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This weekend wasn’t a big production really, just a lot of walking around downtown and incidentally running into a couple of landmarks, like Ice T doing an episode of SVU in Tribeca, and the Ghostbusters firehouse from the movie. Okay, I have to admit, the firehouse was pretty awesome to finally see, even if it was basically just a firehouse. It did have the Ghostbusters sign up inside though, so you know it’s authentic

I also checked out another pizzeria, John’s on Bleecker, so here’s the lowdown:

The Pizza: 6
John’s pizza is definitely a good, solid brick oven pie (no individual slices). This pie put, in my opinion, greater emphasis on the cheese than the sauce, and while neither aspect of the pizza was jaw droppingly wonderful, I did enjoy the combination and ratio. The crust was on the thinner end of the spectrum as I’ve come to expect from most brick oven pizza’s, and was nicely charred, with a distinct ring of crispiness around the edges while the middle remained soft and delicious. Foldability was high as well, but overall this pizza wasn’t quite what I have come to expect from the city’s top pizza joints.

The Toppings: 7
We got some fairly extensive toppings on this pie, including peppers, mushrooms and sausage, all of which score excellently for quality as well as for making a distinct contribution to the pizza’s flavor. You could tell that the ingredients were really fresh, and they were baked into the cheese, integrating nicely into the overall scheme of the pizza.

Other: 8
I’d heard that this pizzeria would be exceptionally packed, with a long wait at the door and no reservations possible. Pretty much par for the course with the pizza greats of NYC. But when I arrived, I found quite the opposite was true. There was no line, and we were seated immediately. Once we ordered, the pizza came out in an almost absurdly short period of time, and the waiter was very nice and helpful. For the specialty pizza, two drinks and the rapid and responsive service, we dropped a little over $30 bucks, which I consider quite reasonable.

The Bottom Line
This place seems like a top neighborhood pizza place, but is not necessarily worth a trip to the Village in its own right. Good service and a tasty pizza will draw me back if i’m in the area again, but probably not before.

Because I was so dejected over the painfully overrated pies at Una Pizza Napoletana, a good friend suggested that I try a more down-to-earth pizza that’s grown quite famous in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge: Grimaldi’s. Now in addition to the pizza, I was convinced to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to get there, which was worth it for the experience, even if my feet were crying afterwards.

The Pizza: 10
Definitely a cut above the norm, this pizza is somehow thin but still filling. The crust is a little more on the chewy side, and it makes for perfect foldability, though you probably don’t have to since the slices are already a fairly manageable size and seem to stay together well. The pizza chef’s use a generous amount of fresh mozzarella to cover a tasty sauce that features a perfect helping of basil, and the overall taste is quite worth the trip.
Thus far, this has actually been the best pizza I’ve tried in the city, so I’m bumping it straight up to a 10.

The Toppings: 9
I’m not sure what it was about the toppings on this pizza (mushroom and pepperoni, my favorite) but they enhanced the slices to a whole new level of flavor and, dare I coin a phrase(?), deliciousity. The pepperoni was just the right kind of crispy around the edges and the meaty flavor was infused throughout the slice giving the topping slices great taste and a big texture bonus. The mushrooms were also fresh and delicious, baked into the cheese with love and care.

Other: 4
While I feel a little bad knocking off a point from average on the “Other” rating, the place was completely packed and a line had formed at the door when we arrived at 4:50, which seems to me like a pretty early dinner. I can’t even imagine how hectic it would be at 6:30. The line did move quickly and we were probably only standing there for about 10-15 minutes, which is less than you might wait at a casual dining restaurant on a saturday night, so I can’t fault them too much.
Once inside, we were directed to a table near the back where we could watch the Pizza chefs ply their craft. The seating was a little tight, and it took a little while to get a waiter’s attention, but even all that was forgivable when the delicious pie of delight was brought to our table.

