Pastafina.com Pizza Cafe: "This is the pizza they serve in hell."

A confluence of a bunch of shit going on, plus my computer only half working led to my not being able to update Slice Harvester for three days. That happens occasionally and you guys are used to it, so I'm not killing myself over it, but it did make ME realize something. I also am pretty sure I haven't spoken to anyone in my family in a few days either, so I wonder how many days I'd have to go without updating or talking to my mom (I LOVE YOU MOM!) for her to get worried and call me to see if I'm alive. I don't plan to find out, but it definitely made me feel like I have a lot more privacy and space than I thought.


Pastfina.com Pizza Cafe is a weird place with horrible food. The name was familiar to me, and I couldn't remember why, but it turns out I ate there with zombie William Blake. As you may recall from that entry, zombie William Blake had been portending doom all day and it turned out he was talking about Pastafina the whole entire time. Anyway, while that place is simply called "Pastafina" and this place seems to be called "Pastafina.com", they share a website, which leads me to believe they are related. Also the fact that eating the food in either location is a terrible and harrowing experience leads me to believe that they are related as well.

This place, though it was terrible, was not without it's charms. To start, it is called Pastafina.com, and do you know what that makes me think of? Trick Daddy, the name whose second record, www.thug.com, is also the name of his website. The other charming occurrence involved my interaction with the two employees. I walked up to the counter and ordered a regular slice. There were two guys back there, and one put my slice in while the other just looked at me. Then he was all, "you speak Spanish?"
And there was something in his voice that made me look at him quizzically and say, "no," instead of shrugging my shoulders, making a pinching gesture and saying "un poquito" like I usually do.
And it paid off because no sooner had I finished saying "no habla Espaniol" en Englais, the guy putting my pizza in the oven turned to me, looked dead in my eyes and said, "chinga tu madre."
Well, I looked wide eyed and said, "well, whatever does that mean?"
And his buddy goes, "He say's 'enjoy your slice.' That'll be $2.50." !!!!!
Those guys were sassy and I like that, but Pastafina.com still had shitty pizza.


Where do I begin? This slice was the pits. It tasted HORRIBLE. I think aside from wanting me to fuck my mother these dudes were also trying to poison me. As soon as I got to the table, Jesse Jane said, "I don't like slices that look like that." Becca said, "it smells like Chef Boyardee." I folded it up and was ready to accept it with arms wide open, until I took my first bite. Yowza was this horrible pizza. It tasted like rotting sour things. Dead things. There was something other worldly about it and not in that way where like, sometimes some of my little weird friends are aloof and effervescent and seem to just flit about on a breeze and bring magic feelings and ~good vibez~ everywhere they go and I'll be like, "David is so otherworldly." No this is otherworldly like from a Sandman comic where it means it came from hell. At a certain point we started mushing the folded slice with our fingers and the cheese was bubbling out and it looked like something from a David Cronenburg movie. It was so sick. Sick like shitting out of your mouth, not sick like jumping out of a hot air balloon on a snowboard. I took a video of it on my cellphone that I was so excited to make into the first ever Slice Harvester Video Supplement, but I can't get it off the stupid phone.


After we were done mushing the pizza around, I opened it up and the most horrifying smell wafted up. It was seriously one of the worst smells I've ever been exposed to In My Life and I have been waist deep in garbage more times than I care to recall. Anyway, while we did ultimately almost finish this horrible thing out of masochism and curiosity, it was really, hands down one of the worst slices I've ever had in my life. Yuck.

Rating:


Pastafina.com Pizza Cafe - $2.50
712 3rd Ave
New York, NY 10017

99¢ Fresh Hot Pizza: "I'm a few weeks too late to be famous."

99¢ Fresh Hot Pizza! I love it. I'll tell you this much, in the war of the dollar slice, between 99¢ Fresh and Two Bros, I side wholly and heavily with 99¢ Fresh. About ten years ago when I was a "bike messenger," I used to go to the 99¢ Fresh location on 9th Ave near where Siberia Bar used to be. Remember that place? The owner looked like Gibby Haynes and was a totally surly dick to yuppies but real nice to anyone who looked like a scum. They used to have punk shows in the basement sometimes and I definitely more than once got so drunk I almost killed myself biking home. Ah, the days of youthful invincibility! How I miss thee.

Anyways! I totally used to eat that old dollar slice. It was a well-kept secret amongst both "bike messengers," like myself, and bike messengers. Not the best pizza, but if you're in the middle of a bunch of runs and haven't had a chance to eat and you are bombing down 9th ave, it is easy enough to stop and house a slice or two, pretty much without even getting off your bike. Whatever, I have never lied about my biases, and I am pretty heavily biased about this chain because I have such fond memories, and it seems like a business model I can get behind. Keep shit cheap, fuck quality, if people want something fucking amazing, they'll go elsewhere.

Just like men painting their nails, mohawks, and fixed gear bicycles, by the time so many people knew about this thing that was once a secret that it was no longer news, the New York Times wrote about it. If I had been moving a little quicker through Midtown, I might have had an opportunity to get quoted in the New York Times, which would've made my grandfather very proud! Anyway, whatever, he still loves me whether or not I got scooped by the Times. On to the slice:


Since we've talked about bicycles so much already, there is actually a very appropriate bicycle analogy for this slice! My favorite formerly anonymous blogger, Bike Snob, recently wrote about the final sign of the death of fixed gear culture, the availability of a "fixed-speed" bike at Walmart for $150. In his own words

As I mentioned in a prior post, I was happy to learn about the Cachet, since I believe anything that makes it more difficult for people to convince themselves that they are "special" or "cool" is a good thing. (Indeed, a reader informs me that, so complete is the mainstreamification of the fixed-gear aesthetic, even Gawker is commenting on it.) Additionally, I believe that accessibility (both in terms of widespread availability and low price) is also a good thing, and that these sorts of bicycles should not be the exclusive domain of monied 20- and 30-somethings with access to trendy boutiques.

