Saturday, September 26, 2009

Como Pizza: "I am not as precise as I thought."


While James and I were out eating hella slices, my friend Jordan called. He is a super rad buddy who knows everything cool. Like, walking around Manhattan with him is way more intesting than walking around with anyone else because he's all, "that's where Malcolm X was living when he was assassinated," "there are only four freestanding houses in all of Manhattan and that's one of them. The other three are in these three places," "etc." Dude is totally like, an unending fountain of rad information.

Anyway, Jordan was like, "hey Colin, you never went to the pizzeria I go to the most in my neighborhood, Como Pizza." I didn't believe him because I totally remembered the name from a couple weeks prior. But sure enough, I leafed through my grease-stained Pizza Journal, and there was not an entry for Como. "By God," I thought, "I fucked up and I need to rectify this situation. So James and I got on the subway and headed up to 168th.

This brings up a brief digression which is as follows: I am but one man, and though I try to focus my energy on pizza all the time, I also work a couple jobs, write puppet shows, and do rape crisis work. Which is just to say, there's a lot on my plate at any given moment, and though Slice Harvester is a pretty top priority, I am bound to make a few mistakes. So if you are following the blog and notice that I've missed the best, most loathsome, or least exceptional pizzeria in your neighborhood, write me a comment or send me an email to let me know. I want to be comprehensive, but I'm not perfect. That said, on to Como Pizza.


Pretty unexceptional looking exterior, but the inside looks like all the best Jewish delicatessens.

I think it's that design on the walls, whatever the hell that shit is. It made me feel like I was at The Woodro Delicatessen in Rosedale, where I had my first ever Corned Beef and Pastrami on Rye with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry Soda as a wee lad. The lady behind the counter looked just like my Grandma Sylvia--hair dyed black, overly made up, tacky costume jewelry--and I immediately felt so comfortable inthere..

The pizza, though, was just not phenomenal. It was decent. Perfect amount of grease, good ratios, the sauce was great. But the whole slice was majorly undercooked. I enjoyed the whole thing, straight through the crust, which tasted superb but wasn't crunchy enough. I would come back here for sure, and I will when coming to visit Jordan, but next time I'm here I'll ask for my slice well-done, and I'd suggest you do the same if you like your pizza crunchy.

11 comments:

  1. I am adamantly against undercooked crust and believe it can cause major Candida overgrowth.

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  2. mmm...but you want to find the best "american pizza" or the most proper one?
    what do you mean with "best"?
    what are you looking for?
    :D

    valentina (an italian)

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  3. e queste sarebbero pizze?

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  4. For Anonymous:
    Non credo che tutte le pizzerie a taglio italiane servano dei capolavori e ogni cultura reintepreta a modo suo i piatti di altre culture. Un po' di rispetto.

    I don't believe that every Pizzeria in Italy sells only gastronomical masterpiece.
    And every culture adapts dishes from others cultures. Show a little respect

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  5. don't be unfair
    "we" invented it but then it spread worldwide
    it's normal that something changed fitting the taste of local people and the availability of the ingredients
    you won't find easilly a proper US meal, or kebap or chinese food in another state
    and in case you'd find it probably you won't like it as a "fake" one

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  6. Great blog!!! all my best from Italy.

    A Italian almost "pizzaiolo"

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good Idea, I'm writing from Palermo, Sicily!
    I love pizza!

    ReplyDelete
  8. zaku,
    sto cercando dove ho scritto che tutte le pizzerie italiane servono capolavori, ma non riesco a trovarlo.

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  9. Four freestanding houses in Manhattan? You're friend may be cool, but his facts need help. I think there's more than four in Marble Hill alone. There's definitely a couple in Inwood just south of the Columbia stadium. Then you throw in the Jumel (I know, sp) mansion and the Grange, and a couple downtown, well, we're looking at a lot more than four.

    These morons think there is only one:

    therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/real-estate-mysteries-behind-manhattan-s-only-freestanding-house

    Thee guys disagree:
    corcoran.com/property/listing.aspx?Region=NYC&ListingID=1788220


    Mike
    NYC

    PS Your blog is awesome. Rock on.

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  10. PS! Just to address Mike's critique here, since I'm relinking this entry and folks may notice the same thing: I totally butchered all the facts Jordan told me up there. For instance, he pointed out the actual building where Malcolm was assassinated, not where he was living when it happened. And I have no idea how many free standing houses he said there were, I basically just made up a number that seemed feasible to me. So don't judge Jordan's facts, but my shitty memory.

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  11. Hmm, I was just coming on here to update the Como Pizza review, but apparently I also have to address criticism regarding my knowledge of the exact number of free-standing houses in manhattan. To get to that first, I don't really know how many there are, and I can't remember what I said to Colin that day but whatever I said wasn't supposed to be taken as some definitive fact but more of an estimate. I feel like 4 is about right and I know I've read that someplace but I don't guarantee its accuracy. The ones I was thinking of were all those that you mentioned in Inwood and Washington Heights - I didn't know there were some downtown. I didn't think there were any in Marble Hill, but I also get confused as to where Marble Hill starts and stops. I'm curious as to where the downtown houses are, would you mind giving more info?

    Anyway, on to what I came here to post. I still go to Como Pizza all the time and I must say over the past couple months it has been excellent. Really the only shortcoming before was that it was generally undercooked, and I don't know if they look at sliceharvester or what but recently it has been nice and crispy and really pretty damn delicious. yesterday I ate at a slice at Tommy's on 123rd before getting on the train, then got off and ate a slice at Como, and I got to say that the Como slice was better.

    Ok that's it.

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