The N.Y. Times takes a look at Domino's new "Brooklyn-style" pizza, which not surprisingly only faintly resembles actual Brooklyn pizza.
One thing the article doesn't mention, and which, as a native of Queens (right on the Brooklyn border) astounds me, is the proliferation of Domino's and (worse yet)Pizza Hut outlets throughout New York City, including Brooklyn. Okay, I'm a pizza snob. But really, in New York (outside, perhaps, Manhattan, where the pizza situation has become dire) you are rarely more than a few blocks away from at least decent New York pizza. And decent New York pizza is, for example, better than anything I'm able to find in the entire D.C. metropolitan area. Why would anyone in Brooklyn, ever order the dreck they sell at Domino's?
UPDATE: IMHO, the best pizza in Brooklyn, in order, is Di Faro's (Midwood), Tottonno's (Coney Island) and Grimaldi's (DUMBO). I like My Little Pizzeria in Brooklyn Heights/Downtown Brooklyn for a quick slice, and, if you find yourself in Queens, you can't go wrong with the unheralded but excellent Carlo's in Middle Village. Rosa's, a few blocks down, is also quite good. I used to like Gino's in Howard Beach, but had mediocre pizza there recently; a good friend is highly partial to the pizza at New Park Pizza, which unfortunately is best known for a horrible racist incident in the 1980s that tangentially involved the pizzeria.
but seriously, whats up with the argument about the impoverished state of manhattan pizza? maybe it sucks north of 23rd in the nosebleed part of the borough, but downtown pie is still pretty strong.
Is that that little hole in the wall old pizza joint thats been there forever, on the west side of the street? Or was that a greasy falafel and bagel deli... i forget.
Because simply residing in The City doesn't automatically mean that you have developed good taste in food. Sure, much better pizza is to be had, but if you can't taste the difference you're going to go for the inexpensive convienent option.
Hey, there are Subway sandwich shops around Philly. Same thing.
She gave me a look. "Oh, come on, it can't POSSIBLY be better than Pizza Hut." Words failed me.
Brooklyn pizza is good. Long Island has some places that are as good or better than anywhere in Brooklyn. Christiano's in Syosset is amazing (it's the place that Billy Joel based Scenes from an Italian Restaurant on). So is Little Vincents in downtown Huntington.
And pizza is one of the few really great things about New Haven. Sally's, Pepi's, The Spot, Modern, Naples, Howe Street Pizzeria. Please don't tell me the pizza in New Haven has gone downhill.
The best pizza is in the Bronx: 18", thin, flexible crust, yeasty bready outside, sauce and cheese mixed, mozzarella (I'm in the land of Greek Houses of Pizza, so that's not obvious), and most importantly, the sauce is sweet. (If I could get a decent slice of pizza, and a bagel that fights back, I wouldn't be nearly as homesick as I am. A shop opened near where I live and I was unimpressed with the nominally Neapolitan pizza. The proprietor said "That's because most of the pizza around here is Greek, we're from the North End, and you're not used to this kind" and I set him straight that no, it's because I'm from the Bronx and I know what pizza is supposed to be like, and while this was closer, it was still way off the mark.)
I had a good slice once in Howard Beach or Rockaway, but I have spent an amazingly small part of my adult life in Brooklyn (I spent most of the first 20 months of my life around Brooklyn College), and I don't know if I've ever had pizza there.
But there's a Red Lobster in Hyannis, so go figure.
Spanky's Clam Shack on Water St.
Right on the inner waterfront, near the Hy-Line ferry stop.
(Now, that's something I know about...)
I think NY pizza is pretty poor. My preferences, in DC, certainly run to Two Amys and Pizza Paradiso (the G'town branch over the Dupont Circle one).
I find Joe's overrated, and Ray's, though a chain, is generally pretty good. You certainly can't be suggesting that it's comparable to Domino's!
The best pizza in Manhattan that I know of, though, is Little Italy on 43rd and Madison. Or maybe 43rd/5th.
