Ah yes, you are right. I almost forgot about Chicago. They do have good pizza there. I just feel bad for the folks across the country that have no idea what good pizza tastes like.
I am sure you can find good pizza in just about any state. When people start saying you can't find it outside the NY or Chicago area it is just posturing. The proportion of good pizza places to bad pizza places may be much lower but if you do just a little research before heading out it will not be that hard. Between yelp and other sites you can narrow down to a few pizzerias to try in your area. I only bring this up because I always hear the "can't find it" statement but even though I live in a county that only has about 180,000 people I still manage to have excellent pizza, excellent bagels, taylor ham and many other items that people say they can't find outside the NY area. Its all within 10-15 minutes of my house, in fact I have 3 excellent pizza spots close by, one guy is from the Bronx, one from Brooklyn and one from Philly. They have all told me the crust was the hardest part to overcome because of the different water down here but they managed.
Dude, where the hell do you live? I've lived in a number of states in this country and eaten at many eastern based Italian owned pizza shops (fuck that Chicago shit), and the only ones that could come close to back east were the ones that had the water from NY/NJ shipped in to work the dough correctly. They can get the sauce, cheese and toppings as correct as they want, but if the dough is not right, it's not a good pizza. And absolutely none of them could make a sub that had bread that was worth a shit.
I live in Weeki Wachee, FL. I think what helps here is most of the water here comes from natural springs which is under the limestone bedrock, not sure about fluoridation or any other treatment. I may have overstated a little but the crust still has crunch, when you fold it it gets a crack in the middle from a good crisp bottom crust but still chewy enough through the middle of the slice. Now when I go back up to the Bronx I always hit up my old pizza shop because... I had to stop there because I was just about to type "there is nothing quite like it" and realize that was what I was arguing against. They still make a good pizza here, not like NY but substitutes until I make my trips back up.
Don't get me wrong, I've found decent facsimiles to the real thing in years past, there's even a place here in SA where they do actually use a couple of bottles of shipped in water to mix with the tap and there's almost that perfectly folding crust... ... but you can't beat the real thing. I can walk out of a subway almost anywhere in NY and find a random parlor that makes better pizza than the best pizza I've found I'm any other region. Yeah, there are some high priced gourmet places all over the country that do that gourmet artisan shit and try to make you forget what the real thing is, but goat cheese doesn't replace an amazing crust.
JS, you can go full monty on Pepe's white clam with the bacon topping. Agreed. Part Pillsbury doughboy b.s., part Sealy posturepedic mattress. As for the odd square vs. round slice of A' bizz' if the sauce and crust are great, what's the problem? They're few and far between but ingrediants (taste & texture) trumps shape. There's this time warp place in a shitty section of Mount Vernon (what section outside of Fleetwood isn't shitty?), the Lincoln Lounge which offers a 'normal' great round pie but also a thin crust square tomato, garlic and cheese pie that's very good. Awesomely tacky interior, great food: http://www.yelp.com/biz/lincoln-lounge-mount-vernon But imho the king of pizza is a thin crust heaven also in Mount Vernon: Johnny's Pizza which is another time warp joint which has the best no-bullshit pizza in the world for my money. Very little cheese on the pizza and it's not needed because the sauce is so sensational and the thin crusts are alone worth eating with nothing on them, thin with a nice char here and there: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g60952-d458170-Reviews-Johnny_s_Pizzeria-Mount_Vernon_New_York.html 5:30: off to the Green-White scrimmage. Hotdogs for dinner : )
Holy shit. When I was a kid we drove to Florida and we went to a restaurant/underwater mermaid show pretty sure it was in Weeki Wachee. Is the Kapok Tree still open? _
I lived in the Bronx for 25 years right near Mt.Vernon, probably 4 miles away from Johnny's but of all that time there and all the time I spent around the area I had one bad experience in Mt.Vernon forever etched in my mind which is what I think of whenever Mt.Vernon is brought up. I was probably 19 years old and had not spent too much time in topless joints at that stage in my life. One Saturday probably early evening me and a friend were waiting on another friend who lived over that way, having about a half hour to kill we decided to hit a bar, my friend suggested a topless bar he noticed as we were driving by, I figure what the hell. We park the car, stroll on over, go thru the first door, get carded and then proceed in. The first thing that catches my eye is the 225lb 5'2" Guatemalan beast that was probably about 8 months pregnant. She was not so much dancing as looking like the only thing holding her upright was the pole. I was so distraught by the image in front of my eyes that the stench in the place did not process right away. When it finally did hit me it smelled like someone had exclusively dined on baby puke for a week, then took a dump and decided to hide that dump under every nook and cranny in the establishment. The crack fueled early 80's in the Bronx and Mt.Vernon were joyous I tell ya.
