Posted by correspondent, April 26, 2006 at 9:22 PM
Honey P. is a contributor at our sister site, A Hamburger Today. She's also a one-time resident of The K.C., where her parents still live. She filed this report while on a recent trip to visit them.
SPIN NEAPOLITAN PIZZA
Location: 6541 West 119th Street, Overland Park KS 66209 (b/n Metcalf and Nall) [map]
Phone: 913-451-SPIN (7746); carry-out only
Website: spinpizza.com
BY HONEY P. .::. When Papa P. said, "I'll tell you where to get the best pizza," on a recent Friday night, you can bet lil' Honey was all ears. (Yeah, so what I chill with the 'rents on weekends, nothing wrong with that, right?) Point was, Papa knows pizza, and although he lives in The K.C., where the beef is a lot easier to come by than a decent pie, he does his best to satisfy his insatiable crunchy, salty, tomato-topped needs.
Papa's vote was for Spin! Neapolitan Pizza. Not having lived in suburban Kansas City for the last 10 years, the only slice I knew Dad was cool with came from Il Trullo. Papa says what? We set our game plan in action: Mama downloaded the menu, we placed a phone order, and in 15 minutes we were picking up gourmet pies from the nearby strip mall that houses Spin. (Carry-out only; Spin does not deliver.)
Spin offers a veritable Gourmet Garage of choices, at least for these parts, but purist Pa went for pepperoni while Ma and I gloated over our much tastier "patate," topped with a layer of roasted potatoes and red peppers, goat cheese, scallions, and crispy pancetta. Although I prefer razor-thin potato slices on pizza, the half-inch-thick medallions, enveloped in garlickly goodness, melted right into the savory mess of toppings. Potato, we hardly knew ye. The patate came from the "Pizza Bianca" portion of the menu, so if you think a pie needs sauce, think again.
My only complaints are with the excess of olive oil (seems the crust is brushed with it) and the lack of charring on the underside of the pizza (maybe they should turn the heat up on those stone-lined ovens). It's hard to criticize though with such flavored toppings and crust. (Remember, you're in the K.C., bitch.) Plus, a smattering of tiny curls of Parmesan completes each pie, whether it's a "rossa" or "bianca" special, a sign that the master of the marble countertop knows a true finish.
Spin is not the cheapest. Their 12-inchers average $10.50, and additional toppings cost $1. And don't expect any two-for-one Domino's deals. However, as quality becomes just as important as quantity on take-out night with the fam, Spin-style pizza should be just what you order.
This review was written by a Slice correspondent. If you would like to submit a review to Slice, click here.
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 24, 2005 at 10:45 AM
Previously on The K.C.: When last I left you, I was clutching my stomach, agonizing over the dearth of good pizza in Kansas City, a.k.a. "The K.C." I had visited three pizzerias in the course of two days and had promised to report on them. Here is the first of those reports.
Some dude once wrote that you can't go home again. But that's exactly where I found myself last week, sort of, after touching down in Kansas City and meeting Ma and Pa Slice at the baggage claim carousel.
The last time a Slice staffer visited The K.C. was in September, when E-Rock reviewed D'Bronx, a perennial Kansas City favorite. It's easy to see why people love this place. It's a friendly joint with an easygoing neighborhood feel to it, high pressed-tin ceilings, large windows, big booths, and plenty of tables. The prep-station counter front facing the dining area is plastered with band and event flyers, making it a sort of pizzeria-cum-community-bulletin-board. And the deli-style sandwiches are excellent.
Having not had D'Bronx since high school days, E-Rock's write-up wasn't enough for me and I wanted to see if the place lived up to my fond memories of it, when friends and I would stop by for a slice after browsing the record stores in the area—Recycled Sounds and Music Exchange and the now-defunct shops Penny Lane and Spiny Norman's.