The Bottom Line
This place is 100% worth it. Maybe 200% worth it if you go the easy route and just take the A train. The pizza isn’t cheap ($14 for a large, plus $2 per topping) but unlike Una Pizza Napoletana, you get a good-sized, filling pizza that you can really sink your teeth into. This pizza deserves every bit of adoration it’s loving fans lavish upon it, so if you haven’t been here yet, it’s high time. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge if you’re up to it and want the scenic view, or just hop the A train and walk a couple of blocks, but either way, you can’t fail to enjoy this pie.

This past Friday I trekked from my office all the way across town to try a pizza that’s gotten a lot of buzz, and many excellent reviews: Una Pizza Napoletana. I am about to contradict those rave reviews.

Other: 1
I’m placing the “Other” category (usually the last topic I consider) at the top of my list today to make a point. Pizza is not typically, and in my opinion never should be a pricey meal, so I’m just going to come right out and say that this pizza is an unscrupulous gouge. Una Pizza Napoletana currently sets its prices at $21 per 12″ pie. For those of you who might have a little trouble visualizing this, the pie I ultimately received was about as large as a vynil record, perhaps a little smaller, and was only fit to satisfy one person, if that. The fact that I was being forced to pay such exhorbitant prices to enjoy this much talked about pizza definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the experience.
Additionally, efforts to make the restaurant space as much like a European cafe as possible were misplaced at best. Since you’re paying the same as you would at a fairly nice restaraunt, you might expect certain amenities to make your dining experience more pleasant. What I got was New York City tap water served in a wine bottle, and a table where I was literally rubbing shoulders with the couple next to me. As you may have realized, I don’t hold most restaurants to overly high standards, but when the price is so obviously inflated, I definitely expect a premium dining experience and this was not it.

The Pizza: 7
For all my criticism, the pizza was actually quite good. It wasn’t $21 bucks good, but that point has already been treated. Basically you get a choice of 4 pies with slight variances in what I would consider condiments (garlic, sea salt, basil), all priced at $21. I asked for a recommendation from my server and before I had even finished my sentence he was saying “Margherita” so that’s what I ordered. When this apparent piece of art came out of the oven and onto my table it was piping hot with a crunchy, nicely charred crust. The additions of sea salt and olive oil to the pizza came out loud and clear in the taste and were points that I greatly appreciated, but the dirth of mozzarella got me down, as I believe a good spread of cheese is extremely important to a quality New York Pizza. The Pie still earns a high rating for its uniqueness and quality, but i can’t give it top marks due to the scarcity of the cheese.

Toppings: 0
This one is easy. There are no toppings! You can only order one of the 4 variations on the menu and are explicitly told not to deviate from them in any way. You can’t rate what you can’t eat, so Una Pizza Napoletana scores a straight 0 in this category.

The Bottom Line
Just don’t bother. When it comes down to it, it’s simple math: you’re paying fine dining prices for a decent, albeit unique pizza in a cafe atmosphere. I’m sorry, but I’m just not buying it. I’ve had a lot of great pizza’s at much more reasonable prices, even at sit down restaurants, and while this one is no joke, at $21 bucks per person, pre tax and tip, without even ordering drinks, I can’t find any way to justify the trip. Save you’re money and go to Lazzara’s, Grimaldi’s or Two Boots, all of which have delicious, unique, good-sized pies at reasonable prices.

I picked up the Lazzara’s tip from a dedicated pizza article in Time Out New York and decided to give it a whirl. So after work on Thursday, the Last NYC Hero and I got on the 1 train and headed up to 38th street and 7th avenue to enjoy some delicious pizza. I couldn’t have been happier with the results!

The Pizza: 7
This particular restaurant (and it is an actual sit-down restaurant btw) doesn’t make pizza by the slice, so Malcolm and I ended up deciding on the Lazzara’s Special pie. This means that I didn’t get to try a pure, unadulterated slice of cheese pizza, but I can infer from the pie we did get that this place has a pretty solid slice. The pizza itself is square and comes with six slices, each with a flavorful, flaky, even crackery crust, a slightly salty sauce, and an individual square of mozzarella baked onto each slice. Altogether, the basics make for what I’d imagine to be a very good cheese pizza.

