Sal and Carmine's: "I doubt I have much to say about this one that you haven't heard before."

I've been to Sal and Carmine's twice now for Slice Harvester. A few weeks ago it was the last pizzeria I visited with my fast friend Johnny Dress Pants, formerly Johnny No Pants, but his fashion sense has changed now that he's an old man. (Happy Birthday, asshole!) Sadly, John and I were so enamored with each other's company that we didn't really pay much attention to the fantastic slice. And I'll tell you, it's gotta be a pretty excellent hangout/reunion to distract me from the incredible slice at S and C's.


For those uninitiated, the nondescript awning above houses one of the best slices of pizza in New York. While the $3.00 price seems steep for a regular slice, I will vouch that it's totally worth it, and I'm a cheap piece of shit. Anyway, last week I returned to Sal and Carmine's with Caroline and Mikey and we indulged ourselves in a superior slice.


Fuck. The thing about this slice is that the ingredients are all incredible. The dough is impeccable. It tastes incredible and is always cooked perfectly. They didn't even throw my slice back in the oven and it was perfectly crisp on the bottom. The ratios are a dream. Just the right amount of bread::sauce::cheese. And the flavors are great. The aged mozzarella really tastes like CHEESE, which shouldn't be special, but these days is totally a rarity. The sauce is delicious and rich, more flavorful than I prefer, but it works so well on this slice. And the crust! The crust is a dream come true. Crispy on the outside, tender and soft on the inside, with just a hint of salt. It's unstoppable. This is a great slice for a cold, rainy day. It really fills you up with that sweet food-warmth that only good grub can, the kind that starts at your belly and slowly spreads out over your whole body.

This slice is a little richer than I'd want to eat on a regular basis, but whenever I'm in the neighborhood, it's a treat I love to indulge. It's refreshing to know that in the current climate of Gourmet Gruel and Hundred-Dollar Hamburgers there are still people out there who continue to make simple foods simply, but artfully. This isn't an anti-intellectual tirade, and I'm not railing about complexity or toying with tradition. But it's so easy to get caught up in trying to make everything new and incredible, that one can easily forget about the basics. I harp on this notion all the time, but the most elementary seeming things can be the hardest to perfect. Pizza is a great example and Sal and Carmine's have come damn close.

Sal and Carmine's
2671 Broadway
New York NY 10025

Broadway Pizza & Restaurant: "Like most things in life, this slice started out with promise but ultimately let me down."

After the nearly delicious experience at Mama's, Caroline, Mike and I trudged out into the rain and over to Broadway Pizza & Restaurant.


It's a decent looking place on the outside, though I felt a little claustrophobic in there. It was really narrow and cramped with boxes and shit. While I oftentimes enjoy the intimate experience of a tiny pizzeria (Rap Pizza, for instance, doesn't even have any tables, but it kind of rules in there), Broadway Pizza didn't feel intimate, it felt cramped. Like maybe a tomato can was gonna fall on my head like that lady who got mushed by a pallet of 2x4s at Home Depot a few years ago. But for $2.50, they serve up what might be a decent looking slice.


Here's why I say "might be decent looking," because I looked at that slice and thought it looked like crap, but I'm a good actor and didn't let on to Mikey and Caroline that I had already made a judgment. Much to my surprise, when I brought this slice to the table, my pizza pals were totally delighted with it. To me, this slice looks too wide, right off the bat I don't love the shape of it. Let's get less equilateral and way more isosceles, okay? Secondly, the colors were all off and the cheese looked bad. I thought this slice was going to be a soggy, wet mess. Luckily for everyone, I was only partially wrong.

This slice actually seemed initially promising. Since I know that I'm a total asshole, I thought maybe I had judged this slice incorrectly and approached my first bite with an open mind. While it lacked that dreamy texture I crave, it certainly tasted good! And despite the slice's over-wideness and over-thinness, it seemed to maintain a certain amount of structural integrity-a crucial element to the perfect slice. The structural integrity is like Deedee's basslines on a Ramones song, it holds everything together. (In case you were wondering Joey's singing is the sauce-sweet, but containing a hint of worldly bitterness, and Johnny's guitar playing is the cheese-you know it comes from somewhere kind of gross but ultimately it's perfect. The two kinds of good crust are Marky and Tommy's drumming, I'm not sure which is which yet. Richie is totally unimportant to this analogy, as is Ceejay. A slice that burns the roof of your mouth but was totally worth it is the time that Phil Spector held the Ramones at gunpoint during the recording of End of the Century. Actually a slice that burns the roof of your mouth but rules is the time when Johnny stole Joey's girlfriend and Joey was so hurt but ultimately he wrote The KKK Took My Baby Away so, it kind of makes it all okay. The time when Phil Spector held the Ramones at gunpoint is when you are at the bar and the guy who owns the pizzeria in your neighborhood corners you and then tries to get you to do coke with him in the bathroom.) Where was I? Oh, this slice. It seemed okay, okay? But then everyone noticed this weird taste in our mouths. The unmistakable, chemical after-taste of cheap cheese. BOOOO! And then the slice started to fall apart. And then the crust was totally way too dense and sucked. Whatever, ultimately this slice was a bummer, but I got to talk about the Ramones, so that's cool at least.

