Monday, November 23, 2009
Pizza Triple Feature: "Can I turn three boring slices into one interesting post?"
Luigi's looks like the Ground Round or a schmaltzy Irish pub on Jamaica Ave, which is to say, dark wood, those lamps with green glass lampshades like they hang over pooltables, etc. I felt very comfortable in there and everyone in the store was really nice. Too bad the pizza blew chunks.
Horrible cheese, bland sauce, crappy dough. It seems like it's cooked okay, but the dough's delicious crunch quickly gives way to that nasty uncooked paste I totally hate. And that segues perfectly into the horrible cheese, like making a Stuff That Sucks mixtape and fading Hey There Delilah into Your Body Is A Wonderland into Virtual Insanity
Luigi's - $2.50
936 8th Ave
New York, NY 10019
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Ma Harvester and me discussed the possibility, upon approaching, that this place was named after Nicola Sacco, the famous persecuted anarchist, and were both hoping like hell it would rule because, I don't know about y'all, but nothing works up my appetite like an imprisoned or executed anarchist. (Proposed business idea: Empanada Goldman: If I can't eat, it's not my revolution.) And aside from the tenuous political alliance I have with the name of Sacco Pizza, the place looks like the dingy kind of A Number One shithole that I love. And just so we don't have an trouble with the antisemites, shithole isn't a yiddish word, and I use it very lovingly.
Seriously, it was cramped as fuck in there with all the construction workers waiting to eat. Both me and mi madre breathed a huge sigh of relief at the prospect of finally having a good slice. Because Sacco Pizza feels right. Sadly, as you've probably already noticed from the picture, the slice is shit. It is easily apparent to any armchair pizziaolo that this slice has been sitting out for a while. The cheese should not form a solid enough mass that it can shift so cohesively off a slice EVER. But if we just got a bum slice, it must've been from a bum pie. Not only did this pizza not taste good, but it tasted like the absence of flavor. This is like, the anti-pizza.
Texturally, it was a nightmare, but that at least has some historic context. See, back in the day when Christopher Columbus, Larry Flynt, Mike Eisner and Sylvester Stallone had to flee Communism in Italy and take their divinely ordained homeland, the good old US of A, back from the socialist Indians, they didn't have time time to let their pizza dough leaven because they had to leave surreptitiously, under cover of night. As such, they packed their cheese, their dough and their sauce into containers, and then they had to cook their pizza in the sun on the roof of their Hummer as they drove across the desert, fleeing Fidel Castro's army of cloned Hitlers. Sure, it wasn't the best pizza, but it was enough to nourish them for the long drive, and the Great Pizzaola used her magic to grant them the ability not to have to pee, so they never had to pull over and the Hitlers couldn't ever catch them because they were riding on Segways. As such, every year around Thanksgiving, traditional pizzerias cook their pizza with unleavened dough, to remember the struggle that our Four Fathers went through in order establish a homeland for their previously nomadic people, Free Market Capitalists.
Sacco Pizza - $2.50
819 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019
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Oh boy, this place. The slice tasted and felt like if you poured ketchup over a piece of cardboard and then melted plastic onto it. NO GOOD. It caused my mother to comment that New Yorkers are really slacking on their pizza making. She said, "you know, I would've thought that at least 1 out of 7 slices would be Great, if not at least passable. We haven't had a single solidly good slice today. I don't know if the rose-colored lenses of my childhood nostalgia are affecting this statement, but it just seems like there weren't this many bad slices when I was a kid." To be fair, my mother was also eating pizza in Corona and Elmhurst mostly, which were two predominantly Italian neighborhoods back then, and not in Midtown, so that may have something to do with it, but she may also have a point. Have we, as a city, accustomed ourselves to settle for a shitty slice? I think we should all do a little self-searching. At least by reading Slice Harvester you're doing your part in promoting a culture of non-heinous pizza.
9th Ave Pizzeria - $2.00
791 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019
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I have read all of your posts waiting for you to try Sacco so I could calibrate your reviews. Apparently we're off. I think Sacco is a great slice and one of the best I've had in NYC.
ReplyDeleteThat place broke my heart, I wanted to like it so bad.
ReplyDeleteNo Mariella's?
ReplyDeleteI tried it once and had a similar reaction and then i went back and after that I went back every day for about a year. then i moved. (i was the first commenter)
ReplyDeleteI think that Sacco Pizza is the best pizza I have ever tasted and I have tasted quite a few. I know one persons opinion does not mean much like yours or mine but a place that has been open for over 50 years, like Sacco Pizza, must be doing something right.
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