The Toppings: 10
I’d easily say this place has the best toppings I’ve tasted out of all the places I’ve been thus far. The special pie we ordered came with a perfect combination of prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, and black olives. It’s a salty slice to be sure, but if you’re down with that, then this pizza is going to be one of the best you’ve tasted. Seriously.

Other: 7
This place may be famous for its pizza (the pizza section dominates half the menu) but it’s a full-blown Italian restaurant with white table clothes and great service. The only potential drawback is that you have to buy a full pie, but the plain pie is reasonably priced (around $10) and while the specialty pies are more expensive, they’re still reasonable for the ingredients and are WELL worth it.

The Bottom Line
I have to say that the pizza I had at Lazzara’s easily ranks in my top 5, and I’ve had quite a few pizza’s in my day. It was an $18 pie, so it wasn’t cheap, but this basically would have covered the cost of the three premium ingredients on it at any other pizza place anyway. Unlike at other pizza places however, after splitting the Lazzara’s Special with Malcolm, I was so pleased that I was actually considering getting another half-pie! It’s probably a good thing that Malcolm dissuaded me from the indulgence, but the fact remains that I can’t recommend this place highly enough. Even though it’s out of the way for me, I can see myself going back for this amazing pizza again in the near future.

If you’re a New York pizza enthusiast, chances are you’ve heard of Two Boots. Well here’s your chance to hear about it again! Two Boots is in the East Village at 44 Avenue A between 3rd and 4th street, and is actually not only an excellent pizzeria, but a video store with (I’m told) a considerable collection of indie films. Now on to the review.

Pizza Quality: 9
This pizza is good. Really really good in fact! When you take the first bite, you’ll realize immediately that this is not your everyday pie. So what’s so different about it? Well if you ask me, it’s the sauce and the crust that make this pie special. The sauce is definitely unusual. It has a bit of a kick to it, and what I want to say is a stong suggestion of basil. Whatever it is, it’s wonderful. The crust was also an integral part of what made this pizza so great. It’s thin, making the plain slice pretty light, and has a crunchiness to it that struck a good balance with the rest of the ingredients. Other pizza’s I’ve tried around the city have been good, even great, but they don’t really bare comparison with this delicious slice.

The Toppings: 9
This place has some crazy specialty pies. As it panned out, I didn’t end up with anything too wild, just a slice of chicken and tomato. This slice was fantastic. The fact that the pizza is thin and light made it ideal for toppings, even something that I’d typically consider bulky like chicken. The quality of the ingredients was excelent as well, and you could tell that someone put some care and thought into making this pizzas. All around excellent!

Other: 6
Nothing too special about the atomosphere or price here. There were some cool retro booths and a nice view, so this place rates a little better than some hole in the wall pizza joint, but it’s still not the ritz.

The Bottom Line
Do it. It may be a bit of a walk from the nearest subway, but it’s more than worth it. I think you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t try one of their specialty pies or slices, but the plain slices are great too. So there you go. No excuses, just get over to the East Village and try it. Give it a taste and you’ll be a believer. Meantime, watch for my writeup on the Bicycle Film Festival which will be forthcoming shortly.

Yes, my parents were in town last weekend, and we actually managed to see and do quite a bit for just the couple of days they were here. Here’s a copy of the itinerary I put together for them:

Friday
The Focacceria (Italian)
The Comedy Cellar

Saturday
The Met
Carne-Vale (Brazilian)

Sunday
Brunch
Happy hour on the river

A pretty solid schedule with some wiggle room for doing other fun things like getting stuck in a cab in traffic. That’s New York for you though. Anyway, I’ll hit each point quickly so as not to completely overwhelm you

The Focacceria
Probably my favorite Italian restaraunt in the city, I highly recommend this place, and virtually anything on the menu. The Penne Vodka and Cannolis are particularly good. I love this place because the food is good, the place is never too crowded, and the service is always friendly and accomodating.

The Comedy Cellar
I saw Collin Quinn here! That makes him my first celeb sighting in the city actually, even if it was on stage. Unfortunately I have nothing flattering to say about him. He jokingly mentioned that his career must be downhill cause no one was laughing. Well, I think everyone realized that it wasn’t as much of a joke as he’d like us to believe, cause really, no one was laughing. Happily, the other comics were fantastic and my parents had a great time. It may also be worth noting that we followed this up with a random jazz place and got a little schnookered before turning in for the night. I’ll figure out the name of the place later.