When I lived in Chicago, I developed a taste for that style. I'm a pizza proletarian (or a pizza plebian) so Uno's will do...but I miss Giordano's and Geno's East. Not sure if true Chicagoans consider these good, but for a boy from Ohio they were a revelation!
What has been lost in this pizza discussion is that the absolute best pizza in B'kln ( and hence, the galaxy) is the sicilian at L&B's Spumoni Gardens.
I actually do like Lido's, the sauce is excellent, but, like you said, it's not real pizza.
As for sausage, real New Yorkers rarely get toppings on their pizza. Domino's and Pizza hut are basically selling you a crust with some sauce and cheese to put toppings on. But good NY pizza stands on its own (though, when getting pizza with fresh mozzarella at Grimaldi's or Tottonno's, I like fresh garlic added to add some zing.)
As for New Haven, I was at Pepe's a couple of weeks ago, and was disappointed. It was good, but not great.
Howard Beach used to have some excellent pizza, but I was at Gino's recently and it was mediocre. Maybe New Park is still good.
Oddly enough, Fairfax City also has the best bagels I've found in the D.C. area, at the Main Street Bagel Deli, owned by a couple from Brooklyn.
I third the recommendation for Alberto's in Dupont for pizza qua pizza, though it isn't New York pizza.
Law school, however, converted me into a Chicago pizza devotee.
For a meal I prefer the inch-thick Chicago style.
Maybe somebody from New York can correct me, but it was my understanding that Ray's isn't actually a chain, just a group of generally-unrelated, confusingly-named shops. I stopped into one in Midtown when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago (only restaurant within walking distance I could find open at 3 in the morning) and it was good (though not great). The quality is supposed to vary greatly depending on which "Ray's" you go to.
More or less true.
That might explain the prevalence of Dominos or Pizza Hut in the more tourist-heavy parts of town (like it explains the Olive Garden and Red Lobster at Times Square). I don't find it persuasive as to the parts of the city mostly visited by locals, which would include most of Brooklyn, yet there's a Dominos and a Pizza Hut within walking distance of my Cobble Hill apartment, when every one of the five or six local joints that I can think of in the same area are far superior. On the other hand, I can't think of a better explanation, beyond my suspicion that there is a segment of the population that actually prefers mediocrity.
For any ex-NYers in SF/Berkeley or Austin, I highly receommend these genuine NY transplants:
SF/Berkeley: Arinell's: on Valencia &16 in SF (is it still there?) and on Shattuck 1 1/2 blocks south of University in Berkeley (ditto?)
Austin: Slices &Ices on the Drag (Guadalupe) right at the end of Dean Keeton.
Yeah so why would anyone order Domino's unless for the sheer novelty of it.
In Manhattan, Lombardi's and Una Pizza Napolitana make mean pies.
I'm sure you knew that already, but this thread wouldn't be complete without it.
If I want pizza, I have to make my own. It's not the same as NY style - I can't seem to get the thin/crisp thing quite right, but it's better than the alternative.
Oh, wait ... I understand now. Folks in NYC, in and around DC, New Haven, and Chicago are loath to admit that there is ANYthing west of Chicago. Indeed, I've noticed that folks in NYC are seldom willing to admit that there is anything west of NYC.
:)
Same reason the interstate is a mass of island franchize food courts and people buy Starbucks coffee not Red Hook coffee from local folks.
There is a small excellent wine store on Henry in Caroll Gardens. Been there for 17 years. Owned and run by Dominic. You can buy a really good bottle of red wine for < $9, recommended and the owner knows your name. It is the right stuff. Franchize wine, coffee, pizza? fugidaboutit.
As one would expect if this theory were true, there are apparently some pizza places in other cities (I've been to one in LA, which was very good) which attempt to replicate NYC tap water by mixing the right mix of minerals into distilled water.
Quality devolves to the level the customer accepts. If the customers have low standards, the food will come down to meet that standard. Plus, with something like pizza, the pizzaria winds up hiring local kids who have no idea what good pizza is.
