in the boiling water. We’re making it.”

For breakfast, the crème brulee French toast starts with brioche bread dipped in custardy egg and cooked to a swirly umber. The toast is topped with a butter-colored vanilla anglaise, berry compote and Chantilly cream, all made in-house.

“We don’t add sugar,” Levy said. “The natural sweetness of the fruit is all you need.”

For umami-heads, Albertino’s offers a nod to Crab Bag with an imperial omelet and lump crab Benedict.

There’s a biscuits and gravy/egg skillet hybrid in the Kitchen Sink — corn bread piled with pork sausage, eggs, Reggiano potatoes, peppers, onions and mozzarella, then slathered in sausage gravy. 

The Kitchen Sink is a bit like Albertino's — it's a mishmash of different ingredients and ideas, somehow coming together in the right dish with the right taste. 

Still, Levy always has his eye on every detail of the new restaurant. 

"It's not good enough," he said. "It's like a painting. You know that little brush stroke needs to be done." 

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If you go

Albertino's Brick Oven Eatery

13117 Coastal Hwy, Ocean City

Hours: Wednesday-Thursday 4 p.m.-close, Friday-Sunday 9 a.m.-close