Bambino's Pizza & Restaurant: "wut?"

Bambino's Pizza and Restaurant is as lifeless and boring as it looks, and there is really no reason to ever go there. Right across the street is a pretty cool Indian Grocery, that is slightly overpriced (Manhattan priced?) but has totally rad stuff like tons of fresh medicinal herbs in bulk bins and ginger candy. Not worth going out of your way for, but if you are ever in the Gramercy area and need some Lemon Balm or Passion Flower ASAP, this is the place to go. This whole strip is actually swarmed with pretty great smelling Indian restaurants. I don't know if this has always been an Indian food district, but 10 years ago when I still had friends that could afford to live in this neighborhood, or 8 years ago when I was messengering, I don't really remember any of these places existing. Although I may have just been such a broke ass at that point that the only places that even registered on my radar were dumpster spots. Anyone care to enlighten me?


The pizza he was overdone. It's texture was horrible. The flavors were alright, I guess, but it was just so boring. And the place was boring too. Like, totally super dullsville, pal. Maybe I am crazy, but it seems to me like there is no reason to come here when there are at least a dozen Indian restaurants within a block, one of which has to be good. Like, if you want pizza go somewhere else.

Rating:

Bambino's Pizza & Restaurant - $2.50
126 Lexington Ave (28th & 29th)
New York, NY 10016

Empire Pizza: "COME WITH IT NOW!"

Before we really get in to what exactly is going on over here at Empire Pizza, can we pause for a moment to do like Paulie in the above photo and check out their stunning logo:


I really like everything that's going on there. It is always pleasant when a food store takes a picture of the food they sell and puts a crown on it for their logo. Although I have to admit, I wish the logo looked a little more evil. I am pretty much the worst artist ever, but I am imagining something a little more like this:


There could be some kind of Robin Hood pizza good guy or something. Or maybe it's like a play on those Pizza Hut commercials from the early 90s where the pizza slice puppet was always partying and then the pizza slicer puppet would show up and fuck him up. Except this time, the pizza slicer is Robin Hood and he keeps trying to capture the evil Pizza Emperor and cut him up and redistribute him to the hungry villagers. Speaking of Pizza Hut commercials of yesteryear starring weird puppets, remember this one where Rush Limbaugh talks about stuffed crust pizza?


If there really is an evil Pizza Emperor, maybe they should just make this the logo:


They could get Rage Against The Machine back together to write a jingle. But anyway, the pizza!


This slice was sloppy in a way that I really appreciate, although it wasn't exactly all that good. The first bite was AMAZING, but somewhere around the middle the slice got to have too much cheese and became super soggy and NASTY, at which point I angrily scrawled, "this would be better if it was a cone" in my notes. Towards the end it got better again, though it was never as good as the first bite. Overall, this slice was TOO fluffy and too cheesy, but the sauce was good.

Rating:

Empire Pizza - $2.50
314 5th Ave (31st & 32nd)
New York, NY 10016

Tutta Bella

What you are about to read is the first ever Slice Harvester review by anyone other than myself! This is a momentous day. It's a little over a year since I started this project and I already have my first national correspondent. He is a dear friend of mine, an excellent writer, and a pizzaman at the only good slice joint in the entire Northwest, so his credentials are spotless. And besides, he's qualified because I say he's qualified, I'm piloting this ship, goddammit and I'll make the decisions around here.

-The Slice Harvester

TUTTA BELLA

2200 Westlake Ave in Seattle, Washington

By VB

Pizza Today is a trade magazine that focuses on the financial end of the pizza business, never actually writing about the taste of anything. They’re about cutting costs, building a pizzeria’s brand, and addressing issues like whether or not managers should hire people with facial piercing and neck tattoos.

Pizza Today named Tutta Bella as 2010’s Independent Pizzeria of the Year. There are four locations in the Seattle area, and collectively they will top $10 million in sales this year. Tutta Bella is approved by the VPN (“Verace Pizza Napoletana, a group that certifies Neapolitan pizzerias throughout the world and verifies the authenticity of their products” says Pizza Today.) Tutta Bella also serves high end coffee drinks, specially imported wine and beer, and fancy desserts.

