Pizza: A Conversation
Pizza is a holy thing.
My new favorite shortcut, when I feel like I'm not writing as much as I'd like to be, is to draw Paul into a piece with me. “What if we write about...?” So far, at least, he always says yes. And so I write a little and send it to him. Then he writes something and sends it back. So on and so forth. It's like tapping into a secret spring, writing alongside a partner. The words come easily. Then, after a while, we inevitably hit the word limit where Substack starts warning me to stop, and I tie a bow around it and call it a piece.
The key, of course, is the subject matter. This year, we've discussed Toast, and we've discussed Nostalgia... When I suggested "pizza" for this conversation, I knew the hard part would be restraining both of us from writing an entire book on the topic...
Tonya:
When I was a kid, my teacher gave me pizza certificates as a reward for reading books. (That explains a lot, you’re thinking.) It was a program run through the elementary school. I just looked this up to make sure it was real, and sure enough–the program was called “Book It!” and, since 1984, it’s been rewarding literacy with greasy one-topping pizzas for little nerds all over the country. When I was a kid, books were my lifeline. I would read any book I could get my hands on, pizza or no pizza, but I will admit that the sight of one of those hot little square paper boxes was an extra incentive. If nothing else, it kept me writing down the names of the books. I’d write down all the titles as I finished them and when I had enough written down—I can’t remember, maybe 20 books?—I gave the list to my teacher and she gave me a certificate for one personal-sized one-topping pizza.
The Book It! pizzas came from Pizza Hut. Actually, the only pizza in town was from Pizza Hut, so, as far as I knew, all pizza came from Pizza Hut. Even now, when I think of “Pizza”, some primal part of my brain still pictures the dark wooden booths, the red gingham tablecloths and tiffany-style lamps. And the smell. Like fresh-baked Wonder bread doused in oil and garlic. Now THAT was pizza. Good, rural South Dakotan, as-far-from-Italy-as-humanly-possible Pizza. I loved that place.
Later, I discovered food court pizza, dispensed joylessly on paper plates in the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City. It was sold slice by gargantuan slice, three windows down from the arcade. By then, I was a middle schooler with pretensions, and my girlfriends and I would carefully dab away the grease from our slices before we ate them. Honestly, I have no memory of how that pizza tasted. I’m going to guess it was okay-to-adequate. It wasn’t an Orange Julius, but it was something to fill the void.
Then, around that same age, I went to New York for the first time and I must have tried, okay sure, let’s-call-it REAL pizza. I wish I could remember more about those trips, but somehow the flavor that really lingers in my memory is the first truly excellent deli pickle I ever tried, and my first slice of cheesecake from what I now realize was the Times Square Junior’s outpost (not actually the best cheesecake in the city, but also not the worst…)
After college, I moved to New Haven, though. And that’s where I discovered the secret joy that is New Haven Apizza. I spark fights and shaking heads in New York when I start talking about how amazing New Haven pizza is. They all refuse to acknowledge it. (I see you, Paul, shaking your head now.) But I have accidentally eaten an entire pizza in New Haven. Just because it’s so perfect—the char of the crust, the spice of the sauce, the cheeses… Anyone from Connecticut can tell you about this. And, really, there isn’t a lot else for them to brag about, so why not give them this one thing? They make a seriously good pizza.
I can sense just how badly you want to respond, Paul. Okay, your turn…
Paul:
Thanks, Tonya, for getting this vital and weighty ball rolling. Before I get started, I wish I could give that little girl in the food court a big hug and say, “One day it’s gonna be okay.” And PPS. I have also “accidentally” eaten a whole pizza in my day.
Pizza is a holy thing. I did not know that when I was young, not at a conscious level. I just knew that it felt good in my mouth and going into my stomach. When you’re 10 or so, you’re not thinking of how things fit into the spiritual world. A walk in the woods is magical, but you might not think of it that way when you’re young. You just know that it’s something special, expansive - bigger than you could ever be - and a connection to something else, but that’s it. You have the gift as a child of being present without being self-conscious. So it was with me and pizza.