The Met
After a night of strong drink, the Met was perhaps not as fun as it really should have been. This place is massively, enormously, stupendously humungous. Man is it big. Even if you were sober as a judge you wouldn’t be able to see this whole museum in a day and would be completely absurd to try, so we picked a few things that wouldn’t tax our addled brains too much: Roman sculpture, Dali, Modernism, and a healthy dose of fresh air on the roof, overlooking central park. A good time that could have been much, much better, but I suppose you just can’t have it all.

Carne-Vale
Carne-Vale is a Brazilian Churrascaria, which are typically very expensive restaraunts that serve obscene quantities of top quality meats. I’ve managed to find one that’s not quite so expensive, but still keeps the obscene quantities of good food. Maybe not the place you want to go on a first date, but it was perfect for a family of carnivores like mine. The one downside to this place is that the service can be a little hit-or-miss, but if you’re not too picky, it doesn’t exactly matter. Once you sit down, service is pretty much limited to red light, green light. Flip the card to green, and they bring more meat. Red, they don’t. Simple, effective, delicious, just the way meat should be.

Cafe des Artistes
Mother’s day brunch isn’t the time to be stingy, but we really pulled out all the stops on this one. My mother lived here in the city, once upon a time, on the upper west side, and used to dine at this restaraunt when it was presumably a little less high-brow than it is today. Thus, we decided to treat her to a prix fix brunch with champagne and a side of nostalgia. It was extravagant, delectable, but a little short in the fun department because we managed to get served by the one snooty jerk SOB on the staff. I should say that this seemed like an abberation, because his fellow waiters and hosts pretty much got us what we asked for when he consistently ignored us. Normally I wouldn’t outright complain about service, but for a restaraunt like this, with the prices being what they were, service really ought to be impeccable.

Sunset on the River
Last stop, the ferry. I decided to end the escapade with a nice riverboat tour of the city, so we hopped over to the South Street Seaport (which is an attraction in itself) and climbed aboard a New York Water Taxi. It didn’t have much in the way of frills, but we got to sit on the upper deck and look at the skyline from both the Hudson and the East River as the sun went down. They also served beer and wine for those inclined, but it wasn’t quite what i’d consider an uproarious expedition, so we kept it low key and enjoyed the view.

And that concludes 2007 parents’ weekend in NYC!

Okay, so I’ve been a very bad blogger lately. Not posting consitently, neglecting my links, ignoring comment moderation…the list goes on. For that I appologize, but I do have a lot to talk about now, so let’s get started with Pizza from Pizza 33. Recently I checked out another of the pizza places on my list, Pizza 33 on 33rd and 3rd. In the name of brevity, I’ll get right into the review.

Pizza Quality:7

This pizza is delicious and light with a crunchy crust. Typically I don’t characterize pizza as a “light” food, but this slice has just the right balance of cheese and sauce that makes every bite almost melt in your mouth. My compatriot, Malcolm, went so far as to say “this is what good pizza should be.” Still, there is decidedly a difference between good pizza and truly fantastic pizza. While this slice delivered strong performance, there’s little to differentiate it and make it really stand out in terms of flavor or preparation, so I’ve given it an 7 rating to reflect what is essentially an excellent representation of a good New York slice.

Toppings:6

As you know, I’m fairly picky about toppings, and the first thing i look at is simply whether the topping is baked into the cheese, or thrown on the pie afterwards and reheated. To me, the latter shows the topping to be an afterthought in the pizza-making process rather than an integral part of the pie. The ingredients that pizza 33 offered on their slices were a little more limited than some pizza places i’ve been to in the city, but they were fresh and of a fairly high quality. Unfortunately, the pepperoni I ordered wasn’t thoroughly backed into the cheese, so they lost some points here.

Other:5

It’s a pretty standard New York City pizzeria in a location that’s convenient to several bars (including one of my favorites to date, Bar XII), but few subway lines. As a result, it’s open late, and the bar crowds that occasionally form can really clog up the place. You probably won’t have to wait very long for your slices, even at peak hours, but you definitely can’t sit when it’s really busy.

The Bottom Line

An excellent slice no matter how you cut it, this pizzeria will satisfy your needs whether you’re just dropping in for dinner or you need something to quell all that beer and liquor you’ve been drinking till 3am. Order up a couple of plain cheese slices and you’ll be good to go. Just don’t expect anything transcendental.

My quest for the perfect New York slice has begun, and thanks to the many excellent recommendations I received from my coworkers, I’ve got a pretty good list to work with. I’ll publish the full list of recommendations at some point later this week when all the votes are in, but for now I’ll explain my reviewing standards and then launch right into the first review.

My Standards

The concept is fairly simple: I will always order one plain slice and one other slice (whatever looks best when I get there) to cover the pizza spread available. This way I can compare apples to apples by tasting the basic element of any good pizza, the unadorned cheese slice, while still giving some latitude in case the pizzeria has great toppings or a particular specialty slice/pie that you just can’t ignore. I’ll rate the each pizzeria on a 1 – 10 scale on several aspects of the experience: pizza quality, toppings/specialty slices, and other. Now on to the first review!

Bravo Pizza on 14^th street and 7^th avenue.

The first destination on my pizza pilgrimage was Bravo Pizza, conveniently located on 14^th and 7^th, right outside of the 14^th street 1 train stop. Having expressed his own interest in pizza connoisseurship, one of my coworkers opted to join me for this trip, so maybe we can get a second opinion out of him later.

Pizza Quality: 6

The basic cheese slice at Bravo is a solid example of New York pizza. The sauce is tasty but fairly generic. The cheese is also somewhat generic but still good. It was perhaps a tiny bit greasy for my taste, but I should qualify that by saying that I’m not a big fan of grease in general. The cheese on this slice did have a some excess grease, but it didn’t have a major adverse effect on the slice as a whole. Meanwhile, the crust was doey with just the right amount of crunchiness making it very foldable. And yes, I’m a consummate folder, so they received good marks for crust. Overall, this slice is a little better than what I would consider to be the standard for New York Pizza, hence the 6 rating.

Toppings: 7

Bravo’s is one of those New York pizza places with a wide variety of topping, Sicilian and white slices all lined up on the counter, and I have to say that most of them looked pretty darn good. I decided on a meat-lover’s slice with sausage, pepperoni and bacon for my topping selection, mostly because they really covered the whole slice and I like my toppings to be ubiquitous whenever possible. True to appearances, the toppings were pretty good! They added to the flavor of the slice without overwhelming it, and were quality ingredients in there own right. They were a little different from the typical fare, a little crisper than a lot of other pizza toppings I’ve had, but the effect was great, and also seemed to have minimized the extra grease that usually accompanies the meat slice.

Other: 5

I wanted to make a category for intangibles such as price, atmosphere, convenience, and anything else that may not actually make the pizza taste any better, but will have some impact on the overall experience. Bravo didn’t stand out to me in any particular respect with regards to this category. The location is convenient if you actually were to travel to get there as I did, but while I’d drop in if I were in the neighborhood, I wouldn’t likely go out of my way to get there, making this something of a moot point. Service and ambience were typical (don’t laugh, some places really excel in this category…and some really suck). The price was a little high by my usual standards, but not enough to be a deal breaker.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that Bravo serves up a solid New York slice with good toppings, at a not unreasonable price. Stop by and give it a shot if you’re in the neighborhood, but don’t go too far out of your way for it.

Not to start a war or anything, cause I know how some people can be about their pizza, but I’m looking for recommendations on everyone’s favorite slices in the city so that I can begin my very own New York pizza tour. So far, I’ve got two names on the table, Two-Boots and Pizza 33, but I’m gonna withold my judgement (which of course I’ll be sharing with all of you) until I actually try them. So shout out a few places that you think make the best slice in New York City and I’ll go check ‘em out!