Try ordering a cheesesteak anywhere outside of the Philly environs - most likely it'll be made by someone who hasn't the faintest idea what a philly cheese steak is supposed to be. And it'll show.
For a while in Los Angeles, there was a great NY style pizza place, located in the Valley just north of Van Nuys. It's one of the few places outside of New York that tasted legitimate to them. When I asked the owner why his pizza was so much better than everywhere else, he said "It's the water. We import it from New York."
There are other examples. I've never had pasta as good in the U.S. as you can get in any trattoria in Italy. Why? I don't know. But its true. The same goes for dumplings in China and the U.S. And in these cases, you actually get some of the original chefs coming here and trying.
And here's another example that's kind of discouraging: one of the chefs of the best Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing came to Houston to start his own restaurant (after serving Bush 41 in China). His duck here was as good as the restaurant in Beijing. The prices were reasonable, about $20 for a full duck carved at the table, and duck soup from the carcass. The place lasted about three years before folding. Why? I haven't a clue.
All I can say is that market forces sometimes give strange results.
I also think to an extent that pizza more than other foods is a regional affair.
Good point about the water in NYC. Contrary to popular belief it's delicious! The other interesting thing about pizza is that its history in NYC is almost as old as in Italy. So there is a very long tradition of pizza making. So lotsa practice.
As for pizza in Italy, it is an entirely different product. Pizza as we know and love it is an American (Italian-American) product.
1. There's definitely some confusion by the non-east coasters on this thread as to what the heck the NE'ers mean by "pizza"...this should have been explained from the get-go. A NY'style pizza (they call it a pie here but it's nothing like a pie -- unlike Chicago-style) is basically a very thin and cooked until very firm crust with tomato sauce and cheese on it. That's it. They also like to fold the slice together when eating it. It's decent enough but if you didn't grow up on it you don't really get it. But yeah, it is entirely different from pizza elsewhere. So if that's what you're used to, no you're not going to find decent pizza elsewhere...cause they don't make NY' style pizza in the rest of the country (at least not well).
2. Lombardi's in NoLIta is where American-style pizza was first invented...1904 I think. Like the rest of American-Italian food, it bears little resemblance to actual Italian cuisine but instead can be considered something de novo. Lombardi's is more of a tourist and B&T trap these days, though not bad. Curiously enough, Lombardi's actually puts various toppings on its pizza. Which is why it's more of a direct parent to pizza in the rest of America than NY'style. (it conceived that as well -- but NY style deviated pretty quickly).
3. To be honest, I can't get great pizza of any kind in Manhattan. And that benighted tourist trap called Little Italy would be the last place in the world.
to quote an Italian friend of mine who tried various American pizzas for the first time (including NY'style, Chicago style and generic Dominos): "This is all very good. But why do you call it pizza?"
people don't use the B&T term for the other boroughs anymore. it refers to the trashier sorts from Jersey, the Island and CT (not everyone from those places!) who invade the city on the weekends, ruining every bar and restaurant. the definition you gave has been extinct for years (at least as used by everyone under 40).
"B&T" is a reference to attitude. The UES is filled with B&T frat boys and sorority types today....and that's in the city.
(personally I'm of the opinion that the only thing that really matters with a dog is that it be grilled -- which is why Gray's Papaya is just fine)
a lot has changed.
the term has entirely morphed in 10 years. today you can spot someone who is B&T a mile off:
if male, the B&Ter will probably be wearing a gold chain around his neck, too much hair product and too much cheap cologne. alternatively, if more educated than the above, he will be dressed in a button down but accompanied by a B&T female.
there are three trademark giveaways of the B&T female:
A. her hair will almost certainly be dyed blonde. (if you see a gaggle of 5 women all with blonde hair in the city, you can be entirely sure that they do not live there). B. she may well be chewing gum while drinking. (I have never found an explanation for this.) C. in the winter she will be dressed entirely inappropriately for the weather -- i.e. cleavage-bearing top, maybe heels, etc. (the city women will be wearing perfectly fitting turtlenecks and coats when going out at night in the winter).
these are the people who populate the meatpacking district (and midtown etc.) on the weekends. these are the people who are universally referred to as B&T today. it's not really where you're from (other than some places are famous for having many of them)....it's kind of a class thing I guess, except that many of them have money (it's not Manhattanites that are buying bottle service at $400 a table in the clubs)
“All I want in a pizza is to be reminded of my childhood,” he said.
