Pizza Plus: "There's nothing they could do to fix this."

Pizza Plus may seem familiar to the observant reader. As you may recall from last week, me and my favorite book thug Corey Eastwood ate at a slice joint on 9th Ave called Pizza Plus already. And if you have an especially good memory, you'll remember that the logo at that place looked exactly the same as this one. Actually, I just looked at the picture of the last one, and realized that I didn't get the logo in the photograph, but trust me, that place had the same exact circular emblem with the poor representation of the Empire State Building as this one does. What you will remember about that place is that it had totally shitty pizza.


Well, so did this place. There was mad NYHC up in this slice. I'm talking Danny Diablo all over the damn thing. This slice caused almost instantaneous bodily depression as soon as it was swallowed. Watching everyone swallow their first bite was like watching a room full of automatons get turned off by remote. There is something inherently evil about this place. Caroline said it was "making her want to cry." In short, this pizza is a pox. Steer clear.

Rating:


Pizza Plus - $2.75
642 9th Avenue (44th & 45th)
New York, NY 10036

Lazzara's: "I am the resurrection and the slice."

Lazarra's Pizza is totally full of shit and I am mad at them. This place is cool if you want to eat pizza on an airship, which is what it feels like when you stare at a huge plasma tv screen while sitting under a tin ceiling and steampunk ceiling fan. Maybe these people would want to eat here, but I think human beings, or "yuman beans" as my father might say, who want actual pizza would not be interested in this place.


They only have square pizza here. But it's not a grandma slice, it's a what they're calling regular pizza. This is like when you make pizza at home and don't have a pizza stone yet so you end up rolling out your dough on a cookie sheet. In a word, unprofessional. The thing that really pisses me off about it is that it tastes really good! It's super buttery and in the words of Leah, the crust kind of tastes like "when you get on a pancake when you're lucky." As in, that rad buttery burnt shit. The slice had perfect ratios, great crunch and the sauce had a bit of a bite. It was really delicious, much to my chagrin.

At one point I took a bite and the cheese stretched almost an entire foot. Leah said, "not to be totally gross, but it's sort of like ovulation." Caroline and I both laughed but I have to be honest and admit that I was only laughing because Leah said "ovulation." Despite the fact that I'm a guy with a good attitude towards menstruation (that's right, I'm the guy), I've never actually ovulated so I'm not quite sure what she's talking about. Whatever, it's always funny to compare food to bodily functions. If anyone feels compelled to graphically explain whatever I missed in the comments section, I'd be really pleased, as I'm sure would most of my readers.

Aside from the fact that it's not real pizza, my big beef with Lazarra's is that they have a million signs all over the damn place that say their slice costs $1.50, and then the slice actually costs $1.64. What a misleading bummer. At least say "$1.50 + tax". Seriously. That kind of bullshit has probably cost many an unsuspecting sidewalk stroller $0.14 she didn't expect to spend. What bullshit. I can't deny that it's really delicious, though.

Rating:


Rating if it were actual pizza:


Lazzara's - $1.64
221 West 38th Street (7th & 8th)
New York, NY 10018

99¢ Fresh Pizza Villa Cafe: "A shitty slice for a shitty guy."

You know when your oogle friends come to town and get you so wasted and then you end up trying to fight one of your best friends and then you wake up at noon still totally shitfaced and you're all "oh fuck!" and you just can't seem to get it together and it seems like life is always gonna be this bad, like the first time you ate mushrooms when you were 14 and at some point you "realized" you are just gonna be tripping forever and everything is totally fucked and your parents are gonna be so mad and it was all a fucking bloody trap and you fell for it like a sucker and goddamnit, now you're stuck like this and how are you supposed to go to school ever again or like, talk to your parents ever again and I guess you're gonna have to just run away and live under a bridge because you're not fit for this world and you're too much of a coward to just off yourself so it's like, I guess it's just gonna be the life of a miserable outcast for me.