It is no surprise that I am fond of this dude. Anyway, homeboy purchased a Mongoose Cachet and rode it around to find out if it was worth the buck-fifty. In the end, it seems "you get what you pay for," which is to say that this bike is kind of a piece of crap, but it still rides, albeit somewhat dangerously.

And that's what the pizza at 99¢ Fresh is like. Totally, exactly worth a dollar. It's not stellar, it's not even very good, but I'm fond of it for whatever reason and it's a totally worthwhile bargain. Jesse Jane said that it didn't taste like anything, and Becca the crust expert said "it tastes like the flour is separate from the dough," paused and then said, "this aftertaste... oh no!" But both of them acknowledged this would be a perfect drunk snack. And me, I'm satisfied with what I get for a dollar.

Rating:




Dollar Scale:


99¢ Fresh Hot Pizza - $1.08
459 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Redstone Pizzeria Cafe: "notapizzeria.jpg"

Redstone Pizzeria Cafe. There was some conversation about whether or not we should go here. This is decidedly not a pizzeria. It felt like what I imagine walking into a Cosi or a Panera Bread might be like, though I've never been inside either one. I have been to the Cheesecake Factory once! And I drank a mojito then, too. Seriously, though. This place is totally the strangest and I wouldn't want anyone to have to go in there ever.


The pizza was horrible, and tasted like ketchup. The cheese had absolutely no flavor. And the bread, though delicious, was too chewy to be a decent pizza bottom. The crust tasted like totally awesome sourdough or something but the texture was just not appropriate for a slice of pizza. Go figure.

Rating:


Redstone Pizzeria Cafe - $2.72
500 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10172

In honor of Easter!

Here is a picture of my friend Chris who looks like Jesus eating a slice of pizza shaped like a dick.

La Belleza Pizza: "A pizza vortex."

Yesterday was a beautiful day for pizza, but I just couldn't seem to get my shit together. By the time I got up to Midtown to meet Jesse Jane, she told me she had already ducked into some weird yuppie lounge to get a cocktail! I found the place, and walked in to find Jesse, Becca and Cassie sitting around a tiny table drinking these tall, slim glasses filled with some kind of leaves. The waitress walked over and I pointed to the glass and said, "I want one of those!" which turned out to just be a mojito, but boy did it look fancy. The place we were in had all this weird art-by-the-foot and like, faux-asian decor and arabic writing in rainbow colors on prints framed on the walls. It was a total weird zone. Becca said it looked like a Pier 1 had puked all over the place. It was cool drinking cocktails with a bunch of babes and I totally felt like we were in some weird world Sex in the City (I got to be Miranda!) except instead of talking about boys we talked about the Whitney Bienniel and the Iraq War, and everyone looked really raggedy and had bad tattoos. Cassie had to run, and we noticed it was getting late, so Becca, Jesse and I set off on our pizza mission.

You can't tell, but that neon sign in the window says Hot Heros, which is coincidentally also the name of me and Cory's "independent film."

La Bellezza Pizzeria looked more promising than most of the places in the neighborhood. A lot of them look like weird franchises or like, total strange yuppie-lunch territory. This place at least looked like a pizzeria, kind of. So that was potentially exciting. I wasn't overcome with dread walking inside.


But oh boy, what terrible pizza! Jesse took her first bite and said, "This doesn't taste like anything!" Then after a few moments of rumination she just muttered, "this is heinous, dude." The slice is floppy and insubstantial. It totally crumbles in a crappy way. The cheese is total dirt and doesn't even have a flavor, so what you've got is bad texture, crappy cheese mush, and then the taste of the shitty, sweet sauce, which barely tastes like anything, either! Becca is a vegan, so she didn't taste the pizza, but she is a Certified Crust Expert. She had a bite of the crust and she said it was terribly dry! This slice has nothing going it. This is like, the anti-pizza. I think it probably has something to do with the Large Hadron Collider facilitating the apocalypse. This is a piece to the puzzle, dude.

Rating:



La Bellezza Pizzeria - $2.75
145 E 49th St
New York, NY 10022

Sido Gourmet Pizza: "Maybe at least the falafel is good."

Cory and I were really excited as we walked to Sido Gourmet, because it had been listed in the phone book as "Ocean's 11 Pizzeria" and we were like, "alright! this place has gotta be awesome if some cornball named it after a Rat Pack movie!" but then we got there and it was this atrocious hellhole you see pictured above.


This slice had nothing going for it. Cory is pointing at the area on the top there that looks like a zombie's face or like road rash or something. He looked at that and said, "when I was a little kid pizza that looked like that used to gross me out so bad." This slice is too oily and it looks gross and the crust is just a tacked on afterthought. Cory said, "I don't even know how to describe this travesty." We each took two bites of this slice and then we took it outside and left it in a phone booth and went a bought a ton of candy. I think it's pertinent to add that Cory attempted to fold this slice, to illustrate what I had been "doing wrong," and it totally crumbled to bits. And he still blamed it on the slice.

Rating:


Sido Gourmet - $2.45
849 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10017