What follows is a mish-mash of some of our favorite posts, our top-choice pizzerias, books we like and think you should read, and other fun slice-and-pie miscellanea. Buon appetito!
If you're a longtime Slice reader, you've heard bits of this site's origin story (ad nauseam) over the years. In a nutshell, when I first moved to New York City in the summer of 2000, I ate pizza almost every day for six months or so. I was broke, it was cheap, and, well, like I needed an excuse to go nuts here in Pizza Mecca.
At first, all the pizza here tasted good to me. But after a few months, my palate became more refined, and I became more discerning. I finally started getting a crazy notion that maybe not every slice I was eating was good. And once I did, I turned to the web to help me find pies and slices worthy of eating. One of the first hardcore pizza documents I found was eGullet co-founder Steven A. Shaw's "Pizza Guide." This was pre-eGullet, when Stephen was publishing a site called fat-guy.com.
The introduction, "Where Has All the Good Pizza Gone?" confirmed my suspicion that three-quarters of the pizza I was eating was just plain bad:
The conventional wisdom—that you can walk into any New York pizza shop, grab a slice, and confidently assume that it will be pretty good—is manifestly no longer true (if it ever was), and it should come as no surprise to any longtime New Yorker not living in denial (though it might be news to tourists and newcomers) to hear that pizza in New York today is, overall, terrible.
Indeed, this was news to me. And so I devoured Shaw's guide, with its then-current list of some of the best pizzerias in the city, along with thoughts on judging pizza, and the first hints at the strange lexicon of the pizza world I was about to dive head-first into ("garbage pie" being a memorable term).
Chicago Upstart Great Lake Has Country's Best Pizza
Alan Richman (left) and Lucali proprietor-pizzaiolo Mark Iacono (right) hold a copy of the June 2009 issue of "GQ" in front of Iacono's Lucali (the No. 2 pizza in the U.S.) at press event celebrating the story's May 19 publication. The issue contains Richman's "American Pie," a list of the top 25 pizzerias in the country.
The story is much too monumental to really do justice here. (Richman sampled 386 pizzas at 109 different pizzerias.) Go read it for yourself on GQ.com—or do yourself a favor and buy the magazine on the newsstand. It comes out tomorrow (May 19). For pizza freaks, this one really is worth having in print. Here are the salient points:
Italians Do Pizza Wrong; the U.S. Gets It Oh So Right
I totally agree with Richman here:
Pizza was created by the Italians—or maybe by the Greeks, who brought it to Naples, but let’s not pile on the bad news. Right now it justly belongs to us. We care more about it. We eat more of it, and unlike the Italians, we appreciate it at dinner, at lunch, and at breakfast, when we have it cold, standing up, to make hangovers go away. Italians don’t really understand pizza. They think of it as knife-and-fork food, best after the sun goes down.
Pizza isn’t as fundamental to Italy as it is to America. Over there, it plays a secondary role to pasta, risotto, and polenta. To be candid, I think they could do without it. Not us. Over here, it’s one of the few foreign foods we’ve embraced wholeheartedly, made entirely our own.
Oh, snap. Suck it, Italy. [More analysis, after the jump.]
Clockwise from top left: You don't see neon signs like this one as much these days, sadly. Maria's dining room is a trip, full of religious iconography, Christmas lights, and those old Tiffany-style lampshades you often find in Midwestern bars of a certain era. (Click top two pictures for larger view.) The "Special": cheese, sausage, mushrooms, and onions.
Maria's Pizza
5025 West Forest Home Avenue, Milwaukee WI 53219 (near S. 51st Street; map); 414-543-4606 The Skinny: Thin- and flaky-crusted, these pizzas are loaded with toppings until they can take no more then served on trays far too small for their cheesy, delicious bounty. Come hungry but not too hungry. Wait time from order is about an hour. You won't go wrong with the "Special" pizza—sausage, mushrooms, and onions Oven Type: Four Blodgett gas-fired deck ovens Price: Special, $16.25 for large, $15 small; but, please, just get the large Notes: Cash only; no delivery; no alcohol, no beer (Yeah, surprising for Milwaukee, right?) Hours: Tues.–Sun., 4 to 10 p.m.; Sat., 4 to 11 p.m.; closed Mondays
Maria's Pizza is soul food. Not in the traditional sense, of course—there are no collard-green or barbecue pizzas on the menu at this 52-year-old Milwaukee institution.
