Cafe Amore Pizza: "Eat this if you are really hungry and hate yourself."

Cafe Amore is my worst nightmare pizzeria. Although unlike the other Cafe Amore this one had no gremlins or labyrinth. This place smelled so rancid and nasty. When I was in high school my tightest bud was this guy named Juan and he had an aversion to coleslaw. This aversion had its roots in the fact that his father, Juan, Sr. had told him as a young man that the way they make coleslaw is that the greasy dishwasher, coming off his shift, chews up cabbage and carrots, then spits it into his hand and rubs it around in his armpits, and then he puts it in a big vat and then they serve it to you. (This is patently untrue because the way they make coleslaw is that they put a rainbow through a cheesgrater, and then they plant carrot and cabbage seeds in the rainbow mulch, and then coleslaw trees grow and they take a little tap and stick it in the tree and turn the faucet and coleslaw comes out, like how they get maple syrup in cartoons.) Anyway, me and Juan used to speculate about what this guy looked and smelled like and Cafe Amore smelled like I always imagined he smelled.

This slice was a big, sloppy, floppy mess and totally sucked, although it was not as bad as it smelled. It had the weird, waxy, plastic-like coating that is the tell-tale sign of the cheapest cheese in history. The sauce tasted like dog barf and the dough was the texture of a moist fart. This slice was ENORMOUS, though. If you are a cowboy and are looking for something cheap and big to feed your horse, get a slice from Amore.

Rating:


Cafe Amore - $2.75
104 E 14th St (Park & Irving)
New York, NY 10003

Cafe Amore's Restaurant: "When the smell hits your nose and you think the dead rose that's Amore"

Cafe Amore is a small local chain with three restaurants that serves giant slice of shitty pizza. For a minute I was thinking it was the worst smelling pizzeria in the city, but I actually have a feeling another small local chain, Pastafina, might take that prize home. These places have even less character than the other small local chain, Abitino's, which is a total pretender and chock full of false authenticity, but they at least have some kind of interior design motif. Cafe Amore just has a shelf of decorative wine glasses.

"For display only"

Otherwise, there are pretty much bare walls and formica table tops. I don't know, I don't mind simplicity but this place is just dreary and so is the pizza.

This slice had nothing going for it. No personality. Aminah said it has "the lingering aftertaste of old people," which she admitted she "kind of liked." But Aminah likes disgusting things! Look at her art. She is intrigued by the sick side of life. And while I dabble in the disturbed, my intrigue with the occult doesn't extend to Hellishly Bad Pizza.



Notice the total lack of structural integrity on this slice. When folded the front flops forward like a huge flaccid dong, flopping around under it's weight at the whims of gravity. Looking at it from the front, it creates what I call The Grease Tunnel, and slightly resembles a quivering and trepidatious anus, poised to spray diarrhea everywhere after having received an enema at the hands of the Pretty Hate Machine himself, Trent Reznor.

Did I spoil your appetite? Does thinking about Trent Reznor giving a slice of pizza an enema and then the pizza shooting greasy, liquid shit all over Marilyn Manson make you feel anything but hungry? Good. Because I don't want you to associate Cafe Amore with food. I want you to associate with gross things, vile things. This is Pavlovian training. Stay away from this place!

Rating:


Cafe Amore Restaurant - $2.75
147 Chambers St (Hudson & West Broadway)
New York, NY 10007

Cafe Amore: "MORE LIKE CAFE AH-BORE-AYE, AMIRITE?!"

