So, last weekend, returning from a trip to our little place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, we needed some late afternoon eats. We stopped at Alfonsos 202 in Flemington, New Jersey, usually a worthwhile stop for some fresh salad, a pasta, and a personal-size pizza. Not a wonderful pie, but an entirely acceptable pie.
Well, last week's pie was dreck. Sauce: bland. Crust: limp. Cheese: excessive and tasteless.
I didn't finish it. The wife agreed: This one's for the trash bin.
As I left, I found myself thinking: Do I need a break from pizza (remember, I answered "once a week" to that poll back in May)? I just felt as if I didn't want to see pizza for awhile.
Fortunately, that aversion lasted exactly a week. Last evening, my daughter, son, and I had a wonderful visit to Toby's Public House, where the cremini mushroom pie was just what the doctor ordered and restored my faith in good pizza.
I know you eat pizza (and burgers) for a living, but have you ever had a slice that made you feel as if you had chosen the wrong profession? And how long did it take for you to get back on the horse, so to speak?
First, no and yes. I have never really eaten a slice that threw me completely off my game. If I get a bad slice, I try to eat my way through the pain, finish a few bites, and then discretely find a way to dispose of it so the pizzeria owner doesn't see me binning the product he may or may not have put some love into. (Strategy: If the clerk has double-plated the slice, I usually sandwich the dregs between the paper plates and then dump it all.)
That said, I do have pizza ups and downs. It's like a roller coaster. When I started doing Slice, I never thought I would burn out on pizza, but my first real slice crisis came at the end of October 2004. Judging in the Best of Long Island Pizza contest is what started the downward spiral. It was my first time serving as a food judge, and I didn't know how to pace myself. So after eating bits of 25 different slices (I actually ate the first two slices completely), I felt like Richard Pryor in Brewster's Millions.
Not long after that, there were a number of high-profile pizzeria openings--Una Pizza Napoletana and Fornino among them--that demanded my attention. By mid-November 2004, I did not want to look at a slice of pizza for a long time.
It usually takes a couple months before my pizza mojo comes back. Right now I think I'm on a pizza high, and my enthusiasm is strong.
The Slice Override
What you did at Toby's Public House is what I like to call a "slice override." You've had such bad pizza that you need to get a slice or pie ASAP from somewhere you can rely on. Ed Levine did this recently after he had some unsatisfactory pies at Angelina Pizzabar--he immediately went to Sal and Carmine's.
Bass Ackward
You say, "... if you had chosen the wrong profession...." But the weird thing is that I really didn't choose this profession but sort of luckily fell ass backward into it. I was just goofing around doing Slice and then AHT, and a few years after I started them, along comes Ed Levine with the Serious Eats thing and BAM! next thing I know, I'm working as the managing editor for SE and Slice and AHT are rolled up into it.
That makes it all the more imperative that I eat through the pain and maintain an enthusiasm for pizza even if I feel a trough coming on. When Slice was just an indie one-man operation, I had the luxury of not blogging for a while until the mojo came back. Now, I have to somehow switch things up and make pizza interesting for myself again if things start to go south. Luckily, I haven't had a trough in a while--even though I have sometimes been at the mercy of time (i.e., not enough of it to eat/blog all the pizza I want to).
Hasta la ...
Last, I see that you have appropriated my catchphrase in signing off. You will be hearing from my lawyer.*
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So, last weekend, returning from a trip to our little place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, we needed some late afternoon eats. We stopped at Alfonsos 202 in Flemington, New Jersey, usually a worthwhile stop for some fresh salad, a pasta, and a personal-size pizza. Not a wonderful pie, but an entirely acceptable pie.
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