You know what I'm talking about? And it's an important experience because you learn that you actually do stop tripping eventually, and when you're done with that harrowing experience you briefly have a newfound clarity and you are now equipped with the knowledge that horrible, seemingly-endless shit is actually finite. And you forget that it's true, so 8 years later when your heart breaks FOR REAL the first time, and you're sitting on 2nd Ave with your best friend crying, you think your pain will never end, and you'll never be whole again. But then you come out of that tunnel and you've got that new clarity again, and you learn to safeguard and protect your heart so that it won't be so vulnerable. And you build an impenetrable fortress around it so that you'll never have to feel that bad, and you don't let anyone in there who can hurt you like that. And then people you care dearly for start dying, and they're like spies who permeated your defenses because you were only on the lookout for people trying to besiege your heart with Romantic Love and all of a sudden your fortifications are all fucked all over again and that's when you finally remember that thing you learned that first time you ate mushrooms when you were 14 and you totally hid it from your parents so well and you snuck downstairs to play Return to Zork on the computer because you thought it would be so cool, but instead you ended up going out and just laying in the grass all night looking at the sky. And then the sun started coming up and you had to run upstairs and hide before your folks woke up and you were in your room tripping and you couldn't leave because THEY'D KNOW just like the cat knew when she saw you and it's never gonna end it's never gonna end and you're laying in bed freaking out and the next thing you know you're waking up in your room a few hours later and everything just makes sense.

The message you ultimately learn from this cycle of death and heartbreak and psychedelia is dual, bifurcated like the tongue of the Lizard Guy from Burning Man. The teachings of the Great Pizzaola call this the Bifurcated Tongue of Wisdom and it is one of the 8 Slices of Enlightment that make up the Pie of Transcendence. The first and most important lesson is that experiencing the joy of love is worth the pain of loss. Whether we are talking about people you are fucking who decide they don't love you anymore (or vice versa, realizing you don't love someone who still loves you hurts in it's own way), or people who you care immensely for in a platonic way, (and really, I've always believed that the differences between these two sorts of love should be slight at most), it is worth it to feel that intense caring, and feel that intense yearning when they are gone, to understand the parameters and depths of our emotions. Open yourself up to the chance of being hurt. Don't be a coward. Fear is the mind-killer.

The second lesson is that sometimes you get so fucked up you think that it's never going to end and you're stuck like that but it does and you're not. Quit being a baby and just enjoy yourself. The more comfortable you are the quicker it'll go. It's like the horrifying Batman ride at 6 Flags where your feet hang out. It was supposed to be fun but it actually sucks and is scary and it seems like it takes forever but it actually doesn't, and besides you're strapped in, so you don't really have a choice. I am being a huge weirdo today, aren't I?

Regardless, I was in the early stages of that cycle a couple of afternoons ago when I went to eat pizza with longtime Slice Harvester co-conspirator Caroline Paquita and her wonderful sister Leah. Leah is a True American Weirdo, just like the rest of us, so she is pretty easy to get along with. As usual when I pizza-eat with people from Florida, it was raining pretty terribly when we got out of the train in Manhattan, with the stated goal of eating the remaining slices of pizza above 42nd St. Our first stop was, according to the phone book listing, called Grandma Pizza, but instead turned out to be one of the many 99¢ Fresh locations in this neighborhood.


This is the most extravagant 99¢ Fresh location I've ever seen. There was so much seating! It was like, really spacious. And when we got there, they were totally sold out of pizza and I had to wait to get my slice. When it finally came out Caroline looked at skeptically, but since I was feeling less than human it felt only appropriate that I eat less-than-pizza.


This slice was not good at all and was totally perfect for my hangover. The dough was billowing and thick like the smoke from a factory. There was barely any sauce or cheese, and what there was didn't taste especially good. Leah said it reminded her of "carnival" pizza, "with a dash of cafeteria," and I think that's a fairly apt assessment. Caroline hastened to add that it tasted like this slice definitely contained HFCS by which she meant High Fructose Corn Syrup, although it my notes I accidentally wrote "C says: 'it's got some NYHC in it."

This slice is fine for a dollar. Not great, not horrid. Definitely different than my previous 99¢ Fresh experiences, which reminds me that I am correct in visiting every store in the 99¢ Fresh empire.

Rating:


99¢ Fresh Pizza Villa Cafe - $1.00
360 West 42nd Street (8th & 9th)
New York, NY 10036

Brick Oven Pizza: "This is not a true and proper New York slice but fuck it, this shit rules."

