June 23, 2004

• Fie on deep-dish pizza, it's only tarted up foccacia!
• Beeswacky gets it! Deep Dish sucks!
• Could someone explain to me why coal-fired is to be preferred to, say, wood-fired? Just tradition, maybe? *nonplusses*
• I'll not have you floppy, soggy dough, toppings-sliding-off, greasy-pseudo-pizza eating East-coasters bad mouth the Chicago pie! There are three pizzas in the world: Pizza Margherita, Sicilian and Deep Dish. Don't even get me started on what those Californians are trying to make... Wolof: The coal oven burns hotter, giving the pizza a distinctive crust and, they say, it affects the flavor as well (never had coal oven pizza myself). I guess some of the appeal with them may be rarity, as coal-fired ovens are largely out of code now in many cities, and only the existing ones get grandfathered in (as in NY).
• "loppy, soggy dough, toppings-sliding-off, greasy-pseudo-pizza" Somebodies never had the real thing. We like our pizza crusts CRISP here in NY Pivo. Crisp as in just short of BURNED. And Coal Fired ovens produce a very different, and very distinctive taste. It's a wholly unique experience, as is a pizza w/ fresh mozzarel.
• I think wood fired ovens are forbidden in New York. That's why our (Montreal) wood fired bagels are better, but that's a whole other thread.
• are you guys trying to tell me that new york pizza is better than chicago pizza? puh-lease! even we (wisconsinites) can admit the superiority of windy city's pies... and we *hate* FIBs.
• Monkeys! Monkeys! Can't we all get along? Pizza is a divine food in all its glorious forms. Sometimes you want the deep dish goodness (oh! the cheese!) of Chi-town and sometimes you want the thin-sliced-fold-in-half-while-you-eat joy that is NYC pizza. Lets wipe the grease off our hands and shake. Mkay? Oh, and a BIG OL' BANANA to Captain P for the link. Can't wait to load it on my iPod.
• I'm trying to figure out how to turn this into an argument involving politics. I wonder what sort of pizza Bush likes...
• Whatever. East Coast YE-AH! are you guys trying to tell me that new york pizza is better than chicago pizza? Um, yes, because it is by light years. If I wanted to eat chicago style pizza, I'd order a Sicilian pie. The crispy crust, molten cheese, light sauce, and sparce toppings, done perfectly, are like eating a juicy filet minon compared to the Chicago style taco meat.
• I'll add that as a New Jersey native who moved out to Detroit six years ago. I have only found two good pizza places in the whole state, and one of them is from Conneticut originally and the other attempts to make high-quality East coast pizza. If I wanted to eat a Chicago pizza, I'd just eat the dough raw and the ingredients cold. Same experience.
• Chicago pizza = teh r0xx0r of my s0xxor(s).
• i'm from new york but now live in chicago. all i can say is that i would kill to find a great east coast pizza place here in the windy city. eating a slice of pizza shouldn't cause you to gain several pounds in sheer cheese mass. i want crust that is thin, crisp, but with big chewy dough-bubbles on the outside. and greasy. mmmmm.
• Brill, Keith.
• I like stuffed and thin crust, but one cannot compare (or argue over) the 2 since they are completely different tasty inventions. Here is a quick list of the Best Pizza Places in the cities where I have lived: 1. Chicago - Giordano
• (sob) If you can get either Chicago or NY pizza, you're lucky. They're both great. You don't want to know what passes for pizza in San Diego. Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway. Imagine "pizza" with goat cheese, fennel, and wilted spinach on top. Or barbequed chicken chunks and some kind of weird roasted peppers. Or foie gras and sauteed baby vegetables. All on too-thick, boring, tasteless, soggy crust, undercooked at far too low a temperature. Heck, you can find places here where they don't know the difference between salami and pepperoni or mozzarella and Monterey jack! Last time I flew through Chicago, I missed by connecting flight because I took a taxi over to the Mt. Prospect Giordano's just so I could get my fix of their stuffed crust special. It cost me half a day, but you know what? It was worth it. (And you Chicago folks, don't bother telling me that they ship overnight to anywhere now... they do, but for some weird reason the won't ship anything with meat on it, which is bizarre.) My east-coast relatives know that when they pick me up at any of the NYC airports, my first stop is going to be a namesless neighborhood pizzeria in my old hometown of Denville, NJ. On my last trip east last summer, my sister informed me quite seriously that I was going to die if I ate pizza every single day. She was wrong. And don't get me started on Drake's Cakes. You can't get a Funny Bone in southern California for love or money....