That's why there could be a Dominos in Brooklyn. For the Utah expat crowd. Re B&T trap, see Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" about Robert Moses, who built those traps on purpose.
I worked in a dominos one afternoon circa 1980. The pies are cooked on a conveyor belt. The job interview doesn't ask if you know pizza - in fact that might be disqualifying.
Here in flyover country, people generally know that New York style is thin crust, Chicago style is deep dish, California style will have goat cheese and organic pineapple over a wood fire. Domino's used "Brooklyn style" as a marketing gimmick to suggest new york style with a hint of the ethnic authenticity it obviously doesn't have. I like to say my ex-wife is "from the old country - Brooklyn."
I'm vegan, but every few years I get that urge to drive all day to the east coast for a real cheese sub - nothing similar locally.
the problem with the B&T is that they killed NY nightlife (check up on the problems for a restaurant to get a liquor license today downtown). that, and they eat at Dominos.
they pretend they wanted to do it anyway.
I love Brooklyn, but it's a lot like Chicago (probably why I like it).
The thing is, I grew up in Europe (college and grad school in the midwest). Manhattan today, despite the UES frat boys, is the closest thing in America to Roma, Paris, Firenze or Genoa. I want that frenzied bustle at all hours. I need it. Many don't. That's why they made the suburbs like Park Slope, Westchester and Cobble Hill (where half the lawyers in NY live).
There's something to be said for people who were willing to move here after then. As opposed to everyone who left.
One key (aside from high quality ingredients) is that they don't make 400 gagillion varieties. When I was a kid, all pizza shops specialized in plain cheese pizza. If you wanted a slice with something else, they put the something else on a slice and heated it up for you. Now, most places have all kinds of varieties sitting out getting stale. But Lucia does it the old way, so the pizza is really fresh.
Of course, that's not everything. I have found other places with similar freshness, but they still don't compare to Lucia.
Interesting side note: I believe they are the only shop in Dumbo to have a grandfathered right to burn coal.
I also believe that people get used to what they ate as a kid and think that is the "best". At least for their "favorite" foods. I've often gone over to friends houses where they say thier mother makes the very best X. Of course when I taste it there really is nothing special about it. In fact my mom makes much better X in almost every case. So this might be a factor in people deciding what is the best pizza. If as a kid you had Pizza Hut then you might just subjectively find it tastes better than NYC Pizza.
I for instance like McDonalds hamburgers. This is because as a kid I was poor and ate lots of beans and rice, and a Mc D burger was a special treat. When I did get to go out it was not to some high class restaurant but McDonalds. Frankly it was and still is much better tasting than S.O.S. (creamed chipped beef on toast), Spam, fried baloney, Underwood Deviled Ham, or Canned Meat Food Product.
If you've seen the Eddy Murphy skit on McDonalds you'll know the kind of home made hamburger I would get. Round, charred on the outside, between two slices of wonder bread and the grease soaking into the bread making it translucent. My dad would do that on purpose because he liked them blackened. Yuck.
I've had excellent New York bagels in Houston. And there are places in DC that sell H&H bagels shipped down from New York, including Arrowine in Arlington and Calvert-Woodley in Van Ness.
I've had good New York pizza in Houston, and I've had New York pizza in Arlington, VA that was better than a third of the New York pizzas I've had in New York (and perhaps even better than the median New York pizza from New York). There is a wildly expensive pizza place in West LA or Beverly Hills that purports to import New York tap water to make its dough, but my brother and I were unimpressed by the final result.