When Corey and I walked up to the front of Brick Oven Pizza, we were a little confused looking inside. There was one tiny table, blocking the entrance to the kitchen, that was set like a fancy restaurant, candles and all. Adjacent to the table was a totally wild, fully-marble counter with like, four or five stools pulled up to it and a guy dressed like I used to have to dress at the catering company I worked for if I was doing some kind of cooking in front of the guests. Like, totally wearing impeccably bleached and pressed chef garb, down to the goofy hat. Corey was all, "I don't know about this."
And I was like, "Yeah, it doesn't look like the kind of place that does slices."
And then this paint covered totally rugged looking dude who walking by was like, "naw, dey got slices."

So we went inside. Chef Boyardee didn't even look up from the dough he was kneading. We sat down in our stools, me and Corey did, and we looked back and forth at each other for a full minute before one of us sort of cleared our throat and was like, "Hey, um, do you serve slices here?" Chef Boyardee looked up and grunted but didn't really respond and immediately went back to his dough. Another guy walked in and sat down and didn't say anything. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, so it was comforting, like when you've been waiting at a bus stop late at night and someone else shows up to wait for the bus too.

Anyway, dude totally started making a pie and was like, deliberately refusing to make eye contact with me and Corey. It was so weird and I felt like I was in like, the movie After Hours, or something. It there was just something askew about the whole situation, it was not Normal Human Interaction. Anyway, after like, fifteen real minutes of awkwardly watching this guy make a pizza and throw it in the oven and talk in a language I didn't know with the electrician hanging out in there, he pulled out the most fancy looking pie, and cut a slice off, and handed it to me and Corey.


And FUCK, it was GOOD. Like, the kind of good pizza you only get in a really fancy restaurant or at like, those weird rest stop sort of places they have on whatever is the equivalent of State Highways in Italy. You know what I'm talking about? I don't care really.

Anyways, this pizza was phenomenal. It had the absolutely perfect amount of salt, which is crucial, the cheese was totally delicious and fresh and an amazing texture, the sauce was understated but tangy and sharp, the dough was an incredible texture and everything had that perfect, charred, brick oven flavor. And the best part of all? It was only $2.00.

Rating:


Brick Oven Pizza (annex of L'Allegria Restaurant) - $2.00
402 W 44th St. (at 9th)
New York, NY 10036

Pizza Plus: "This is criminal."

As is often the case with pizzerias, the door to Pizza Plus is a warp vortex that takes you out of New York and deposits you somewhere else, like all the open plumbing in Super Mario Bros. In the past we've visited the time travel pizzeria, Tito's, which forced me to question if it would be possible to warn the staff about the attacks of September 11th and thus divert a major national tragedy, (sadly if I tried to do that the Time Police would be on my ass quicker than the NYPD were misguidedly "randomly searching" sikhs ten years ago), and Basement Pizza, where the patron is transported into a David Lynch film. There must be a couple more. Anyway, perhaps the most exotic of all, thus far, Pizza Plus warps you into a touristy neighborhood in Berlin trying to facsimilate American culture.

Remember the game of telephone I described in the review of Buk pizza a few weeks back? (It's worth noting: I'm pretty sure I stole that idea from a story that Young Punk Andy wrote [congratulations on graduating, by the way!]) Well, imagine if instead of having an inter-continental misunderstanding about what pizza is, there was a misunderstanding about what pizzerias are like. This place was just so weird. Huge plasma TV playing live U2 footage, weird L-shaped couch in the front that it looks like you could order bottle service at, there was this like, 13 year old girl wearing tons of garish makeup and smoking outside who apparently worked there. I really felt like I was in another country. It was super weird.


This slice? This slice was a miracle. Seriously. Via some feat of science, or pact with the devil or something, the contents of this slice worked in collusion to somehow totally disguise the fact that there was any cheese or sauce on it. This is like, some Faust shit where it's not real pizza and it looks like pizza but then when you bite in the cheese and sauce disappear and you're just eating bread. I honestly felt like I was taking part in a magic trick. A really gross-tasting magic trick.

Rating:


Pizza Plus - $2.75
707 9th Avenue (48th & 49th)
New York, NY 10019