Unfortunately, the pizza pie that this reporter had there on the way home from the ever-so-far-flung Kansas City International Airport was not quite as good as E-Rock's report or as good as the sandwiches there. While the crust was crisp and flexible, our sausage-and-onion pie was so laden with cheese that the top strata of its bready foundation was close to raw in places. And the cheese blanket was so heavy that Ma and Pa Slice and I were feeling full after only one piece. Ma Slice bowed out at two, leaving Pa and I to force down three slices each, as we were in a curious predicament—we didn't want to take any of this pie home as leftover but didn't want to waste food.
Later that night, I visited KC rocker Andy Graham, the impetus of my KC-Austin trip, and he asked, "Why'd you go there? E-Rock already reviewed that place!"
"Andy," I said, "I wanted to see if I could prove Mr. Wolfe wrong."
Unfortunately, this learned man was quite correct: You can't go home again.
Next time, on The K.C.: Slice visits Pizza 51, a gas-station-turned-pizzeria at 51st and Oak in Kansas City, Missouri.
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 15, 2005 at 10:30 AM
This is how it's done in Kansas City:
From Left: A sausage-and-onion pie from D'Bronx. A plain slice from Pizza 51. A plain slice from Joe's.
Remember on The O.C., before Luke turned nice, how he kicked Ryan's ass on the beach before delivering the lines that serve as the title and lede of this post?
After eating pizza here in The K.C., I feel a bit like Ryan, rolling in the sand, clutching my stomach—with one notable exception so far.
On the drive to my parents' house from the airport, we stopped at D'Bronx. E-Rock has already reviewed D'Bronx, so I won't go into much detail here but to say I'd stay away from it for pizza. The sauce was on the sour side and the dough loaded with so much cheese that the dough was raw in patches on the top side. After two slices, both my pops and I were stuffed and had to force down a third each just to finish the pie. But I remember the deli sandwiches from youthful days spent record shopping in the area. Now those were good. I'd skip the pie and stick to them, as they're what really make this airy, high-ceilinged, neighborhood place shine.
After D'Bronx, it would be hours before I'd have enough room to cram down more pizza, so the folks and I drove around The K.C., taking in the sights. They had just moved back from Florida, and in the three years they'd lived down in the FLA, Kansas City and its suburbs had changed immensely. You can imagine how different it was for me, then, having been away—with only quick trips back here and there—for, oh, about 13 years now. Pop Slice drove while Ma Slice pointed out the various big-box retail complexes going in on almost every major intersection in the southern suburbs. They were all pretty much the same, the difference being whether this one featured a Petco vs. a Petsmart or a Super Wal-Mart vs. a SuperTarget.
But, hey: Who's complaining? At least one-third of these developments had a Culver's under construction, slated to "open soon."
What's a Culver's, you ask? Why, it's only home to the ButterBurger, which, while not pizza, was the only thing I could manage to fit in my stomach for the rest of the day Saturday. Culver's use of fresh ingredients with burgers made to order brings to mind the In-N-Out Burger philosophy. Oh, and Culver's, based in Sauk City, Wisconsin, also makes some delicious frozen custard (which New Yorkers might be familiar with now, thanks to Danny Meyer's Shake Shack.
Anyway, it's 10:30 a.m., Central time as I write this. My ride to Austin is coming to pick me up in an hour and I've still yet to pack. So more on Pizza 51 (the one redeeming pizzeria so far) and Joe's Buy the Slice (absolute dreck) the next time I have access to a wireless connection.
Posted by Adam Kuban, September 21, 2004 at 11:44 AM
At home he feels like a tourist
At home he feels like a tourist
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer
—Gang of Four, "At Home He's a Tourist"
The Tragic Prelude: John Steuart Curry's "The Tragic Prelude" (top), an allegorical mural painted between 1937 and 1942, is familiar to almost anyone who went through public grade school in Kansas. Thousands of the state's children have seen the mural on one field trip or another to the state capitol building in Topeka, where it is located. E-Rock's visit to D'Bronx in Kansas City (above left) with friends Andy and Chris (above right) is in itself a tragic prelude (though an undeniably less dire one). Stopping by the famous KC pizzeria made E-Rock late to a wedding he was attending.
words by e-rock .::. photographs by a. graham .::.
Sometimes Slice pulls out all the stops for E-Rock.