Broadway Pizza & Restaurant
2709 Broadway
New York, NY 10025

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In other news, recurring character and official Pizzateer, Jordan DeVylder reported to me that last night he had a slice at Como Pizza that they forgot about in the oven for longer than they meant to and it was PERFECT. So keep that in mind. Maybe I will return there.

Mama's Pizzeria: "It's like I'm at my mom's house-the toilet paper is softer than at my apartment and there's some old lady yelling the whole time."

I went pizza eating this past week with my friends Caroline Paquita and Mikey Hotsauce. Caroline is my nutritionist, herbalist and general medical practitioner, so the irony of her joining me to eat a gratuitous amount of pizza is as thick and sumptuous as the cheese on a slice from Tom's Delicious. (Mike is a totally rad pal who has no personal investment in my health beyond the universal desire that one's friends not be sickly, so the irony of his accompanying us is non-existent, like my book deal.) Caroline and Mike have some things in common besides being friends with me (and they were friends with each other first, anyway). For one thing, they both make cool art. For another, they are both Master Bassers and play in bands I'm fond of. And finally, they're both from Florida. And you know what I realized, when we all stepped out of the subway at 110th into the pouring rain? Every time I've been pizza eating with people from Florida I've gotten rained on. What is it with that godforsaken hellhole of a state?! Don't think you can just bring your bad vibes up here and piss all over my pretty sweet life in New York City. There's a reason I never moved to Florida: it sucks there.


Well, anyway, the first place we went to was Mama's Pizzeria on Amsterdam. This is the second time I've been here, having forgotten to write about it the first time around. But I just got an email from Jordan, who you may remember from previous entries, asking me about Mama's because he remembered liking it and noticed I hadn't written about it. I had left it out for organizational reasons, but really, my book-keeping is a pretty boring subject. On to the slice!


Looking over my notes, both times I went here I had the same criticisms. The slice is slightly underdone and vaguely too sweet. However! If the slice had been cooked a little more, the flavors from the cheese might've come out a little more strongly to counteract the whack sweetness in the sauce, and there would've been a bunch more grease, which is always a plus. And aside from the sweetness, which is not saccharine and nasty but somewhat more Natural Tasting, the sauce had a really great texture, in that there were sporadic tomato chunks, and it maintained the understated presence that I prefer in a pizza sauce. The cheese was great, and the dough was good, if a bit too soft (another easily remedied problem). In other word, the ratios on this slice were totally perfect. And the crust, it was so good! Really, when I go back here I'll ask for my slice to be hotter, but otherwise it was great.

Mama's Pizzeria
941 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025

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Even though Florida totally sucks to be in, a lot of cool things come out of there. Many of my favorite people were born or raised in Florida. And a lot of good musicians have come from the Sunshine State, like Tom Petty or Trick Daddy. But as the Oracle at Delphi famously told Moses, "somewhere betwixt a Traveling Wilbury and T-double-D, lies an aural force that will leave the fabric of one's very soul cleft in twain." For years, rabbinical and clerical scholars have been trying to determine the meaning of the Oracle's perplexing words, and tonight I will reveal it to you: "there is this 7" by the Y that will blow your mind."

click the image for a download link.

Mikey and Caroline brought this 7" over to my house the other morning and were all, "Colin, you need to hear this song!" And proceeded to play me the record's second track, "Pyzza Tyme!"


