Bleeker Street Pizza: "More like 'Blah-ker Street Poopza.'"

After the weird times at Z Pizza, I was expecting Bleeker Street Pizza to be good, because it looked like a real pizza shop! The guys behind the counter were total dicks in a way that I was super into, and they were listening to some awesomely terrible music, and some old lady thought I had a bad attitude and was mean to me, so overall it was a wonderful experience, but then I got my slice.

I am always theoretically fond of an employment situation where the workers don't give a flying fuck about me as a customer. I have worked in many such a situation and there is something very rewarding about the freedom afforded by not caring at all. However, in this instance that translated to these guys handing me a slice of totally cold pizza! It seemed like it had been refrigerated and was totally gross. A few bites in I asked them "would you mind fucking cooking my pizza a little, buddy?" and they heated it a bit. It was way better, but still not stand out great or worth the effort it took me to slog through the employee malaise and make this slice decent. Heave ho!

Rating:

Bleeker Street Pizza - $2.50
69 7th Ave (Bleeker & Barrow)
New York, NY 10014

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Also! I wanted to say Happy Birthday to Linda Sparhawk and give a shout out to all the ladies at Miami Children's Hospital who read Slice Harvester!

Z Pizza: "I should not have eaten here!"

Z Pizza is such a weird place! It turns out that it's also a national chain and thus falls outside of the Slice Harvester scope, but fuck it, I ate here, so I'll tell you about it. I kind of had a feeling this was some kind of weird franchise situation. And it still boggles my mind that these kind of places open up in New York City, but I guess as a town we are not nearly as tough on outsiders as we used to be.

This slice looked like toy food, was totally tiny and tasted like some kind of salted meat. Laszlo said, "the aftertaste tastes like a burp." Eric said, "the crust is the texture of fried salami." I say, "don't eat here."

Rating:

Z Pizza - $2.00

298 Bleeker St (Barrow & Grove)

New York, NY 10014

Rivoli Pizza II: "Larry is dead."

I remember the name Rivoli Pizza from my notes and I just spent the past ten minutes researching on a popular search engine for information on Rivoli Pizza I. It wasn't until I consulted my trusty companion, Il Pizza Journal that I saw that I had, in fact, attempted to visit the Original Rivoli, and it is, in fact, no longer there. Having now eaten at Rivoli Pizza II, it is no surprise that its predecessor has gone the way of the microraptor, the primary differences between the two being that Rivoli Pizza was a probably mediocre pizza shop, and the microraptor is a dinosaur that looks like it could've lived in an Ursula LeGuinn novel and has four wings.

At least, in juxtaposition with what I ate before it, this is actually pizza. However, this is mediocre pizza at best, and kind of bad pizza at worst. The dough was crumbly, like soggy sheetrock, the cheese was cheap and had what Laszlo characterizes as "the bad grease," and the sauce, Eric pointed out, "tastes like it's about to turn." You know when you dumpster pizza in the summer from those places down by Wall Street that close when it's still light out, and they've been sitting out in the sun baking in garbage bags for a few hours by the time you get there, and you take a bite and you realize the sauce is a pinch of yeast away from becoming some kind of disgusting Tomato Wine? It was like that. Sort of rancid.

Rating:


Rivoli Pizza II - $2.50
125 Christopher St (Hudson & Bedford)
New York, NY 10014

Slice, the perfect food: "A terrifying glimpse into our dystopian future."

Slice: the perfect food is one of the creepiest places I've ever been. Their logo seems to be an inverted Tri-Force. Never has a symbol of such incredible good been flipped over and used for something so evil since the Catholic Church turned the Upsidedown Cross logo on its head! This place is not just selling "pizza," (in fact, they're not selling pizza at all, but more on that soon), they are selling a lifestyle of smug superiority. This is the culinary equivalent of that piano guy on NPR who used to sing songs that sounded like the beginning of Frasier and were essentially about how working class people are stupid.