It is absolutely the case that one cannot get good Chicago pizza outside of Chicago. There's a place forty or fifty miles east of Los Angeles in the middle of nowhere that makes a reasonable facsimile, and the Superossa frozen pizzas imported from Chicago were also acceptable (but hard to find, and Ralphs eventually stopped selling it). I don't know the explanation for this, other than that there's a lot of bad Chicago pizza in Chicago itself, and that there are places like the Uno's chain (as opposed to the original Uno's) that can make money selling mediocre Chicago pizza, and there hasn't been enough incentive to go the next level up.
Two Amys is good pizza, and it's the kind of good gourmet pizza that can be found in a lot of big cities, but it is decidedly a different kind of pizza than New York pizza, and it is entirely plausible that one likes one and not the other.
Similarly, I've had excellent Mexican in Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago, but not in DC or New York. Go know.
The only decent Chicago style pizza I've had outside of Chicago is in Minneapolis, at a place called Eduardo's (sp?). And it may just have been that there was nothing else in town that you could even swallow. The first year I was there, there was a pretty good NY pizzeria, but it folded. They didn't serve any pizza with pinapple on it, and I guess that was the deal killer.
I agree about liking what you grow up with, especially when it comes to comfort food and street food. I still think that you can't get good pizza outside the NY/New Haven area, good bagels or lox outside of NY, a good deli sandwich anywhere outside of NY or Long Island, and I'm fond of Sabrett's and Nathan's hot dogs, and I love those horrible knishes you get from street vendors that sometimes are too soggy to hold, other times are harder than hockey pucks, but every so often they are just a little piece of heaven.
That's because you think of New York as Manhattan and I tend to think of Long Island, where I grew up. There are still good delis on Long Island. When I lived on the Upper West Side, and also in Inwood, I didn't think much of the delis there, and that was 20 years ago. Of course, Carnegie and Stage still pretend that 5 lbs of meat on two slices of stale bread is a sandwich, but yes, you really had to go downtown to get anything good in Manhattan, even when I was a student there.
As for the NY Reuben, its a joke. Alot of those places give you the option of having turkey instead. Oh, and good pastrami is another of those things that just doesn't seem to exist outside of NY.
and, on a completely unrelated not, the manhattan snobbery is too funny. loves it.
More or less true.
--------
Yes, as I understand it, someone thought it would be fun to call themselves "Famous Ray's" because if they called themselves famous they might do really well and become famous. And then a lot of other people caught on and copied the idea. The one on 6th ave and 12th used to be okay, a little heavy on the cheese and greasy but not bad. Nuthin like good Brooklyn pizza, but fun for a slice. Also I think there was one on 16th and 1st? I forget what block that was, that was really good, I think it was a Ray's.
/me wishes she was still in NY to weep
How can you say that you have never seen a reuben in NY? Unfortunately for my waistline, I probably eat about 1 a month. They are on every menu of every diner in the entire city (albeit, so are gyros). Katz' makes a great one if you like the meat piled up about a foot high. I prefer closed face Reubens which I have been told means it's not really Reuben but . . . the heart wants what the heart wants.
And as one of the Utah expats living in Brooklyn--Carroll Gardens, to be precise (26 years now), arbitraryaardvark missed the mark. I couldn't believe that a Domino's was opening on on Court Street, and I've never bought a pizza from them.
My son and his friends, Brooklyn born and bred, on the other hand, gets the stuff regularly. There's no accounting for taste, huh?
Langers, in Los Angeles. They also make their own rye bread. Order hand-cut and lean, and you get the best pastrami sandwich in the country.
I've gotta disagree here.
They were pretty good when they first opened about 8 years ago - it was real east coast style pizza. But after about a year or so they had "gone native" and now offer the same soggy sweet midwestern dreck as all the other pizza joints in town. Too bad.