Kapok Tree closed years ago, it became Thoroughbred Music and then Sam Ash Music. I think they still rent out the gardens for special events though. I live 2 miles north of the mermaid theater, Weeki Wachee Springs is no longer privately owned. The state bought the whole park a few years back. It has changed a bit since you were last here, there is a small water park with a beach area, the mermaid show is still going strong, they have wildlife shows and a cruise down the river in an electric boat that sits around 40. http://www.weekiwachee.com/
The biggest mystery to me is how there are Dominos and Pizza Huts IN NEW YORK CITY. It's mind boggling- the mediocre $1 slices from 2 Bros Pizza are far better than anything those companies have ever made. How can they exist here?! Now some will say "it's tourists who eat there"- no excuse! That's like going to Belgium and ordering a Bud Light when they have Duvel. Except Pizza Hut isn't even cheaper! I just don't get it.
^I'm shocked by that as well. How do the chains survive in NY / NJ? I honestly think it's just because they are open late and so many drunk / lazy folks are looking for a quick easy delivery with no scrutiny on quality. I wonder what it is about the water around here that makes the pizza so much better. Is it the whole city water vs well water thing? Do we just treat ours better? You'd think other cities would have similar water, but it really makes you wonder. Maybe we get more rain over here and have fresher reservoirs as a result?
All bread stuffs are much better in the greater NYC area: Pizza, bagels, french loaves. I think its got to be some minor chemical variance having to do with the water and atmospheric pressure that just cannot be replicated anywhere else. And I have absolutely no technical stones to support that theory.
It's the DNA from the Indian burial grounds in the swamps of New Jersey that has permeated the water tables of all of the surrounding areas. Those Lenne Lenapes make for some tasty breading.
They're not Indians you racist. They're Native Americans. Otherwise the bread would taste like curry. _
The drunks have to be a big part of it, every Dominos and I think most Pizza Huts deliver, whereas the corner pizza joint often doesn't. But I'd see workers eating at Dominos during lunchtime, 10 yards away from a real pizzeria. NYC gets its water from aquifers, which are underground river-ish things where the water filters through solid rock over hundreds of years. So it's pre-filtered naturally and purer than well water, which is usually contaminated with minerals ("hard water" that has a terrible aftertaste.) But some other cities have aquifers too, yet still can't make decent pizza or bagels.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2010/09/what_makes_new_york_tap_water.html The answer to all your NYC water questions.
I'm surprise none of you LI'ers aren't all over the "no square pizza" comment. As a native of northern NJ(grew up right up the road from you Stokes), some of my favorite pizza is grandma pies on Long Island. I know Umberto's gets all the buzz, there are a few other places I've been to that are as good or better. Haven't been there but I keep hearing the square slices from L &.B Spumoni's are also crazy good. The best pizza, IMO, is in Brooklyn and LI. Edit: Oh, forgot to mention I grew up calling it Taylor Ham. TH, egg and cheese on an egg bagel with s, p, ketchup is easily my favorite breakfast sandwich. I prefer the TH sliced thin with multiple slices as opposed to the same amount sliced thick. It's a texture thing.