As you can see, this band is very pizza oriented. Pyzza Tyme is a song about working hard and living large, about seeing something you want, grabbing it, and holding on with everything you've got. Pyzza Tyme is about everything that makes our great nation beautiful. In an ideal world, the United States of America would be run by a wizard, the national bird would be a fucking Griffin, and Pyzza Tyme would be our national anthem. There would be no war in this beautiful world. Disputes would be settled via dance contest and everybody's needs would be met by the kindly wizard. But woe unto he who crosses the wizard's path! It is said that the first man who dared to F with the W, if you will, was turned into a gigantic pizza, and thrown into the sky. It is said that for cheese this pizza has fire, for sauce molten lava, but it lacks a solid dough and is thus incomplete. This sky-pizza is our Sun. The first woman who messed with the Wiz was also turned into a pizza, and she too was cast into the sky. But this second pizza was a pizza of brilliant, glowing stone, crunchy and delicious, yet totally lacking sauce or cheese-this is the origin of our Moon. During the eclipse, it is said the stone crust of the Moon combines with the molten sauce and firey cheese of the Sun for a delectable cosmic tryst, forming the most perfect pie. For in life, before their transformations, this man and woman had been married, and in their dreadful afterlife, they yearn constantly for one and other, but can only meet 2-5 times per year. Their love is true and their marriage was a beautiful feast. The Great Pizzaola herself descended from the clouds and blessed them. I should know, I was at their wedding and drank mead. It ran down my mustache, but none went into my mouth.

Rubik's Dude is also the raddest song. (Lyrics: Freakin' out squares tonight! All you gotta do is do something totally weird and then they'll freak out! Cause dude, they're squares!") What I uploaded is not the 7", which I don't have the capacity to do, but the CDR, which means you get some bonus tracks. If you really like this shit as much as I do, you can still order the 7" off No Idea, so do that by clicking here. It's $2.60 for crying out loud. Support independent music and good record labels and blah blah blah. Unity and shit!

Speaking of marriage, I'd like to extend a loud and resounding Mazel Tov to Ellis and Lilie. May your marriage be as strong as the crust at Koronet, as interesting and engrossing as the sauce at Patsy's, and as HOT as the cheese on a slice fresh out of the oven, you know? Aah-cha-cha-cha.

Cafe Roma: "In which I definitively decide whether or not I will continue to review Kosher pizza."

Okay, Cafe Roma. Not so good, but okay as far as Kosher pizza goes. Notice the sukkah outside. These people are not pretending.


What do you expect? I wish I could lengthen this entry by repeating to you the hilarious tour story that Johnny Pants told me while we were eating, but some tales have to remain between two gentlemen. As far as the slice of pizza here goes, it has the usual Kosher slice pitfalls.


The bread is too brittle, the sauce is too sweet, and the cheese just straight up tasted weird. However, this slice is LEAGUES better than Grandma's. Eating this slice, I started wondering if it was worthwhile to continue eating Kosher pizza, since, as was pointed out to me by a faithful reader, Kosher slice joints have to use different ingredients in order to remain Kosher. However, ultimately I've decided that my readers who keep Kosher deserve to know what some traif shmuck (I know, I know, that's not how you use the word "traif," but come on!) thinks is the best slice of pizza. So, in that spirit, I will declare that as far as I know, Cafe Roma is the best slice of Kosher pizza in New York, beating out it's one competitor, Grandma's, by a landslide.

Cafe Roma
854 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025

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In other news, firstly an apology. I'm sorry I haven't been updating as furiously as I should've been, it's been a hell of a week. But let me just say, that I'll be back on track in the next couple days with more frequent updating.

Secondly, I was recently inteviewed for Cityscape, George Bodarky's incredible show on WFUV. The podcast is available to download, if you wanna hear me talk a bunch of bullshit on the radio. As usual, it got edited a ton and most of my favorite stuff didn't make it to the air, but that's not a problem, because George was a totally incredible interviewer and I had a total blast. Plus it's becoming almost a running game with myself to see how many interviews I can do where they edit out the fact that I do rehabilitation work with sexual assaulters. That's no insult to George, if I was doing a feel good story about some dude eating pizza I would not want him talking about rape either.

Cityscape is kind of like a totally New York specific This American Life, it rules super hard, and thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I can now listen to it at my leisure since I'm never up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. My segment is somewhere in the middle of the show, but I recommend you listen to the whole thing, and if nothing else, check out the interview right after me with the two guys that make Bronx Pop. They are super charming and now I totally want to drink their soda.

For those that are too lazy to download an mp3 and fast-forward, I'll link a streaming version of just my segment in some future post this week.

Finally, I heard some guy was coming around my job claiming that he knows me, and spreading libelous mistruths. I would once again like to invite that fellow to sit down for a cup of coffee and talk all that brazen shit to my face. That isn't a threat or anything, and I totally don't want to fight because two dudes fighting over a misunderstanding is like, the most played out macho bullshit, but I'd like him to look me in the eye then and tell me he knows where I live and how much money I make. I'll even buy the coffee.

Maria's Pizzeria: "Don't trust any business that spells 'espresso' with an X."