The precipitous downturn in Manhattan pizza has been going on for a long time. I think it is in large part due to the proliferation of pizza ovens in every salad bar and deli on every street corner. These faux pizza places turn out really awful dreck, using crappy ingredients and poor technique, but there are so many of them that they tend to dilute the critical mass of quality pizza.
I think true pizza mavens are becoming more rare as people come from outside of New York to work and are exposed to this stuff. The result is that the demand for truly great New York pizza is waning, so there are fewer places willing to spend the money on the right ingredients to make the right kind of pizza.
I grew up in the Bronx, and the best pizza I ever had came from (naturally) Pizza Italia on Sedgwick Avenue near my house. Interestingly, years later I went back to the old neighborhood and was dying for a slice, and it was horrible. (Same guy running the place, BTW.) Now I don't think my pizza tastes have changed, but I do think that even places that used to make top quality pizza are now skimping because the market for pizza is far less demanding than it used to be. And I think this effect is most noticeable in Manhattan for the reasons set forth above.
I can't tell you how many times I have commented to my wife (not from New York) that its hard to find a good New York slice of pizza in New York these days.
That said, there used to be a place on 42nd street between Madison and Fifth called Pronto Pizza (not the one on 6th Ave) which was really great. Also, I remember years ago that Ben's Pizza in the Village used to be reliably good. Haven't been there in years (if its still even there).
And BTW if you think its hard to find a good slice in Manhattan, try finding good pizza in New Jersey.
There have been several comments on brick oven pizza. Someone mentioned John's and someone else mentioned Frank Pepe's and Sally's. These are in my view a whole different genre of pizza. All very good but a whole different animal -- sort of proto-New York pizza. I can see New York pizza (the one true pizza) having evolved from the tasty but less fully developed style of brick oven pizza. It's an evolutionary thing ;-)
Finally, a great deal of the mystique of New York pizza is not just the manner in which it is made but also the manner in which it is served. A New York slice is typically a reheated slice. Reheating is very important.
Have you ever noticed that pizza delivered in a cardboard box is never as good as the slice you get at lunch time? That's due to two factors. First, the pizza steams in the box as it is being delivered, which makes the crust rubbery. Second, the lunch time slice is usually reheated. This allows the cheese to firm up (instead of being runny), and it allows the spine of the slice to crisp up. The perfect slice has very slight spine breakage as you fold. That's how you can tell that the slice has been properly reheated. It makes for that great New York slice consistency that cannot be beaten.
Ok, now I'm hungry . . .
Dan
Of course, like the midwest, when it comes to any other type of food the franchises are king. My wife's friend thinks the best you can get is TGI Friday's. If we want some good non-franchise food, we mostly have to go to foreign restaurants like Thai or Indian.
B&T: So there we were, a bunch of college guys and recent grads, heading back up to the Bronx on the west side, in my brother's car, which he registered at his college address in Mercer County for insurance reasons, and we got into some sort of road rage altercation. A couple of us angry young men jumped out of the back seat, which surprised the overly groomed other driver and left him speechless until he looked at the Jersey plates and said "At least I'm not from the suburbs!" We considered that a victory so we got back in the car and had a good laugh and went off.
Toppings: You could always get toppings on a pie, just not on a slice.
And we may as well complete the triumverate. I have a cache of glass-bottle Fox's U-Bet, and a siphon bottle and CO2 cartridges, so that's one thing I don't have to go home for. And it's milk, syrup, then seltzer, not how you Brooklyn boys make it with the white froth.
In the DC area, Tally Ho in Potomac is very solid. Not sure on the slice situation, but their pies are the best around.
Schmutter: Ben's (the one on Macdougal and W 3d) was there this past Feb., the last time I visited (for the FS student symposium. Never was the best, but was at least passable. And you are right on about the reheating and slight break in the crust upon folding thing.
I have been salivating since yesterday now over this thread. I am definitely going to Slices &Ices after work today.
I am also fascinated that this is one of the most commented threads on VC in awhile: up there with the Penn Halloween controversy and medical self-defense.
