Pintaile's Pizza: "A one way ticket into the scariest areas of pizza purgatory."

Despite the name, Pintaile's Pizza does not actually serve pizza. When I first looked at the pies sitting behind the counter I thought that maybe there was some gourmet shit going on, because the slices looked like they were maybe some kind of fancy gourmet crap. I figured maybe it would taste really good but be totally insubstantial.


Actually, this pizza is like, some fucking Lean Cuisine bullshit. This is pizza for people who are on a diet. Can you guess what Slice Harvester's official stance on dieting is? Fuck that shit, it's stupid.

Not only was this, like, some total horseshit "Pizza Lite," which means it was totally insubstantial and not fulfilling to eat AT ALL, it didn't taste like anything whatsoever. This is "pizza" for suburban moms who are on some faddish unhealthy diet, not for pizza lovers. Even though this slice technically fulfills all the requirements for being a piece of pizza, I would classify this as a notapizza.jpg. In closing: stay away from this weird pizza hell unless you are on a diet.

Rating:


Pintaile's Pizza - $2.75
26 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10028

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I'd like to wish a happy Winter Solstice to everyone out there on the internet. In honor of the season I am rereading The Master and Margarita and then I plan to reread Barabbas. And I am coincidentally just up to the part of The Alphabet Versus The Goddess where Shlain talks about the correlation between the rise of Abrahamic, monotheistic religions and the development of the Patriarchy which is totally seasonally appropriate. Heavy times.

But what I really want to do, is share the work of my new acquaintance Gill Henry Durant, who I met in Atlanta on Forgetters tour. The man is a genius and his annual Christmas spectacular is an Atlanta tradition. So in honor of the heavy times, let's all lighten our load a little and enjoy some Hotlanta Christmas Jams:


Check out the live video of "Candy Cane" to see some of the power that Gill brings to the stage. Homeboy is a musical genius.

Zesty Pizza & Deli: "Ewww, Colin. You just put that in your mouth."

This was maybe the worst pizza I've ever had.

Rating:


Zesty Pizza & Deli
1693 3 Avenue
New York, NY 10128

Ray's Pizza: "According to the phone book I'm going to write this review 26 more times."

Have I wished everyone a Happy Chanukkah yet? Last Friday, one week ago yesterday, I spent the first day of Chanukkah wandering the Upper East Side with some friends trying to find an open pizza place. Seriously, it seemed as if the first like, five places Sara, Eleanor and I went to were closed. Either permanently, by the health department, etc. It was doubly stressful for me because we were meeting our friend Amy and I kept having to tell her new addresses where to meet up, as each place was consecutively closed. But like the oil discovered by the Maccabee Bros. way back in the day at the Holy Temple in Jersusalem, we burned on. And much like God consistently rewarding the Jewish people for their courage and tenacity with more hardship and tests, we finally found an open pizzeria. A Famous Original Ray's.


What do I have to say about Ray's? Nothing. I already said it here.


I could also just hotlink you to that slice review for this one, to. Because, seriously, fuck a bunch of this place. I think I'm probably not gonna review any of the other FORs, actually, because these shitholes are total shitholes. I'm over it. This counts as a chain, right? I don't have to go and knowingly eat another 40 shitty slices, right? Give me this one Hannukah gift.

Famous Original Ray's
1827 2 Avenue
New York, NY 10128

Sal Pizza: "Bummer times in frown town."

Right now I'm sitting at a table in Sluggo's in Pensacola, Fl, which is probably my favorite rock club in the country. This afternoon we left our friend Travis' house in Gainesville and headed down the treacherous and deceptively long corridor of I-10 that separates Gville from Pcola. Perhaps it is just the decades of Florida Emo seeping in through the air vents in Meredith's van, but when I saw the acres of clear cut trees to the North, barely hidden by a line of forlorn looking shrubs, I started crying. Luckily the whole band was asleep so I managed to save my dignity, but it was certainly haggard times. But now I'm here at Sluggo's, where I feel really at home, eating a DELICIOUS vegan reuben (a nearly impossible feat), and I'm once again at peace with myself, if not with the sick fucking world. So in the spirit of harrowing emotional experiences with no real resolution, I'd like to tell you all about Sal Pizza.


When Willow, Chris and I approached Sal Pizza, the first thing I noticed was the pizzaola, who looked like a perfect cross between Super Mario and Phil Lynott, standing with his hands on his hips, proudly surveying his domain. Motherfucker looked like a grown up Sweathog, you got me? I was really looking forward to seeing what kind of pizza Juan Epstein makes, so I was totally thrilled until I saw the pithy offerings in the display case. But like I said an entry or two ago, sometimes a slice doesn't look appetizing until it hits the oven for the second time. So I was willing to give it a shot.


This slice was majorly underdone. And even if it hadn't been, it would've still been a horridly wet sloppy piece of shit with crappy, sugar-sweet sauce and bland crust. Whatever. Don't go to this place with Luzzo's around the corner.

Sal Pizza
1375 Madison Ave
New York, NY 10128

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

Passione Pizza: "Um... yeah... I don't know..."

This is going to have to be a short entry, because I'm sitting in this weird grocery store/deli/sandwich shop/internet place in Charlotte and we have to head over to Hotlanta real soon to get wild with Babyface and Jermaine Dupri. The show last night was kind of perfect, by the way. Despite how dead things seemed at 6:15 when we got into town, once night falls Charlotte brings it. Either way, it doesn't matter that I gotta rush this one out because there is not much to say about Passione Pizza.


Passione had a warm and inviting interior, which was real nice on the crappy, cold and rainy day me, Christ and Willow spent eating pizza. (I just noticed that typo, but Chrissy Hewes looks just like a white version of Jesus, so I'm gonna keep it there.) The pizza looked like crap behind the counter, but I've learned by now that oftentimes crappy seeming pizza turns out delicious once cooked so I was not judging harshly.


When the slice came, I was immediately turned off by the bold red, manufactured color of the sauce, and the cheese looked like it could go either way, but the crust looked decent, at least. Sadly, I judged the qualities of the sauce correctly, and upon biting in, realized that not only was the viscous component of the pie synthetic, but it was ABUNDANT. Which is to say, that my first bite was a wet, mushy mess. The cheese was not that great, and the bread barely had a crunch. The crust was okay, if a little bland, but all in all this slice was nothing to write home about.

Passione
1590 Lexington Ave
New York 10029

Il Fornaio Pizza: "This is the worst part of my job."

Il Fornaio is like, the classic "perfect pizzeria." Amazing awning/storefront, totally warm on the inside, both literally and figuratively. There's only one dude in there, and he makes all the pizza himself. He seems to totally love his job and doesn't mind making people wait while he moves about at a snails pace, something I appreciate. I was watching a video of Frank Zappa as a guest on some tv show in the 60s with my rooommate, and watching it he was like, "people had a much longer attention span in the 60s. No one would sit through something this slow on television nowadays." And he's right. Now I'm not here to yearn for yesteryear or bemoan how shitty everything is today, but let's be real, everyone could do to relearn a little more patience.


But I didn't really like the pizza. It just seemed sloppily prepared and was definitely undercooked. There was so much sauce slopped on it was like eating soup and the dough was mushy as fuck. Total mindblowing bummer times up in here. This place is so charming that I bet if I said the slice was good no one would disagree with me, for fear of hurting this old guy's feelings or whatever. But really, it's nothing special. Any pizza tourist worth her salt should still stop by this place just to see what it's all about, but it's for the experience and not for the food.

Il Fornaio
1505 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10029