I don’t remember my first slice. Nor my second slice. I don’t remember my first pizza. It may have come from an established Italian place on a hill near us that had a spotty reputation. We never ate out, though, so I don’t remember that place, either. My mom cooked and that was pretty much it. What I DO remember is my first pizza place. It was in a thin strip of stores on Central Avenue, in Yonkers, and it was called Fiesta Pizza.
We had to sneak away from our dead-end street and take our Stingray bikes - in my case, an old newsboy bike tricked out with bolt-on parts from Sears to turn it into a fake Stingray. When I think about 9 and 10-year-old boys riding off to a busy road miles from home, I’m kind of horrified. I used to think my parents were over-protective, but that clearly wasn’t the case. More like I was over-rebellious and hyper and I felt restricted by them. But this is no time for childhood therapy. We’re talking about pizza. Although, I must say, Tonya, reading about your connection between books and pizza was amazing. And that it was an official program! I see the seeds of something bigger here.
Fiesta was run by an angry World War II veteran. At the time, he was pretty young, but he’ll always seem old to me. Old and bald and angry. He’d yell at you for no reason, just because you were sitting at his counter. I was sitting there one day, blowing bubbles through my straw into my cup of coke - granted, this is pretty annoying, but I was 10 years old - and he shouted out, “What are you, a submarine?” He said it with a scowl. His pizza was 32 cents a slice, so you could get two slices and a soda for a buck and that was pretty much all the cash I could ever scrape up.
It was delicious - an even texture, good sauce, not too much cheese and a crust that I might find a bit chewy now, but it was perfect then. Classic New York City Tri-State area storefront pizza. That’s also when two slices were enough to fill me up. This was pizza. We found it in our natural habitat, just like a squirrel finds an acorn at the base of his tree. We kept going back and scarfing it down, so we must have liked it.
The whole trip to Fiesta was an adventure, as we had to ride down steep hills all the way to Central, which was as close as we could come to an escape from deep suburbia. Central Avenue was simply a main artery of deep suburbia, but at least there were stores. And this was the only pizza I ate until I began to sneak into New York City a few years later. I have a lot more to say about this, probably much more than you want to include for this piece, so I’m going to toss it back to you and see what you have to say. This may well turn into a short book on my end. PS - I like New Haven pizza. I’m just being a New York City loyalist when I razz you about that silly “Apizza” stuff.
Tonya:
Having grown up in the woods, I’m not sure I agree that a kid doesn’t recognize magic as it’s happening. I do get what you’re saying, though, about the pre-self-conscious years and I often long for that feeling.
I love the whole story of Fiesta Pizza, the incredible amount of detail you remember. And I wonder if that level of detail isn't due to the flavors associated with the memory. Like, if you tasted chocolate every single time you saw someone, then after a while that person would taste like chocolate in your brain. It's the same with Mr. Old, bald, and angry on Central Avenue. He's forever attached to the taste of pizza.
The whole New Haven Apizza thing is like that for me, in a way. I moved out to New Haven after I graduated college. It was the first time I was really out on my own in the world. I'd lived alone in college, but that was different. In New Haven, I was finally an adult. I was living with my best friend, Sara. We were thousands of miles away from parents and teachers and the whole past. I worked late nights at a fancy cocktail bar, and when I wasn't working, I was out constantly in other bars and restaurants or parties in random people's houses. I was constantly broke, and falling in and out of meaningless relationships. Ultimately, I made myself pretty miserable that year. But at the same time, I felt so young and free. It's a feeling I miss, like I miss the late night Apizza from Modern or Sally's. It was unique to that particular time and place.
Also, it's just really really excellent pizza. I'm happy you can admit it.
And speaking of a pizza unique to a place and time, it was such a disappointment when you and my sister and I tried to go to my childhood Pizza Hut in Sturgis this summer. During the pandemic, they had shifted their operation entirely to pickup and delivery, and somehow (in a town that famously ignored every other pandemic-era precaution) they never resumed normal operation. The old wooden booths were all gone. The lamps. The carpet. The dining room itself was gone, somehow swallowed into the large kitchen. It was a sterile little white room with one guy at a counter, handing out pizzas. They wouldn't even let us sit down.