The last time you heard from me, I was on assignment in Northern England. Maybe the pizza wasn’t the best, but our great leader, Adam, felt like it needed to be covered. And the lush, cool English countryside was a nice break from the mind-frying New York City summer.
But sometimes the head honcho over here at Slice headquarters isn’t so nice. He can be a downright evil bastard. Over drinks one night, we were having a friendly conversation about archery, the implications of NASCAR culture on American life, and other things.
Suddenly, he leaned over the table and yelled: "I’VE GOT IT!"
"You mean they’re all crazy rednecks and we’re basically doomed? Haven’t we been over this?"
"No, no, you stupid bastard! NASCAR! They built that racetrack outside of Kansas City that seats, like, 100,000! It’s the biggest tourist draw in the region! I’m sending you to Kansas City to do a pizza story. Do it on d’Bronx. It’s apparently the best in town."
"Have you lost your mind? I think all that grilled pizza is starting to get to your head, man. If you think for one second I’m going to put myself in harm’s way like that, you have another thing coming. If you’re gonna TREAT me like Christiane Amanpour, you’re gonna have to PAY me like Christiane Amanpour!"
He sat back in his chair, slowly sipped his drink and let out a low chuckle.
After about 20 seconds of silence, he said: "Are you refusing the assignment? You can. By all means, you can. But are you prepared to deal with the consequences?"
"Hey," I said to the waitress, after wiping about a gallon of sweat off my brow. "Can we get two more over here?"
"That’s my boy. That’s my boy. So why do they always sell so much basil in one bunch? I can never seem to use all of it, and every time I buy the stuff, it goes bad."
KANSAS CITY HERE I COME
When one tells someone they’re from Kansas City [Full disclosure: Adam and E-Rock were both raised in Kansas City], they’re bound to get some pretty similar, cute, responses. One is, "Are you from Kansas City, Kansas, or Kansas City, Missouri?"
Why do you people always ask that question? Why do you care? Does it make any difference to you? You’ve never been there. If you had, you wouldn’t ask. You wouldn’t know the fucking difference! (Except Kansas has a better basketball team.)
Then there’s the whole Wizard of Oz thing. "How’s Toto?" and "There’s no place like home, huh?" How creative! That’s a real obscure remark! Moron.
And lately, if you’re a Royals fan, you can easily get jeered by some smart-ass 12-year-old Yankees fan, whose seen his team win the Series half his lives and wets his bed if the Bombers get knocked out of the ALCS on a random year. Well, let me tell you, you little brat. If George Brett were around today, you little punk, you’d be pissing a RIVER!
Uh-hum. Sorry. Sometimes E-Rock can get of hand.
Anyway, the reality of growing up in Kansas City is anything but cute. It’s brutal. Especially if you grew up in the suburbs. The suburbs there can make or break any teenager with half a brain. There’s nothing to do. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no sense of community that one has in an urban environment, where you’re forced to (and hopefully enjoy) living with people from all sorts of backgrounds. It’s about 90 percent white. You have to drive everywhere. The local meeting point for teenagers is the area convenient store. And the ’burbs sprawl on and on and on.
This does strange things to people. Some are happy, stay there their whole lives and become honest, decent citizens, who think people in New York are either homosexual prostitutes or part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. Others go nuts and start eating handfuls of acid at a time, listening to the Butthole Surfers, driving their cars down empty country roads at weird hours of the night, eventually ending up in cardboard boxes or mental asylums. Then there’s the hick contingent that lurks around, barking obscene things at women and longing for the day when it’s perfectly acceptable to behave like Johnny Paycheck anywhere, all day long. And still others, like your dear narrator and his boss, get the hell out of Dodge.
But E-Rock exaggerates. There are many great things about the city. The town has many huge, green boulevards. Its jazz history is impeccable. The barbeque (right) is considered among the world’s best. [Um, make that THE world's best. —Ed.] Kansas City’s downtown is filled with one of the largest collections of Art Deco skyscrapers in the nation, and just south is the grand Country Club Plaza, a shopping district developed in a Spanish architectural style in the 1920s. E-Rock can actually enjoy the place if he feels like a tourist when he goes back.
