When you think “Casino Royale,” you think James Bond, right? After a visit to Pinocchio in Pound Ridge that just might change.

The Casino Royale is Pinocchio’s pizza version of Clams Casino — a crispy pie topped with baby clams, slab bacon, tomatoes, white wine, garlic and roasted red peppers. It’s just like the clams appetizer at your favorite checkered-clothed Italian restaurant — only better. A lot better. So good, in fact, that the Casino Royale won the top award for best seafood pizza in the 2008 North Atlantic Pizza Show.

And that’s not the only award Pinocchio has to its name. Bruno DiFabio, who owns Pinocchio, Amore Pizza in Scarsdale and two branches of Pinocchio Pizza in Connecticut, is the 2009 U.S. champion, a six-time World Pizza champion, and he won the Best Traditional Pizza medal at the 2010 World Games at the Las Vegas Pizza Expo. (Yes, there is such a thing.)?

He has 16 medals in all, and has appeared on “Rachael Ray” and “The Today Show.” As if that wasn’t enough, this year, Food & Wine magazine named his restaurant on the West Coast, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, one of the best new Italian spots in the country.

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Predictions for the 2011 Pound Ridge NY real estate market.

Freddie Mac analysts point to five features that they believe will likely characterize the 2011 housing and mortgage markets: 

1. Low mortgage rates. With Fed observers expecting the central bank to keep the federal funds rate at its current target range of 0 percent to 0.25 percent for most (or all) of 2011, relatively low mortgage rates will be a feature of the 2011 mortgage market. Thirty-year fixed-rate loans are likely to remain below 5 percent throughout the year, and initial rates of 5/1 hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages will likely remain below 4 percent in 2011. 

.2. Prices have hit bottom. House prices are likely to begin a gradual, but sustained recovery in the second half of 2011.  

3. Housing will remain affordable. With affordability high, many first-time buyers will be attracted to the housing market in the New Year, likely translating into more home sales in 2011 than in 2010. 

4. Refinances will dwindle. Many eligible borrowers have already refinanced and the federal Making Home Affordable  refinance program is expiring on June 30. While fixed-rate loans are likely to remain low, they will move up gradually, making it even less likely that refinances will be attractive to most home owners 

5. Delinquency rates will decline. Based on the last several business cycles, the share of loans that are 90 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure proceedings — known as the “seriously delinquent rate” — generally crests within a year of the start of the recovery in payroll employment, and this economic recovery appears to fit within that pattern. Payrolls began to rise last January, and by the spring the seriously delinquent rate had begun to fall. 

Source: Freddie Mac (12/09/2010)

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FOUR residences in Westchester County — two multifamily and two single-family homes — are among 13 winners of the 2010 Design Awards given every year for the past 20 by the 600-member Westchester-Hudson Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The awards, conferred late last month at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, acknowledge “design excellence and the best architecture recently produced in the chapter area or by a chapter member,” said Raymond Beeler, a Pelham architect and a chairman of the awards committee.

Thematically they seem to share a focus on the environment, and the safest, most practical ways to live within it. The four structures are:

FLOOD HOUSE, MAMARONECK

This 1,700-square-foot two-family house near Long Island Sound was built by Habitat for Humanity for a mother and daughter who lost their 1940s single-family cottage when the Mamaroneck River flooded in April 2007.

Built on concrete piers, the new residence was designed by Jason Taylor, the principal of the J. Taylor Design Group in New Rochelle, and Nick Viazzo, an associate, to rise above floodwaters, to resist hurricane-force winds and to be accessible to persons with disabilities. It uses L- and I-shaped piers as both stilts and buttresses against wind.

“This is a very different-looking house for this neighborhood,” Mr. Taylor said, alluding to the piers. “It looks like something you might find along a beach or perched beside a lake. But it actually sits along a normal suburban street with your standard mix of traditional-style homes.” He used cedar shingles and paint colors that blend with nearby houses.

Each half of the two-family has two bedrooms, a bath and a large living-dining area with a kitchen. Because one of the occupants is elderly, it has an elevator that serves both sides.

Mr. Taylor incorporated energy-efficient and sustainable elements into the house. But it is not certified by the United States Green Building Council as adhering to standards known as LEED (for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), he said, because “that entails a lot of record-keeping and a LEED coordinator, which makes it too expensive.” The project, using volunteer labor, cost $250,000.

RIVER TOWN HOUSE, HASTINGS

Christina Griffin, an architect in Hastings-on-Hudson, converted a 1910 railroad flat building into two condominiums, in accordance with the highest level of LEED certification. The structure has thermal panels and is designed to harvest and recycle rainwater, among other things. The three-story building — with glass walls and roof decks at each level — overlooks the Hudson River, the Metro-North railroad tracks and remnants of factories where its original occupants worked.

The architect owns the building. The condos, each with three bedrooms, are both listed at $999,000 and have been on the market for a year. Ms. Griffin questioned whether a market exists for LEED construction. “People say they like the idea of a green house,” she said, “but they don’t want to pay more for one, especially in the current real estate market.”

She said that even though prices for many materials used in green construction had come down in the past 12 months, the condos were far more expensive to build than if she had not sought LEED Platinum certification, the highest level. The cost of the project, including purchase of the land, was $1.3 million.

LINK HOUSE, POUND RIDGE

The three-bedroom residence in Pound Ridge, by Carol Kurth of Bedford, is called Link House in part because it seeks to link 21st-century advances with a midcentury-style aesthetic. One of Ms. Kurth’s first projects, dating to 1983, it has since been occupied and renovated by five different owners.

She was commissioned by the current owners, a retired couple, to return the house to its origins, and to add a guest suite and a large music room.

A trend in renovating today, especially when it comes to modern houses built in the last century, is to simplify, creating what Ms. Kurth describes as a “spa-like serenity.” For example, the bathrooms in the Link House have cedar walls, ivory stone countertops and a floor that resembles concrete — “very natural,” she said, “without any veining or swirling patterns.”

Ms. Kurth observed that in the current climate there are decidedly fewer commissions for residential construction, but that “what we’re doing a lot of these days is breathing new life into homes.”

While declining to provide specifics, the owners said the renovation cost less than $400,000.

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