So we ended up at Domino's, which didn't exist in Sturgis when I was growing up. And we had a great time, of course—due entirely to the company and not at all to the Domino's pizza, which will never taste quite right to me.
Paul:
I’m going to make this the Cliff Notes version of “Paul’s Pizza Parade,” so I’ll note just a few things here and save the potential 800-page treatise for some future date.
I have eaten Dominos when on the road, but only when I have arrived late, am famished beyond belief, and there is no other food around. I always regret it, but I have eaten Dominos. I have eaten my share of bad pizza, most memorably from the window in a tiled passageway in Grand Central Terminal, long before it was gentrified with food courts and fancy stuff. This pizza went down, although it’s hard to remember much from that night so long ago. There was other stuff involved. Notably, it came back up and this was shortly before the train pulled into Tuckahoe Station and I had to climb the cold concrete stairs with regurgitated pizza on my shirt. My dad met me at the top of the stairs and said, “What the hell happened to you?” I wasn’t about to go into a long explanation and my memory is a blank after that, thankfully.
As a teen, the go-to was Ray’s, and the awning actually said, “The One And Only Famous Original Ray’s,” on 6th Avenue and 11th Street. Ray’s slices were great, heaping slabs of pizza, with more cheese on them than you could imagine, served up under bright fluorescent lights while you stood at small formica tables or sat at the window counter and looked at the whole world as it passed by. Amazing pizza and famous among gourmands, potheads and pigs. A great value and a great taste. I thought they’d be there forever, but they closed one day and a Chinese restaurant opened up there. NOBODY I ever knew went to that place. Now, they are a pizza place again, but they have mighty big pizza footprints to fill, so keep working at it, buddies.
There have been many storefront pizza joints in my life since then, including the “Original Rays” on Prince and Elizabeth Streets, which the New York Times once said was the actual original Rays out of all the Rays Pizzas that claimed they were the original Rays. They had a mean pesto slice, back before pesto was as common as it is now. They also went out of business. There was the legendary - and ancient - Marionetta, on Greenwich Avenue and 12th Street, whose waiters looked like they stepped out of a Hopper painting. They died decades ago. Or Pizza Box on 8th Street. Or Regina’s, in Cambridge, Mass. Or all of the places uptown. All those places where I found myself at night with a couple of bucks in my hand and a dream of warm, aromatic pizza.
When Two Boots came along, in the early 90s, I was there every night. I was notably, indelibly single then. Young and single, and I’d use those pizza counter guys at Two Boots the way a drinker might use a bartender. In the three minutes I stood there every night, waiting for my slices, I’d unload all of my romantic and financial woes on them. I’d walk in and they would say, “What happened today?” And I would tell them. Great pizza. Different, with cornmeal under the crust and some oddball toppings, but great. A pizza-loving friend of mine and a purist once called them “a sideshow,” but he eats it, nonetheless.
We take our pizza seriously in New York and we often argue over pizza. Usually, everybody claims that the pizza place closest to them is the greatest pizza ever. I call this the “Law of Proximity” and it rarely fails. I’m not so magnanimous. The place nearest me sucks, but luckily, there are other places within a few hundred yards that are much better. And then there are the legends, all of which I hit on a regular basis. Every borough is proud of their particular pizza joints and the fiercest arguments are usually between Manhattanites and Brooklynites over whose pizza is better. I try to stay about the fray, but sometimes I will hurl an anonymous pizza insult in an online forum.
This seems to be a time of peak preciousness for pizza, and the Williamsburg contingent takes food preparation and presentation to a new fetishistic high. A Williamsburg transplant recently opened nearby, actually two places, within a block of each other. And they each make a big song and dance, with pastry bags of cheese, drizzled oil and basil leaves, ON EVERY SLICE AFTER THEY COME OUT OF THE OVEN. Somebody somewhere once saw dear departed Dominick from DiFara - the legendary pizza place in Midwood, Brooklyn - when he was still alive. He used to drizzle oil on a pizza after it came out, then use scissors to slice up basil leaves on top. This ritualistic dance, combined with his deserved reputation for insanely great pizza, is what the hipsters are emulating. The newer versions out of Williamsburg? Okay, but not all that and a bag of chips, as they say, and the crowds are godawful.