People who are willing to spend 60 hours a week for forty years making pizzas are hard to come by, and Sgr. Di Marco may quite possibly be the product of a culture that no longer exists.
On the other hand, one would think that a Grimaldi's, with its much larger staff and quicker turnover time, would be replicable elsewhere. I imagine the demand is not there.
My personal favorite pizza is Jack's in Bay Terrace (in Queens). Used to be inside a relatively small shopping center, and then they tore down a bowling alley and built it up tremendously, but Jack's hasn't moved. Pizza is identical to the way it was 25 years ago though.
I order from Dominos quite a bit because I'm cheap and lazy, but never pizza. Their wings aren't spectacular but they are consistent.
The froth is a key element because in a properly prepared egg cream, the froth at the top must be able to support the straw in the vertical position. When I make an egg cream my straws always stand at attention.
A proper egg cream has a chocolately base with a mildly tan layer of thick froth capping it off.
Dan
See this.
(emphasis added)
BTW, is Szechuan West still at 101st and Bway? Best cold noodles and dumplings outside of China (and cold noodles are hard to find in China. I found one place in Shanghai that was good, and another in Hong Kong that was outstanding).
Yes, with NY pizza, the whole thing is that it is street food that you eat by the slice, while on the go. Getting the right crispiness in the fold is very important. And its hard to make decent slices with toppings, unless the place has huge turnover, which means that the slices would still not likely be decent.
And because slices was the main standard for a pizza place, that means that most New Yorkers I know will judge a place based on the quality of a plain cheese pie. By the same token, I tend to judge a Sicilian style Italian restaurant based first on the quality of its spaghetti marinara. The really hard thing to do is to get pasta and marinara sauce right. Other Italian restaurants get the Linguini con Vongole test.
When growing up, toppings on pizza were exclusively for dining in. Delivery didn't exist, and its clear that letting the pie bake in the box is just a bad idea. It ruins the crust and the cheese.
I can't see getting wings from Dominoes, or anywhere else for that matter. I've had Buffalo wings at the original places in Buffalo, and nothing I've had elsewhere compares. In Minnesota, there was a place that featured "extra mild" Buffalo wings.
Scmutter, et al: My favorite egg creams come from the little oplace on Ave A btwn St Mks and 7th, across from Tompkins Sq Pk. What is the name of that tony place? Last time I was there they had gotten rid of all the magazines, but still had the egg creams. But it was the kind of ol' faithful place that seemed likely to be crushed under the transformation of the LES into a high dollar playground. The egg creams up the block on 2d Av at Gem Spa were never as good.
And yet they are not that great. There is a much, much better place called Pizzeria Bianco, near the ballpark. The proprietor is from Brookyln or the Bronx, I forget. The wait is forEVER (even for my friend who knows the owner), but on a nice Phoenix evening (like when I was last there in the spring), you can sit outside and have a bottle of wine and it's perfect.
Best pizza outside NYC, to me: Casserta's, on Federal Hill in Providence, RI.
Best pizza in NYC, to me: Di Fara's. Also, I like Joe &Pat's on Staten Island. And, if you've got an extra arm and leg to spend, Pizza Napolitana in the East Village...
To those criticizing Ray's: do you mean Famous Ray's, Original Ray's, or Famous Original Ray's???
Re: B&T - this term still applies to people from the outer boroughs, provided, however, that for purposes of this sentence Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Brooklyn Heights, and Park Slope are to be considered part of Manhattan. :-)
A.S. on B&T: Hah! What's next (for annexation into Manhattan)? Carrol Gardens? Boerum Hill? How about DUMBO? I used to live there when it was still pretty desolate, but I hear its artsy-ing up all the time.
Exactly. If you put the syrup in last you get white froth with a dark dot. All showmanship, not taste, and it means you're stirring seltzer.
The best pizza in NJ , and it is real pizza, is the Resevoir Tavern in Parsippany.
