Paul's Pizza: "It's like when your best friend plays in a really good emo band."

Paul's Pizza is a shining beacon of authenticity in an otherwise barren wasteland of crappy posers, like Dick Lucas in a Hot Topic or Mobb Deep hanging out at Kanye West's house. That's a little bit histrionic, on both accounts, but seriously, the place looks for real.


I don't need to explain why that storefront appeals to me, right? That storefront appeals to everybody but weird fancy-pants fuddy duddies who use descriptive adjectives like, "that looks poor" pejoratively. And I don't need to remind you about Slice Harvester's official stance on fancy-pantses, do I? I will anyway: fuck those people.

I digress. The place looked amazing. I need to get a decent camera, I think because I tried to take some pictures of the inside but the lighting and my camera-phone just didn't want to get along. This place is really a sight to behold. It's not dirty, but it's comfortably worn in, like your Grandfather's fedora. Still suitable to wear to synagogue, but you can tell it's got history.

I ordered my slice, it was an even $2.00, which was a pleasant surprise after the last few places, especially considering how big it was, and brought it back to the table to be subjected to everyone's judgmental gaze.


Anyone who has been following this blog with any regularity will immediately notice that this slice is a lot more golden, and a lot less golden-brown, than I prefer. I noticed everyone at the table notice, watching them wait with trepidation for me to weigh in after my first bite. I remained stoically silent, though, and passed the slice along, as I didn't want to influence their judgments. After everyone had tried the slice, they started to weigh in one by one. "This slice is way bigger than I like... but it's so good," was the general consensus. And I agree. Not necessarily my perfect slice, but this is someone's perfect slice. This shit is great.

This slice is huge, and thick. There is way more dough than I would want in my ideal piece of pizza, but the dough is airy and light, like a pretzel or good bagel, and the ratios are consistent. There is ample sauce and cheese to match the dough but not too much or too little of either, and the ingredients are all of spectacular quality. You can tell there's a lot of history and love in this pizza, not to mention, it is a TON of food for two bucks. Josh reached some kind of higher plane of transcendental meditation eating the crust.


This slice of pizza is like when your best friends play in a band you don't like that's getting moderately popular. Maybe you don't want to go see them all the time, but you totally understand the appeal, even if it doesn't appeal to you. And they're such great people that you're just like, "awesome, I'm glad this touches someone in a real way, even if that someone's not me."

Paul's Pizza
3409 Broadway
New York, NY 10031
UPDATE 4/1/11: According to Kevin Yankou, "Paul's Pizza is now Olga's Pizza. I think most of the old staff is still working there and they still make a great slice (though they no longer offer meatball, which kinda sucks)." There you go. Come out, drink some beers or seltzer waters or whatever, dance a little if you like, watch me run from the DJ booth to the sidewalk to suck down half a cigarette in the span of a 2 minute song 30 times. You know, typical Friday night.

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And I'd just like to remind everyone about my DJ party at Alligator Greenpoint on Friday. It should be a good time. I've moved the flier from Tuesday's post to this one so it won't be repetitive. Just in case you were wondering, which I'm sure you weren't.