When I went into Cafe Amore I thought it was totally empty. That's because I didn't see the huge Daedalian labyrinth in the back in which me and Yusuke discovered a number of poor lost souls clutching their trays and trembling. I went up to the counter and asked them to charge me for a slice and a coke, but to put the coke into the cup I already had. The lady was like, "we don't do refills."
And so I was all, "No, I'll pay for it, I just don't want to waste another cup."
And she was like, "well aren't you a Good Samaritan?" in this total 'I'm so over it' voice.
Then this West Village Gremlin came in, rubbing his dirty paws together and hissing like Gollum, "buy me a slice, mister? Can you buy me a slice mister? I'm really hungry mister."
And I was like "And gimme a slice for this guy." And the lady behind the counter gave me such a high brow and was like, "another good deed from Mother Theresa."
And buying the Gremlin a pizza ended up being a fortuitous decision because he showed us how to escape the labyrinth! I think that's why it irritated the lady behind the counter, because they find the people stuck in the maze and then work them to death and then after they die they make pepperonis out of them. Real talk.

This slice totally sucked. It was cooked enough for the crust to be crunchy, but the cheese was awful and so was the sauce. Yusuke said, "it's like... the cheese... it's like a... it's not like cheese. The texture is different. I ate frozen pizza in Austin long time ago, this is like that. It tastes like pizza from other town, other state, but not like New York." Basically this slice was nasty. The cheese was the cheapest crap imaginable and didn't melt all the way, probably because it is made from ground up human bones or whatever. The sauce was saccharine sweet and grotesque. The crust was fine but considering the rest of the slice, who really cares if the crust was okay? To quote my man Corey Eastwood, this is nihilist food.

Rating:


Cafe Amore - $2.75
319 Ave of the Americas (Carmine & W 4th)
New York, NY 10014

99¢ Fresh Pizza: "Best dollar slice so far!"

This 99¢ Fresh Pizza location on Avenue of the Americas is the best dollar slice of pizza I've had so far. Hands down. Me and Yusuke both agreed that it was leagues better than Cafe Amore. And in my very informed opinion, it's the highest quality dollar slice I have eaten in the past 15 and a half months.

Even though it looks nearly identical to almost every other 99¢ Fresh slice, this one was GOOD! Objectively, not just on the Dollar Scale! Decent cheese, non-weird, even good sauce, nice and greasy, this slice had it all. Or, almost had it all, as the dough left something to be desired in a big way. But even though the dough was 'meh,' the crust was 'yeah!,' which is to say, it was excitingly good. Yusuke said this slice tasted exactly like the Sbarro in Tokyo, which is new, and is apparently the best pizza place in that city. I am not usually a proponent of Sbarro, but I will say that in a city that only has chain pizza shops, the chain that comes from New York better be the best one, although I have a personal affinity for Famous Famiglia over Sbarro. Whatever, blah blah blah yakkety yak.

Rating:


Dollar Scale:


99¢ Fresh Pizza - $1.00
368 Ave of the Americas (8th & Waverly)
New York, NY 10014

Georgio's: "Plastic surgery disasters."

By the time we arrived at Georgio's, I think Jen Shag and I had run out of expectations, though we hadn't run out of hope. Upon walking into the establishment, we were confronted with the ambiance of a Cafe Amore and the smell of a Pastafina. In short, what little hope we had left was squandered. I'm not exactly sure how to best tie it together, but everything about this place seemed to be summed up in the 4000" flatscreen on the wall playing some "Deadly Bar Fight" reality courtroom show and the gaggle of lonesome fools watching it, slack-jawed and dead-eyed.

And if ever a piece of pizza could be described as "slack-jawed and dead-eyed," this is the slice. It vaguely approximates pizza in the way that weird overly tanned, overly plastic surgeried celebrities approximate humans, but a true New York slice it is not. The sauce tasted like the meatball sandwich in my Middle School cafeteria. Jen remarked that the cheese tasted like "they cooked the wrapper from the mozzarella onto the slice." There were distinct notes of burnt plastic and impending cancer. The crust had a shiny gloss to it, like the varnish on a hardwood floor or the paint job on a car. Everything about this slice was artificial. To be frank, it looked like Carrot Top's face. In summation, Jen said, "they should be paying us $2.50 to eat this slice." I think I'd probably like to be paid more than that, but I'll take what I can get in these trying economic times.

Rating:


Georgio's Pizzeria - $2.50
20 Beaver St (Broadway and Something Else)
New York, NY 10004