New York Pizza

For the past several years now, as most of you know, I have been living with my Grandmother. She’s a pretty good cook, and so most of our meals are homemade. But every now and then, something inside me says "Screw the hamburgers, the pasta, the Caesar Salad and all that other stuff, I want a pizza." And I will often persuade my grandmother to get a pizza. Sometimes it is a piping hot, fresh pie from Cybelles, the local place, or Sometimes we will go to Zachary's Chicago Style. But occasionally I am desperate enough that I will settle for a frozen pizza, as I did last night.

But as I was biting into my pizza last night, I realized, this isn't a real pizza, this is a piece of crap. In fact, thinking about it, I haven't had an honest slice of pizza since my friend and I had one in Times Square on a hot summer night back in '03. See, there's more to pizza than crust, cheese, and tomato sauce. There is, I believe, a New York Pizza Experience.

Picture yourself on a cold and snowy day in January, wandering north on Amsterdam Avenue. You're almost home, where there is food in the Fridge, but as you drift past T&R's pizzeria, half a block north of 79th street, the steamed up windows and the scent of warm dough pull you in irresistibly. You go in.

Your pizza man stands behind the counter, making a pizza, stretching out the dough on his fists and he's not happy to see you, especially not when you tell him "two Pepperoni, for here, and a small coke." He's making a full pie for someone down the street and you, you are a little pipsqueak and all you want is two slices of pepperoni pizza?

But your money is green and so he rings you up, slapping a small fountain soda down in front of you. Your plain slices are already made, sitting on a metal pie pan underneath the glass counter. He cuts the pie and puts two slices on his long wooden paddle and dumps them into the huge steel pizza oven.

You take your coke and sit down in a booth and nurse it, taking in the scene. All around the pizzeria is a mosaic of every known landmark in Italy. Behind the counter are two juice dispensers, one with phony fruit punch, the other with phony piña colada, constantly aerating whatever chemicals make up those god-awful concoctions. Above the oven, pizza boxes are stacked high. The guy behind the counter pulls one down and picks up his paddle and pulls out a thick, square pizza. This is Sicilian Pizza, something I have never seen anywhere else but in New York City. It’s thick, with lots of Cheese and a heavy crust. It’s almost always plain, although I MAY have seen some sausage Sicilian once. He puts the Sicilian into a box and some kid appears out of nowhere in a jacket, to take the pizza through the snow to a waiting customer.

As you sit there, starving, two cops wander in from the cold and order pizza, they place their order and they to sit in a booth, waiting. Your slices finally show up on the counter on a plastic tray, and you go pick them up. You have the option of adding garlic, peppers, or parmesan cheese onto your pizza, but you can’t beat the real thing and so you bypass the condiments and bring the slices back to your chair. The cops’ radios crackle but you pay them no mind because you are to busy eating. The pizza crust is a little brittle and breaks as you fold it to put into your mouth – you’d never DREAM of eating it with a fork (what are you, some kind of animal?) Hot grease from the cheese and the pepperoni drips out onto your plate, burning your hand, but you don’t care because you have a delicious mouthful of pepperoni pizza. The pizza should have a crunchy crust and be a little salty, but not too salty, just enough to make your Coke seem sweet. The cheese should be slightly chewy and should pull away from the pizza in long, thin strips as you take a bite. As you eat, the pizza cools and becomes easier to eat, but as long as it is still reasonably warm, pizza is one of the most delicious things in the world.

Your meal finally finished, you politely dump your greasy plate and napkins into the trash and once again head into the swirling snow, strengthened by the New York Pizza Experience.

Now, I have some friends who from Chicago and I will concede that Chicago Deep Dish pizza is pretty good stuff, but when I think of pizza, real pizza, I think of thin crust pizza that is served everyday, to bankers, cops, lawyers, and construction workers every day in the City of New York

Although I love my adopted home in California, very much, I find, sometimes, that I am still very much a New Yorker. Every now and then, something will happen that reminds me just how much I love that place. Longing for a good slice of pizza certainly does that.

John East Bay, CA http://thesloop.blogspot.com/