Let me just quote this text for you in case you can't read it in the photo:

Slice is a wonderful invention. It is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It is the perfect food. The perfect food is much better than the perfect painting because you can eat the perfect food, and it tastes good. The perfect painting never tastes good. The perfect painting tastes like canvas and oil, which tastes horrible. 

 The perfect food is also much healthier than the perfect painting. The perfect food is natural and organic while the perfect painting is toxic. If you eat the perfect food you will come away feeling giddy, and jubilant. If you eat the perfect painting, you will come away feeling poisoned.

Slice, the perfect food is something like a pizza. If you look at it, it appears to be a pizza. As you eat it, it sits on your tongue much as a pizza would sit. But in fact, the perfect food is vastly superior to pizza, so enjoy.

It's really like they did a focus group based on everything that I hate and invented this place just to irritate me. We ordered one plain slice, which was charmingly called "the Simpleton" on the menu, at 2:21:26, according to our receipt. 27 minutes and 52 seconds later, after a lengthy conversation about that weird propaganda they had stenciled on their wall, a game of yahtzee and a game of chess, we were handed this thing:

For now let's briefly overlook the fact that it took them almost half an hour to defrost a supermarket pizza, cut it into a triangle, and throw a sloppy handful of parsley on it. Instead let's revisit some of their rhetoric before we even begin to discuss this shitshow they are calling food. The entire tone of is so whimsical and self-satisfied I want to find whoever was responsible for writing that copy and shake him down for his bus tokens. This is some seriously sanctimonious bullshit! These people must be, in the words of my amazing friend Meredith Gaydosh, so fucking delighted with themselves. And it is sickening. I am getting so mad thinking about this shit, just do me a favor and go back and read it all over again in "come to Butthead" voice.

Now let's talk about the fact that this is "vastly superior" to pizza. Apparently, in whatever fantasyland the copy writers for Slice, the perfect food live, "vastly superior" means smaller, more expensive, and less delicious. It also means that there is no longer any crust but there is an enormous, sloppy pile of parsley. As we were eating this... thing, Eric looked contemplative and said, "I think this is what the normal characters in A Clockwork Orange eat." Laszlo looked at both of us really excited and was all, "I was just thinking that this is what the pizza is like in Logan's Run!"

Rating:


Slice, the perfect food - $3.82
535 Hudson St (Perry & Charles)
New York, NY 10014

Village Pizza: "Too bad."

For a hot minute I was working as a fancy waiter at a fancy restaurant in the Meatpacking District. My friend who got me the job said it was easy money, but I have never really felt more dehumanized in my life. Like, there is this thing, I think, where the mega-rich pay the people who serve them to not be people anymore, and that's fair if it's something they are comfortable with, but I don't like it. After one particularly horrible brunch shift surrounded by entitled dickbags and their bratty children I was kvetching to a friend of mine about it and she was like, "yeah, I have done like, so much sex work, and high end waitering is definitely the most demeaning job I've ever had."

Anyway, every time I went to that shitty place, (which was honestly only like, 7 times, I quit after a week) I would walk by Village Pizza and think, "Goddamn, this place looks good! I can't wait until I get down here with Slice Harvester!" But on further investigation, I think it doesn't look good, so much as it looks old and kind of ratty, which is obviously something I am fond of.

This slice looked like a not wonderful, but hopefully alright slice. And the inside of the shop was awesome! When I was in there, the three totally butch dudes behind the counter and these two construction workers were singing along with Holiday by Madonna! It was like a scene from Querelle or the beginning of a Tom of Finland cartoon about what happens when you move to the Village. So Rad!

Anyway, the pizza was not so good. "It's maybe just a tad saucy," said Eric, upon his first bite. On his second he said, "that's very mediocre." Laszlo pointed out that the cheese was really terrible quality and added an absolutely horrendous flavor to the slice, which was totally true. The crust was REALLY good, and the sauce tasted alright, even if there was too much of it. Ultimately, if they could get their ratios down better and would spring for some decent cheese, this slice might be a total stud, but right now it's a total dud.

Rating:


Village Pizza - $2.50
65 8th Ave (13th & 14th)
New York, NY 10014