The real problem arises when you live in a place that has no local food. That's not a problem here in Houston, but when I lived in Minneapolis, the closest thing they had to local food was the grilled corn on the cob on a stick, swimming in butter, that you could only get at the State fair. Minneapolis is the place where Picante test marketed Extra Mild Salsa. I think it failed because the locals still thought it was too spicy.
I don't have much good to say about L.A. for local food either. As near as I could tell, you take another regional recipe, put a slice of avacado on the top, and BAM! you had California cuisine. I suppose they had those inedible Corn Dogs, but and some truly dreadful diner food at the Copper Penny and some other places. After that, it was, maybe, Bob's Big Boy for local color?
But if anyone reading this is ever in the Bay Area, try:
Melo's in Pleasant Hill,
Mangia in Lafayette,
Zachary's or The Cheese Board, both in Berkeley.
As far as SF goes, the only decent place is Village Pizza in the Cow Hollow district. The so called authentic Italian places in North Beach are not what they used to be, and most are not even owned and operated by Italian families anymore. The places I mentioned are independent sole proprietor establishments that are not chain outlets. They're the closest thing you can get to a New York pizza on the west coast.
Tommy's chili-burgers
Canter's deli, anything on the menu
Illegal bacon-wrapped grilled hotdogs
The Pantry downtown (this may qualify as "truly dreadful diner food" though
Phillippes' french dipped sandwiches, over by the jail
In-n-out
All sorts of "mexican" food, I prefer Chano's, which looks scary but has yet to cause me a fatal food-borne illness
I'm sure there's good sushi at reasonable prices out there somewhere, just haven't found it yet
Salads 2000, deep within the failed mall under the city national building downtown
Bay Cities Italian Market and Deli in Santa Monica makes a mean sandwich if you can stand the wait
the 7-11s sell sandwiches and other food made by a local lunch-wagon catering company, it's better taste and quality food than almost anything on the menu at any national fast food chain. Grab a Nemo's cake while you're there, they're as good as "Starved" made them look
Pink's hotdogs are worth the money but not worth the wait in line
The Pizza place that claimed to use New York water was Johnnie's. The one on 3rd street in Santa Monica closed down, I don't know if the rest of them did or not. IMHO it was the best pizza in SM, although everyone else seems to prefer Dagwood's.
For any ex-NYers in SF/Berkeley . . . I highly receommend these genuine NY transplants:
SF/Berkeley: Arinell's: on Valencia &16 in SF (is it still there?) and on Shattuck 1 1/2 blocks south of University in Berkeley (ditto?)
Indeed, are either of these still there, or have they disappeared (I was last there 5 years ago)?
Zacharay's is good Chi. style. But then again, as a native NYer, I probably wouldn't "know" good Chi. pizza from bad the way a Chi. native would.
Dan Schmutter: I'm fascinated that you mention that. My grandparents lived across the street from Pizza Italia, and a good third of the New York pizza I ate in the first twenty years of my life came from there. (When my brother had his bar mitzvah in the shul on Sedgwick Avenue, my father, cousin, and I snuck out of the reception for a slice there.) Sorry to hear that it's not what it used to be.
I'm also glad you mentioned the importance of reheated pizza. My girlfriend looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that reheated pizza was superior to that fresh from the oven, which is why I don't understand Bernstein's reluctance to go to The Italian Store during off-peak hours.
I wasn't all that impressed with Washington Deli the one time I had a slice there, but maybe I'll give them another chance.
Hmm. Amazing thing, the internet.
That would have been the Van Cortlandt Jewish Center. Yeah, I remember when Pizza Italia was actually across the street. It started in what was originally a Chinese hand laundry. Across the street was a candy store. Then the laundry and candy store both closed at about the same time, and Pizza Italia opened where the laundry was and Charlie's Pizza opened where the candy store was. Charlie's eventually closed and Pizza Italia moved across to where it has been (or perhaps was) for many years thereafter.
Yeah, last time I was there (which was still years ago) the dough was like rubber and the cheese tasted like the really crappy stuff that you get at Manhattan salad bars.
So when was your brother's bar mitzvah?
Dan