Thursday, December 17, 2009

Little Luzzo's: "This slice confuses and frightens me, but it is DELICIOUS."

Last night I was thinking of ways to let you down easy that I was never gonna leave Florida, so the Pizza Mission was over for good. You got to understand, I got out of a van after a six hour drive to St. Augustine from chilly Atlanta, felt that beach breeze on my face and said, "fuck it, I'm staying." The show last night was in this goofy as fuck sports bar that served excellent vegetarian food. I'm talking like, their whole menu was Spicy Tempeh Grilled Cheese, Garbanzo Burger, Seitan Gyro, Huevos Rancheros. Are you kidding me? That's the bar food around here?! Maybe it's just my ethnic predisposition to feel compelled to move to Florida and I'm just getting the first taste what's gonna hit me way harder when I'm 75, but I was seriously feeling it. I mentioned enjoying the temperature when everyone else was complaining about being cold and Blake looked at me and said, "you know, you look comfortable right now."

So that was it! Florida, for life. Last night we went to Caroline's friend Rich's house to sleep, I woke up this morning to a beautiful breeze, drank some coffee, ate a kumquat off the tree in the backyard and thought, "This is the start of my new life. I guess I should update the blog and let the Slice Harvester fans know that I'm about to become a raw food yoga guy in Florida." And then for kicks I looked at my flickr to see which pizza place I would've been reviewing and it was Little Luzzo's and I remembered why I need to come back to New York.


This place felt great inside and smelled even better. The tables are all some kind of dark, thick wood and while the place was bustling the whole time we were in there, it never felt overcrowded. I was a little surprised by how the pizza looked, but I decided it was worth it to give it a shot anyway.


This slice is crazy. It is like some wild, perfect crossbreed between a Neapolitan slice and a New York slice. The fresh mozzarella and blackened, brick oven edges are totally Old World steez, but the size of the slice and thickness of the dough is a touch of that New School New York flava to keep things up to date. Perhaps we can convince Craig Mack to write a song about Little Luzzo's called Flava In Ya Mouth.

In my estimation, this slice is a huge success. Combining the size and shape of a New York slice with the higher quality, fresher ingredients of conventional, continental pizza is genius. Especially for $2.50. My biggest gripe with brick oven style is that the quality ingredients necessitate a high price for a very small amount of food. I am no Koronet disciple, but I certainly believe that a single slice of pizza should be big enough to fill me up for a little while. A bunch of bullshit fancy-pantses are gonna piss and moan about how plebian my opinions are, but fuck that and fuck them. If I am in a restaurant sitting down to eat and get a tiny pizza that cost $22 and is fucking delicious as an appetizer before my mussels, I am not gonna whine about it. But here at Slice Harvester we are dealing with street slices and street slices should be within a certain price range and fill a guy up a certain amount. And the point is, the slice at Little Luzzo's satisfies both of those criteria without sacrificing quality or raising the price even infinitesimally.

This slice was cooked perfectly. Great crunch, nice amount of grease, the sauce was super fucking delicious and the cheese was a totally flavorful fresh mozzarella that melted really well and totally kicked ass. The douchebag boneroni jerkoff from the bar last night who talked my ear off about how cool my hat was and made Blake and Kevin really uncomfortable probably would've called this slice "a sick bitch." Blah blah blah. Not your conventional street slice, but whatever y'all, this shit ruled.

Little Luzzo's
119 E 96th St
New York, NY 10029

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review. I pass by this place everyday but never tried it. Now I will give it a shot.

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  2. I might have to venture over to the east side for this. I don't think I've been over there in years.

    BTW: What happened to the labels on the right side? Now I can't figure out how to get to the listings just for "good slice" for instance, without scrolling through every post looking for it at the bottom.

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  3. This post makes up for all the times you called Florida a shithole
    xo
    Mikey

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  4. A visit last spring to the library on 96th across from Little Luzzo provided the serendipity of a couple of slices that I have been extolling to friends ever since.

    However I live in the Seaport neighborhood and rarely roam the upper east.

    I had a day to myself a couple of weeks ago and decided to start it with a trip to Little Luzzo where I devoured 3 slices which confirmed my earlier experience.

    I think this place has the best street slice (and the price is now $2.00) I know of and competes favorably with any of the better known sit down joints.

    For me it achieves perfection in the synthesis of 3 simple ingredients: sauce, cheese, crust. Whenever pizza attempts to carry a deeper culinary narrative than this, the experience of eating becomes more important than the eating.

    Viva Little Luzzo! Pizza without pretension.

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  5. PS

    What is Papa John's doing here?

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  6. I don't know. I went here the other day, and I was handed two decidedly dry slices. The flavor was good, but there isn't much worse that old pizza. One of the slices wasn't even warmed up enough, and I asked for more heat, and it was still kind of louse.

    I think one of the hallmarks of a good pizza place is attention to the details, and this place missed the mark on that account.

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