• We've got one NY pizza joint here in Nashville, TN. Complete with the bad attitude & Brooklyn accent, too. I'm a little scared of them, to be honest. But boy, do I love their pizza. Crispy, with just the right amount of melted cheese and a perfect tangy sauce. Mmmm.
• Excuse me, but as fine as New York pizza is, nothing compares with New Haven. I defy any of y'all to go to Pepe's and still come out touting the virtues of your previous fave. But don't believe me: listen to the people! Note to fans of Sally's: Sally's makes a damn fine pie, and if I couldn't get my Pepe's fix I'd definitely go next door. But the best is the best. Oh, and in NYC, it's all about John's (the original), Patsy's, and Totonno's. But I do want to try some of Robert Sietsema's finds in his Best 100 Italian Restaurants article.
• Sal's in Mamaroneck and Mirabella's in Port Chester. 'Nuff said.
• pah -- this Chicago/ New York rivalry pales in comparison to the southwest burrito wars.
• All pizza is just tarted-up foccacia, from the dough's perspective. Seattle is not a pizza town. (Cafe Lago in Montlake is one of the few places here that bakes a good pie. The rest is vile dreck, suitable only for students.) So I make my own. Throw a hell of a lot of charcoal on the Kamado, let it run up to 500-550F or so, get a couple of pizza stones hot in there for half an hour, take some foccacia-type dough that I started the previous day (but no second rise -- I don't want foccacia), and put anything the hell on it that I want (viva California!). The results beat anything available here, which if you know Seattle you will recognize is faint praise indeed. I don't know why Seattle pizza is so terrible, but there you are. One of my great regrets is not taking my wife to the Wooster Square pizzerias when she visited New Haven on her grad school tour.
• goetter: true, Seattle's not a pizza mecca, although Atlantic Street Pizza (which I used to live across the street from back in the day) is damned good. And, really, the best pizza is in Italy: the freshness of the ingrediants, the crust... mmm. The US is just a pretender.
• Wasn't pizza invented in the US? Best pizza in the Bay Area is Pizza My Heart, Pacific Mall, Santa Cruz. Thick crust, lots of tomato sauce, and a great pesto topping. I'm a total thick-crust pizza lover.
• Serpentor invented pizza. From his own recollection: In the new Imperial Dining Suite on Cobra Island, Dr. Mindbender is outraged when the Dreadnoks (filling in for the sick "Kitchen-Vipers") serve he and Serpentor chocolate-covered donuts, grape sodas and pizza for dinner. "This is a gastronomic outrage!" he shouts. Serpentor stops Mindbender's ranting and tells him pizzas aren't inappropriate at all. He tells him of a memory he has from Julius Caesar. He explains that during the siege of Alesia during the Gallic campaigns, Caesar worried that his troops' morale was waning, due to the stale food they were forced to eat. He witnesses one of his soldiers taking pita bread and bits of meat and cheese, cooking them over a fire and making the food more palatable. He essentially invents pizza. After Caesar sees that all the troops learn of this, and they eat their "pizza", the Roman legions soon defeat the Gauls. Mindbender is again outraged, but now at Serpentor: "Are you telling me that the invention of the pizza led to the downfall of the Vercingetorix and to the domination of what is know France and Belgium?" Serpentor smiles, "No! Of course not... it was just a random memory." The final scene we see is the Gauls being led out of their fortress in chains, as Caesar looks on, eating a piece of pizza... shamelessly plagarized
• Thank you for that blast from the past, blogRot. I'd forgotten about that episode until now. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle!