After we left The Son of Pizza Delia, we walked a little ways to find the next couple places. I'd never really been to that part of Washington Heights before, so it was a real pleasure to walk around and look at the buildings and shit. There's way more hills, and a lot steeper, than I am accustomed to in other parts of Manhattan or New York City in general. Either way, we shlepped up this huge winding hill. I almost felt like we were in San Francisco, and when we got to the top, and turned onto St. Nick, Heights Pizza was staring us right in the face.
I was immediately dismayed by the awning. It's one of these new vinyl computer printout awnings that have absolutely no character or soul and were probably designed by students in the graphic design program at Apex Technical Institute. (Not to badmouth Apex, I have plenty of buddies who learned trades there, but I can only imagine the kind of rote graphic design churned out in that type of environment, like the art schools they used to advertise in the back of EC Comics.) Really, the place was hideous.
The inside didn't look much better. Bare walls, no music, no real ambience of any kind besides the bad vibes being given off by the two surly pizzamen. The depths of our respective hangovers were starting to settle in and Kevin and I could barely mutter a word to one another. And then we got our slice:
And what a slice it was. $2.00 had just bought me and Kevin a little taste of heaven. I took the first bite and it was as near perfect as it could be short of it's only existing as the waking recollections of a fleeting pizza dream. The dough, made and cooked perfectly, was probably a centimeter thick throughout the slice and maybe 1.5-2 cm at the crust. The very bottom was a layer of perfectly crisp perfection, segueing into a beautifully soft sponge of dough. The sauce was adequately sweet, but still retained a fair amount of the natural tartness and tang of the tomatoes. And the cheese was solid and congealed enough to properly contain the moist interior of the slice, but it was still warm and gooey enough to slide apart in my mouth with every bite. Slices like this make all the mediocre and bad pizza I have and am bound to continue eating worth it. This is an A+ slice.
Heights Pizza
1624 Saint Nicholas Ave
New York, NY 10040
I always wanted to get my degree in welding technology from Apex. SO RAD DUDE.
ReplyDeleteHow can you actually taste the pizza by putting all those stupid spices on it?
ReplyDeleteYou should leave off all that other garbage - red pepper flakes, dried herbs, etc if you are going to rightfully judge a slice of pizza.
I love this mission! Excited to see how it all plays out..and I'm particularly excited for when you hit my neck of the woods - Murray Hill/Gramercy/Union Square.
ReplyDeleteBest blog ever!
ReplyDeleteAre you taking any suggestions for places to blog about?
Sorry, I have to disagree with you on this one. I went to Heights Pizza on your recommendation. My sister and I were rather disappointed. The crust was crisp, but it had a number of "weak spots" where they had failed to remove air bubbles and the dough did not cook properly. It was a decent balance of cheese and sauce, but the sauce was decidedly bland and tasteless. All-in-all, a very undistinguished slice.
ReplyDeleteWow, Bill, that sucks! Sorry to have steered you wrong. I was going to say that maybe we just have different taste in pizza, but it actually seems like I wouldn't have liked the slice you described either.
ReplyDeleteThe pizza aounds worth a try - what the heck, it's only $2. But for God's sake, PLEASE don't say that the money "had bought Kevin and I a little slice of heaven"! You'd never say - "it bought I a slice", or for that matter "it gave I a tummy ache". The word you want it that review is good old ME. As in - the money bought me (or Kevin and me) a slice of heaven. Bad reviews are a service to humankind, bad grammar is purely annoying!
ReplyDeleteI almost don't want to fix it because you're so smug, but I also totally know better.
ReplyDeleteI swear, though, if you correct me for something idiomatic I will track you down via your IP address and make you read my 13 year old cousin's text messages for an entire 24 hours.
as long as we're correcting grammar, after i tell you i enjoy the HELL out of your blog, i WILL take the liberty to remind you that "its", as a possessive of "it" requires NO APOSTROPHE.
ReplyDeletethe store's awning? "its awning"
is it raining? "it's raining"
GET OFF MY PHONE!
ReplyDelete