That's Amore Pizza: "When your eye's hit the pie / and you just wanna cry..."

Cristy, Matt and I left Rap Pizza and wandered around in a daze, still high off the incensual aroma of Rap's rad slice, until we found That's Amore Pizza a block or two away.

 

I was pretty pumped at the front of the place.  The filthy awning and Italian Ice Area out front worked in collusion to take me back to childhood.  As soon as we got in, though, I lost any expectations that the rad exterior might have instilled in me.  The slices sitting behind the counter just didn't look very good.  I ordered my slice, paid my $2.00, sprinkled on my usual array of pizzeria spices (if you care to argue about the legitimacy of spicing pizza, we may as well keep it all in the comments section of this entry, just for the sake of containment), and brought the slice to the table, feeling pretty unenthused about how it looked.

 

The undercooked, thick glob of cheese at the very front of the slice, falling apart, with sauce poking through the holes in it's structural integrity, really turned me off.  While I totally realize that this is someone's ideal slice, I also realized that I am not that someone.

I kept my reservations to myself, so as not to prejudice Matt and Cristy, my pizza partners.  Taking the first bites, I was impressed by how good the sauce tasted, though I did mention, after everyone had tried it, that I was generally unenthusiastic and thought the slice had too much cheese.  Cristy mentioned that there was "something wrong" with the taste of the crust.  The she put her finger on it, "it seems like this crust has been frozen!  It's a good thing, though.  I fucking love Elio's."  Take that however you will.

Generally speaking, I think the slice was totally undercooked overall, and it might've been a little better if it had been a little more cooked through.  However, with that much cheese lumped on the middle, it'll never really be possible to cook it more without the cheese turning into total liquid and dripping off.  Initially I thought the crust was pretty good, but that was just because I had bitten into the reservoir of grease that had collected when I'd folded it in half.  The rest of the crust was the most textureless, flavorless waste I've tasted in a while.  The sauce sure was good, though.

That's Amore Pizza

1405 Saint Nicholas Ave

New York, NY 10033

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I got a really nice letter recently from my friend Kate Ferencz, whose new tape my roommate happens to have put on in the living room ten minutes ago and it is BLOWING MY MIND.

did you get the idea for the pizza blog when you were traveling through sad lonely places where there wasn't any good pizza? I'm sitting in my mom's house in westchester reading it and thinking about how it really makes me want to eat pizza and remembering what it was like in new orleans when all we ever ever did was talk about how we wished we had pizza, or sometimes, you'd think it but you wouldn't say it, because you didn't want to remind everyone else around you and make them all upset.  I can't believe I'm about to leave pizza land again.  keep up the good work!

You can listen to Kate's rad music and check out some upcoming tour dates on her myspace page, which you should do.  She is way talented and worth seeing live if you're in the Southeast, where she will apparently be playing some shows next week.  And if you aren't lucky enough to live in Asheville or Murphreesboro (really, Kate, Murphreesboro?), you should still listen to the songs and order a record if you like them.