Anyway, their pizza totally sucks. Tutta Bella doesn’t serve slices. The equivalent of a cheese slice is a personal pizza “Margherita,” which is a small pie that’s mostly sauce with three or four mozzarella globs and a couple basil leaves floating around in it. The sauce tasted like Cambell’s soup, but sweeter. It would maybe be good if you dipped your grilled cheese sandwich in it. The cheese slumped around, actually really didn’t taste much like anything and when slurped up, slides down your throat like a raw oyster. The crust was the best part and it was still bland as hell. Buying this pizza for dinner is $11! What a rip off!

Tutta Bella is like eating pizza at Starbucks. (Which make sense because owner, Joe Fugere, was an executive at Starbucks before he quit to open Tutta Bella in 2004) It’s made to look like high end bohemia, but comes off culturally void and boring. The location we ate at sits atop a Whole Foods (they totally have better pizza) in the “up and coming” neighborhood of South Lake Union. The building is ugly and new, and had these big white statues in front of it that everybody I was with hugged affectionately. We could see the space needle from our table, which is kind of neat, because I love the space needle, and our server was great. But don’t go. Nobody should eat here.

K! Pizzacone: "Shame the original pizza in a cup guy went out of business."

Now I know, what you're thinking, "I thought this was Slice Harvester, not Cone Harvester. Where does he get off?" Because that's pretty much what Paulie said to me when I told him and the gang we were going to head into K! Pizzacone. In fact, everybody thought it was a bad idea except Peter, who understood my morbid curiosity about such a fascinating culinary anomaly; and who I realized right then that I knew from the week that I spent sleeping on a hammock in the woods next to Megan's house two or three years ago, because he was living in a tent in those same woods and we had drank some beers together. And not a bullshit tent, mind you, like a really sturdy canvas tent that was pitched atop a wooden platform and looked like something from a WWII movie and was probably the size of my apartment in Brooklyn. Anyway, since I am really the only person involved with S.H. who has any actual decision-making power, (besides Nate Stark, I guess), consensus was a non-issue and we ventured in.


We ordered a 'Small, Margherita Pizzacone' (to split 5 ways) and immediately began to feel nervous. The proprietress of the establishment opened up a crazy looking deep freeze unit that emitted that wild "cold steam" or whatever like they had coming off the dry ice beakers in the horror movie tv show that was on channel 9 when I was a kid. She removed a premade, frozen "bread cone" from within the depths of this sci-fi meatlocker and placed in on some kind of stand in a convection/microwave "quick cooker." There was already way too much technology involved in this food and it had barely even been prepared.

When the thing was done, she filled it with cheese and sauce that she scooped out of little trays like they have in Subway, and then sprayed a bottle of what turned out to be some kind of "butter spread"-type substance into the recesses of the cone. Then she placed it in the oven one more time.

While it was cooking, we watched in horror as an informational video about pizzacones played on two televisions, just a few seconds apart. It made everything look so disgusting.

When they handed me my pizzacone, I was a little disappointed it wasn't less grand, but then again, I did just order the margherita. I took my first bite and chewed contemplatively, eying the expressions on my comrade's faces as they were presented with the pizzacone and weighed whether or not they would take a bite. It tasted like "butter," which is to say, it tasted like fake butter, there was absolutely no sauce in my bite, and the cheese was incredibly weird and synthetic. In short, I loved it. As everyone passed the pizza pon the left hand side (bom biddilee bom biddilee bom bom bom biddilee bom biddilee), the comments started to roll in:

"Too much cheese."

"I wish there was more sauce."

"This tastes like butter."

"This is amazing."

"Tastes like I'm eating a bowl of pizza hut."

As the cone made it's second trip around the cipher, everyone seemed to grow tired. The whole thing was almost done, and I was the only one that was still excited about this weird thing, although my enthusiasm quickly waned when I began chewing my third bite. This thing was probably the most disgusting food object I have ever eaten. When I was unable to pawn the cone off on anyone else, I simply threw the remnants into the garbage. As we were leaving, Peter said, very succinctly, "Well, I definitely feel grosser than before I ate that."

Rating:

While the rating system is usually on a scale of 8, that didn't seem like enough for this horror show, so K! Pizzacone gets 0 out of 20 slices.

K! Pizzacone - $3.60

325 5th Avenue (32nd & 33rd)

New York, NY 10016