There are a couple of places near me that make a spectacular Neapolitan pizza and I can’t keep myself from shoveling that stuff down my throat at every opportunity. We live in a golden time for pizza and New York - according to the scientists - has the best pizza due to the composition of its tap water. The minerals from upstate make our pizza dough, along with the local bagels and bread, worthy of the Empire State. And have I mentioned yet how hard it is to find a good pizza in most other parts of the country? Let the name calling begin. I can take it. And if you want to know the places I like best, feel free to follow me or Juke on Substack and send me a message. ALL HAIL PIZZA!
Tonya:
Since you brought up the “Law of Proximity,” let’s roll with that. Here are the ten slice places closest to where we live in the West Village:
[WITH COMMENTARY FROM PAUL IN BRACKETS]
1. Made in New York Pizza: I don't care that it's a block away. The name alone. Even if the slices weren't overly greasy, and the lighting weren't medical-grade fluorescent, I wouldn't go here.
[Greasy and salty. Crazy salty. Plus, there is just something lacking. Maybe it’s love or care, and I’m not saying every decent slice place delivers love, but there is something contrived about their pizza and it feels more like a bunch of ingredients than a cohesive slice of pie.]
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2. Rivoli II - We keep getting slices here, even though we've decided multiple times to stop getting slices here.
[Rivoli II is schizy. I have a loyalty to it - tenuous and weak, yes, but loyalty - because they used to be good and, on any given day, you can still get a good slice there. I was not happy with the redesign, which took it from your standard linoleum, formica and fluorescent stall to a strange Home Depot decor that doesn’t feel friendly at all. It doesn’t help that, during the pandemic, the owner told me, “I could save a lot of money if I just opened in Jersey City,” which makes me think he’s running out the string on his lease. Still, it can be fast, easy and anonymous. You can just be another faceless face eating a tasteless slice. What’s not to like?]
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3. Village Pizza - a perfectly good place, but it's somehow always the opposite direction of where I'm going.
[Okay. Consistent. Relatively friendly, unlike the barbaric cocksuckers at other establishments. Big slices that are fairly inexpensive. It’s slightly off my beaten track, so I don’t get there much. I’d hate to see them disappear, though.]
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4. Village Square Pizza - the sad, forgotten step-child of Christopher St. pizza now that L'industrie and Mama's Too are nearby. The last time I went here, I felt sick halfway through the slice. That was at least six months ago, so ask me in a year when I go back again.
[I have had some good slices here and some bad ones. I am told that they will deliver a selection of individual slices, which is a rare thing, but also not something I ever do. I’m not writing it off, but I’m also not penciling it in. As with most other future slices in my life, they will happen on the spur of the moment if they happen at all.]
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5. L'Industrie - the newest bougie Instagram-famous pizza place, more focused on visual thrills than anything else. The slices aren't bad by any means, but the general hype and the long, anxious line outside the door ruin the whole experience.
[I really wanted to love this place. I still do want to love it. The slices, though, are not incredible. They hew to that new standard for pizza crust, which seems to be too crisp, but not crunchy enough. Not chewy enough and, again, often too salty. They make a big production out of it - when a slice comes out of the oven, their team of dedicated neo-hipsters decorates each one with gobs of this and that, expending palpable energy in a demonstration of supposed skill and taste. At this point, the greatest draw is the crowd, which is like a museum of Williamsburg fashion, circa 2014, but over the top. It’s too crowded, too noisy, too striving, but sometimes fun to experience, mainly because I’ll walk away grateful that I’m not part of that scene. More of an “emperor’s new clothes” act to me, but I will go there again. Only when there’s no line. The slices of olive oil cake are not bad.]