And while scads of religious iconography hangs on the wood-paneled walls, making oblique reference to the life of the soul, that's only part of it.
Maria's brand of soul derives mostly from the love, hard work, and comfortable familiarity of the second- and third-generation family members who staff the place, roaming the aisles in their red T-shirts, taking orders and bringing hungry Milwaukeeans rectangular trays of oblong pizzas that overhang the serving platters by several inches.
Maria Traxel founded Maria's Pizza in 1957, using her own recipe and roping her three kids—Ronnie, Bonnie, and Mickey—into working in the joint. And work they did. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Maria didn't believe in vacations, so when you go, you'll always see a familiar face. I've been going to Maria's off and on since childhood (while visiting family in Milwaukee) and on Saturday night recognized Bonnie Crivello, with her signature blond bouffant and red dress, still roaming the dining room after all these years. Sadly, her sister, Mickey Story, died in 2006. Prior to that, you'd go and your waitress would either be "the blond one" or "the brunette"—or one of Mickey's daughters.
Nice to see Minneapolis's Aaron Landryget some props for his pizza-blogging. His site, found at s4xton.com, isn't primarily about pizza, but he attacks this dear-to-my-heart subject with great passion. He's got a number of reviews from his hometown, a roundup from Kentucky as well as a nice selection from visits to New York City and D.C.
I've had a lot on Slice lately about Scott's Pizza Tours, but you know, there's another pizza tour out there, one that's been around for a bit longer and that takes folks through perhaps the best pizza borough* in the city. And that tour, my friends, is Tony Muia's A Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour.
Muia started his tour in 2005 and has been taking pizza-hungry folks around Kings County ever since, mixing stops at Grimaldi's and L & B Spumoni Gardens with spin around neighborhoods such as Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst. It's thanks to Muia that I can point out the house where Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito character gets whacked in Goodfellas (it's in Bay Ridge) and that I know which pizzeria John Travolta's Tony Manero buys two slices from, eating them as a double-decker, in Saturday Night Fever (Lenny's in Bensonhurst).
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM
I'm obsessing over this Japanese stovetop pizza oven that looks like it would replicate the ideal baking conditions of a traditional Italian pizza oven. I say "looks like" because, honestly, could this thing really work? I have my doubts. Not to mention that the pies that come out look incredibly small.
I love this pizza-themed Lego vignette (left) by "Big Daddy" Nelson, a Hawaii-based Lego ambassador. Looks like it was made with pieces from the Lego Pizza to Go set (No. 6350), which is now discontinued and super hard to get. Trolling through his Flickr photos, I also found this playful representation of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi.
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 18, 2007 at 6:00 AM
Or, 'This Is Where You're Ordering Pizza From Now, Park Slope'
Peppe's Pizza & Panini
Address: 597 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215 (b/n 17th and 18th streets, Park Slope; map) Phone: 718-788-7333 Website:peppepizzapanini.com Oven Type: Gas-fired, steel-deck oven Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily Payment: Cash and cards Price: $16 for large plain pie (18 inches); $12 for small (12 inches) Recommended Options: Order the plain pie and ask for a mixture of regular mozz, fresh mozz, and the imported Pecorino-Romano. The Skinny: This newcomer to the Park Slope pizza scene is being compared to Di Fara, and while that side-by-side is a little premature, it offers a stand-up pie that's miles beyond that of any conventional-oven pizzeria currently operating in the neighborhood. If you live in the Slope, this is your new go-to delivery pizzeria.
A whole pie with fior di latte (fresh mozzarella). The lighting in my kitchen blows, so this doesn't look as good as it tastes.
Even so, apart from visits to Franny's on special occasions or delivery orders placed solely to stave off hunger when all other late-night options are closed, I hardly look forward to eating pizza in the neighborhood.
Enter Peppe's Pizza & Panini, which actually has me excited again about Park Slope pies and slices.
So the Friday after Thanksgiving, Ed Levine emails me some message about how he's going a pizza tour with Bob Kinkead (of Kinkead's in D.C.) and Mark Furstenberg (founder of the BreadLine and now a baking consultant and author).