Plus, E-Rock has a handful of friends and family who live there who don’t fit in the aforementioned categories, so it can be a nice visit from time-to-time. But these are strange people, nonetheless, who have somehow created a world livable enough to ignore the area’s many bad qualities.
One of them is Andy Graham, currently the biggest rock star in Kansas City. He might be living high now, but I remember the days when empty bottles of Early Times littered his basement room and he would play lonely love songs until the sun came up. Songs with lyrics like: You talked about me/ You talked about me/ In the bars around town/ The bars around town/ You made me look like a clown.
special to slice
DOWNLOAD SONGS FROM KANSAS CITY'S OWN A. GRAHAM!
Total Nutcase (m4a, 2.4M)
from This Tyrant Is Free, by A. Graham & the Moment Band
[Right click (Mac users: cntl-click) on link and choose "Save As"]
Jake and I (mp3, 3.2M)
by mid-'90s A. Graham project The Dot.Dot.Commies, feat. Slice editor & publisher Adam K. on drums
[Right click (Mac users: cntl-click) on link and choose "Save As"]
Now his lyrics are about getting drunk with chickens and monkeys—and nautical adventures. Andy also has a nice girlfriend named Chris, who generally keeps him in line. No more sedatives and pornography in his life.
Since Andy lives near D’Bronx, we decided to go together.
D’Bronx. Pretty stupid name for a pizza place in Kansas City, huh? It’s like calling something the Fuhgeddaboudit Deli in Houston. I remember the Citysearch profile saying something about how the people who run it have family from The Bronx and blah, blah, blah. There’s only about five of those joints in every metro area in the country, so E-Rock couldn't give a shit about this information and would rather just go to Arthur Avenue. [I'd rather go to Arthur Bryant's. —Ed.]
Let’s just say E-Rock wasn’t expecting much.
The restaurant is off 39th Street, one of the main business strips in the city’s Midtown area. It’s a somewhat vibrant area in the city for boutiques, restaurants, and bars, and has the closest thing one will find to a Brooklyn-type feel in the city. The place has a prime corner in the area.
We walked in and placed the order at the counter. I decided on a large pie with tomatoes and garlic to get a good feel for the quality. At D’Bronx, when you order, it takes about 20 minutes (it gets pretty busy there, especially on a Saturday afternoon, when we went), so they give you a numbered ticket. We decided to go to a bar across the street and wait it out.
When we got back we grabbed a table in the open-seating area. The interior is nice and airy with large windows all around. It kind of had a bit of a hippy vibe to it, but not in a way that’s too pronounced. What E-Rock did find strange was that D’Bronx sells its own bottled water. I guess it makes sense since Kansas City is so close to the Alps, right?
We picked up our pizza at the counter and sat down. After one bite, the pie blew away my expectations. The crust isn’t thin in the New York-style sense, but it wasn’t too thick, either, and it did have some nice, slight nice burning on the bottom. The ingredients were super-fresh tasting. Maybe there was a little too much sauce, but E-Rock liked its wine-tinged flavor.
Great New York pizza this was not, but it was definitely worth the trip for their interpretation of the art. Most Slice readers will have no business going to Kansas City, but if they do, this would be a great choice, if they are in the mood for pizza. My advice is to go in with bad expectations—the expectations any person with a quarter of a brain stem would have about Kansas City pizza. One will be mightily surprised.
Well, the day went downhill from there. E-Rock won’t get into the nitty-gritty details here, but the evening in Andy’s back yard was highlighted by endless quantities of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jameson. An Elliott Smith live-show bootleg blared out of the speakers, on repeat, into the morning until sun rose. Answers were given before questions were asked, and E-Rock had dreams on the air mattress about roving packs of wild Chihuahuas laying small towns to waste.
D'BRONX
Location: 3904 Bell Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
Phone: 816-531-0550
Hours: Mon. through Wed.,10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Thu., 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Fri. though Sat., 10:30 a.m. to 11p.m.
Payment Accepted: Cash and credit
Name: Dan Curry