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6. Mama's Too - See: L'Industrie, except it's a shorter line, fewer flourishes, and also the pizza isn't as good.
[This place had to compete with the naked emperor next door, so they introduced a house slice that’s not a square. It suffers from the same crust problems that I had with L’Industrie. I like some of the squares, but they also don’t scream at me when I walk by. Again, if they’re empty and I’m hungry, I’ll think about it, but that’s it.]
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7. Two Boots: I don't know how, but this bizarre Cajun-Italian slice mashup works. It definitely isn't a traditional New York pizza—the cornmeal crust alone—but you (and I) could argue that it's as New York as any of the others, and more so than some, given that New York is best defined by outsiders coming here and bringing their own thing. Two Boots may actually be the best slice in our neighborhood. Even the one with the clams on it.
[Two Boots has stuck around this long for a reason. They make a good pie. It’s not typical, but it’s good, the variety is good. The ambiance is fun, as well. I also have a lot of personal history with Two Boots. When the location on 11th Street and 7th Avenue South closed, I went into mourning. When they reopened in Sheridan Square - and had a free pizza day with a tuba-based trio to celebrate it - I thanked the pizza gods and rejoiced. When I thought that the quality of the crust in their Grandma slice went downhill, I emailed the owner, who responded and vowed to investigate and fix the problem. What more could you ask for? PS. clams and pineapple do not belong on pizza.]
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8. Bleecker St. Pizza: a reliable, good slice of pizza. Unfortunately, at some point, you decided the guys who worked here were all assholes and now we don't go here. *cough*
[I’m not sure how reliable or good it is. I have gotten good slices there, but I am not the only one who has had problems with their counter people. They are FAMOUS for being surly and unfriendly. Look, I don’t expect a hospitality committee when I get a slice, but they have a fucking attitude. Take it from someone who is familiar with having a bad attitude. Anyway, they may have softened a bit in recent years. They used to be the place with the buzz and that has worn off. Competition will either bury you or force you to do better. I’m hoping it’s the latter and I may go back in a day or two to give them another shot. I’m going to put my thumbs in my ears and wiggle my fingers now while sticking out my tongue.
PPS - I just went back and I am a total asshole and wrong again, as always.]
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9. Joe's Pizza - I have arguments with Villagers over this place. It's supposed to be "the" New York slice. It tastes like nothing. I don’t get it.
[It’s not nothing - not for nothing do I say this - and it’s not what it used to be. The greatest asset is the thin crust, which lets you stuff two slices down your piehole quickly so that you can move on in life, freshly fortified and ready to roll. They have been resting on their tomato laurels for FAR too long, though. Not my first choice, but not my last.]
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10. Rivoli: It's been gone a while, so Rivoli is officially the farthest away (in heaven) and nostalgia has preserved those slices in amber. It was probably just middling-to-okay, but in memory it was great. *Sigh*
[Rivoli was great because they let ANYBODY sit there forever, because they had a bathroom and they put up with a lot of bullshit from the sordid crew of customers. It was a basic street joint slice and I miss them, too, but not so much for the pizza as the space.]
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Final note: Thank god Patsy's is on 118th St. Otherwise, I'd eat nothing else.
[Patsy’s is pretty good. Must be the ancient oven. When I take bike rides around the island, they are sometimes a pit stop. Luigi’s, in Sunset Park, is good, but overcrowded. And there are so many others, past and present, that I will just slice it off here and vow to return another day. Now I’m hungry.]
[Also, we still haven’t talked about the pigeons.]
With pizza? You mean the rats.
[No, the pigeons.]
All photos by Paul Vlachos, “Professor of Pizza.”
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Well, as someone who recently moved to Portland I would be remiss not to mention that Ken's Artisan, a pizza place in Portland was just named the #2 pizza in the whole world by Big7 Travel.! I haven't been there yet. But, just say'n. Pizza is a big deal in this town. tho my husband claims I make the best. HA! (loved reading your guys take on all things pizza!)
LOL! You two have become a power couple, especially in your writing collaborations. Now I'm hungry too ... thanks to you.