Ed's all like, "These guys are totally serious about pizza and bread. We're going to Franny's ..." Blah blah blah. And I'm like, "Where's my invite, yo? What am I, chopped liver?" Whatevs. I had plans, anyway. I just wanted a chance to turn down the invite.
Anyway, on Monday, Ed's all like, "You have to see this crazy spreadsheet they had for evaluating and ranking pizza. It was insane!"
Ed asked Kinkead to send a copy, which he did. And that's what you're looking at above. Check that thing out! Kinkead says, "I have included The rubric we showed you and another score card I made [after the jump], which we didn't end up using. I still have not gotten around to tallying up and writing down our conclusions, but I'll send it when I do. There were 14 places total."
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 20, 2007 at 1:00 AM
Slice reader and graphic designer Norman H. manages to combine the concepts of coal-oven pizza and stoking a coal-fire in a brilliant little creation that's at once novel and obvious in a why-didn't-anyone-think-of-it-before way. Thanks, Norman!
Frankie and Mary Lou Cappezza, the former owners of the now-closed Corona Heights Pork Store, are my culinary E. F. Huttons. When they talk, I listen. So when they told me I had to check out Rose & Joe Italian Bakery in their old Astoria stomping grounds, I wasted no time getting there.
As usual, they were right. Rose & Joe's wondrous braided semolina bread has plenty of character and flavor. But as good as the bread is here, Rose & Joe's ultimate triumph is their Sicilian pizza.
In the back of the bakery a young woman sells slices: plain, broccoli, and sausage. The crust is crisp, slightly doughy, and surprisingly light. So don't thank me when you bite into your first slice of Rose & Joe's pizza. Thank Frankie and Mary Lou.
Most Sicilian pizza is just too thick for me, but Rizzo's in Astoria is the home of the wondrous thin-crust Sicilian slice. For 40 years, Joe Rizzo has been making thin-crust Sicilian pizza the way his father learned in Sicily. That means he uses homemade sauce (slightly sweet), full-cream mozzarella that lies ever so gently on top of the light—almost demure—crust, and just enough Romano cheese to give his pizza a little zing.
When you walk into Rizzo's, all you'll see on the counter are rectangular trays of fresh-out-of-the-oven Sicilian pizza. After years of maintaining Sicilian-only pizza purity, Rizzo's is now making conventional Neapolitan pizza. I can't tell you how it is, though, because I refuse to order it on general principle—I come here for the Sicilian slice only.
Rizzo's
Address: 30-13 Steinway Street, Astoria NY 11103 (Queens, between City Avenue and Dunway Street; map) Phone: 718-721-9862
At Denino's, the pizza box says it all: "In Crust We Trust."
They should trust their crust, because it is light and crisp and pliant.
Denino's is a classic red-brick tavern pizzeria (with a separate dining room), but it is just as welcoming to kids after a little league game as it is to middle-aged softball players coming in for a pie and a brew after a game.
I'm crazy about Denino's sausage pie, which features fine sweet Italian sausage made fresh every day by a local butcher. If you want to go vegetarian, try the white pie, made with mozzarella, onions, fresh garlic, and a splash of olive oil.
After 53 years, you might think the Denino family has gotten bored with making pizza. Not so, according to third-generation co-owner Michael Denino: "We still put our heart and soul into every pie."
Denino's
Address: 524 Richmond Avenue, Staten Island NY 10302 (at Hooker Place; map) Phone: 718-442-9401 Related: All Denino's entries on Slice
Michael Bauer, food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, continues his Pizza Friday series on his blog Between Meals with a trip to Pizzaiolo in Oakland, California. Pizzaiolo makes a Neapolitan-style pizza and is owned and helmed by Charlie Hallowell, a longtime pizza-maker at Alice Waters's famed Chez Panisse:
Bauer says:
Crust: The thin crust has well-formed blisters that shatter into a dozen pieces on contact, and a chewiness that gives the jaw a good workout.
Pizza tried: The classic Margherita has a restrained swipe of savory tomato sauce, pools of buttery mozzarella and shards of intensely flavored basil. We also tried a pizza with chunks of ground sausage, basil, and orange and yellow gypsy peppers, enhanced with a last minute drizzle of fragrant olive oil.
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