Maria's. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that most of the pizza this week was good two entries ago. This place was the pits.


At only $2.00 a slice, it's still totally not worth it to eat the pizza here. The cheese tasted like plastic, the dough needed salt and the sauce tasted like corn syrup.


Johnny said, "it's like a piece of cardboard that someone jizzed on." Seriously gross. I would probably prefer to eat the piece of cardboard. BOOOOO.

Maria's Pizzeria
886 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025

Angelina Pizzabar: "Forget what I said in the last post about most of the pizzerias this week being good."

Angelina Pizzabar sucks. That could totally be the whole review, but whatever, I'll explain myself.


Okay, so me and Johnny walked up to this yuppie shithole, and I was all, "fuck this place." But Johnny Pants, always observant, noticed a sign that said "$0.99 Slice until 4pm." Who can argue? Not me.

So we walk in and it's kind of an ordeal getting a slice to go, but it seemed so not worth it to have a waitress bring me and John a $0.99 slice of pizza to share. While we were waiting Johnny asked how much slices are after 4. Answer: they don't sell slices after 4, just whole pies. Whole pies of really bad pizza. What really chaps my ass is that their website claims they are "the best in authentic New York style pizzas." More like the worst in inauthentic Italian style pizzas. God, this place pissed me off so much! Plus I've been such a total grump lately. You should hear what I have to say about Art Cars.


Okay, seriously, I think this pizza was cooked in a convection oven. This slice sucked to start out and got worse as I ate it. It was the texture of lasagna, the sauce tasted like garlic salt, and the dough was totally droopy, floppy crap. The only redeeming factor was that the cheese was decent quality, but F that S! This pizza is not even worth $0.99. I hope this was like, a purely business venture and not someone's lifelong dream restaurant because if it's the latter their dream sucks.

Angelina Pizzabar
2728 Broadway
New York, NY 10025

Jumbo Pizza: "Possibly decent things come in weird packages. Or something."

As you can tell I'm really struggling at titles here. This week I had the formidable pleasure of eating pizza with my close friend and former bandmate Johnny "Johnny Guitar" No-Pants, who is an excellent drummer. His rad band Stupid Party was recently on tour for six weeks, which means my days were dampened by the lack of his grinning visage shining it's ethereal light on my generally sour demeanor. So when the opportunity arose to wander around with him for a day and scarf some slices, it was kismet. And wander we did. I ended up walking 13 miles that day. I wore holes in the insoles of my busted ass boots!

I met Johnny in the early afternoon on 110th Street, and we headed to Giovanni's for a quick appetizer slice (report back: the pizza there still rules), because I had heard from my pal Dani that they'd pasted up MY grinning visage in their window, in the form of the Daily News article about Slice Harvester in which I publicly professed my love for their slice. It was there, and going in to get another slice with John Pants dispelled any fears I may have had that my vanity had gotten in the way of my anonymity, because the guy behind the counter, who had watched me getting photographed holding a slice of pizza in front of my face, didn't even recognize me.

While we were at Giovanni's, Johnny commented, "I love that we're eating a slice of pizza to get ready to spend the afternoon eating pizza!" And I think starting off with a good slice totally portended the general trend of decent slices that our day would soon hold.

Our first stop was Jumbo Pizza, which is a total enigma to me.


While the name and visage lead one to believe this is a pizza place that serves some other food, the interior seems like a decent greasy spoon where the pizza is an afterthought. I didn't have high expectations when I ordered my slice, but I was pleasantly surprised when I found out it cost $1.75. In fact, I asked the guy behind the counter to repeat himself.


This slice was a total preemie, but other than that, it was pretty good. Johnny said it reminded him of the pizza his Italian grandma used to make, although he was quick to add that "she was no chef." Luckily it doesn't take a chef to make a decent pizza, in fact chef's usually make ridiculous gourmet pizzas that have like, morels and gold shavings on them, so who cares what they think, right?

The sauce was a touch on the sweet side, and the cheese wasn't exceptional, though nor was it bad. The dough tasted great, but the texture left something lacking. I will definitely come back here, but I'll ask for my slice well done.

Jumbo Pizza
964 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025

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In the Other Pizza Blogs dept., I recently was alerted to the existence of Clinton Loves Pizza, presumably by Clinton himself, and I've gotta say, it's like the pizza blog equivalent of the time Aminah drank an entire bottle of cough syrup in like, 15 minutes on Joey Ramone day two years ago and then started puking this neon green slime in the middle of the sidewalk on 53rd and 3rd and totally freaked out all these yuppies. That is absolutely a compliment, if that wasn't clear.