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NYC Slice

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Re: NYC Slice

#321

Post by audiodude »

LarryMullins wrote: post #101
billiam wrote: post #90

Native New Yorker here. Out of towners are obsessed with the BEST slice, but the true measure of NYC's 45 degree greatness is the decent quality following a Poisson distribution. My tip: just travel to any random spot in the five boroughs. First; you will be impressed how close you are to a pizza spot wherever you are. Second: you will be impressed with the slice, and with the variety of people who are good at making…

Like out-of-towners asking which cheese steak shop in Philly is the best. The best is whichever corner shop is closest to you. If you're local and eat cheese steaks often, you don't drive all the way across the city to get such a lunch. You walk one or two blocks whichever shop you're near. But visitors want to experience the best, not experience it as a local would.

Ditto burritos in SF!

Re: NYC Slice

#322

Post by yamtaddle »

scoofy wrote: post #125

I used to live above Best Pizza (Williamsburg) and lived there when they opened. In my opinion, the best heuristic for good pizza is just the quality of tomatoes they use. San Marzano or Roma for the east coast, but on the west coast you have a ton of local options. I'm not saying you can't have good pizza from processed tomato sauce, I'm just saying that a place that cares about the quality of tomatoes also cares ab…

I finally got to try Frank Pepe's a while back, having never visited New England before at all, so it was also my introduction to New Haven style, period.

I'd previously thought the idea of a "tomato pie"—just sauce with a little parmesan, no other cheese, no toppings really—seemed kinda crazy. Like, I was willing to try it, since that's one of a couple "classic" pies in the style, and it's well-regarded, so I figured I must be wrong, but I couldn't reckon how that'd work out well.

It all came down to the quality of the sauce, and mostly to the quality of the tomatoes. And boy was I wrong. That sauce was absolutely enough to hold up an entire pizza (almost) on its own. I mean, damn. I've made some excellent sauces from home-grown San Marzanos (I know, I know, I don't have the volcanic soil or whatever, but they were good) but this was next-level. So much complexity when, as far as I could tell, there was hardly anything in the sauce other than the tomatoes.

Re: NYC Slice

#324

Post by audiodude »

neilv wrote: post #182

The best slice in the Boston area ("the city that always sleeps") was the one you could get at 2am. It had a loose connection to HN-style hackers. Hi-Fi Pizza and Subs was a rare place that would serve the Central Square clubgoers around last call, as well as the people walking home in the cold from a late night at MIT. There'd be a welcoming warm light from the somewhat gritty street, and a fast moving line. You'd g…

I moved to SF from Boston in 2012. I haven't completely kept up with which iconic spots have closed since then, because it's heartbreaking like this.

Re: NYC Slice

#325

Post by mbStavola »

Grazester wrote: post #149

There was a Papa John's in Bay Ridge that sold $1 slices in 2009. It was just a cheese slice but I enjoyed it. I do not enjoy Costco pizza and I enjoy more pizzas than I probably should.

Speaking of Bay Ridge pizzerias circa 2009, there was a place on the corner of Bay Ridge Ave and Colonial called Lil Nino's (?) which served the absolute worst slices I've ever had. They essentially just plated up what was obviously frozen, microwave pizza.

Their whole game plan seemed to be to appeal to the high school students in the area based on their location and the fact that they had a couple of Xbox 360s and TVs you could use. It was cool at first, but most of us just went back to picking up a couple of slices at Rocky and Nicky's across the street and going home to play Modern Warfare. I'm not sure they lasted more than six months to be honest.

Re: NYC Slice

#326

Post by twoodfin »

pzone wrote: post #244
rcme wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out-of-towners are obsessed with the BEST, most obscure everything. It's one of the things I liked least about living in the city. Everything always felt like a competition about who knew the coolest places. It's comical that someone would travel more than a few minutes within NYC just to try a slice of pizza. Like if it's a nice neapolitan pie, sure. But just for a standard NYC-style slice? That's a waste of time. A…

I disagree. Here in Prospect Heights the pizza is a solid notch below than Prince St or Bleecker St and I think it is worth making a pit stop to get a slice at those places. Restaurants like L’Industrie are worth a whole trip on their own to visit.

L’Industrie was on my Google Maps list of “places I heard about in the dark days of 2020 and will visit post-apocalypse”.

I think it was the first of those that I did manage to hit, and absolutely lived up to the hype. Probably the best individual slice I’ve ever had.

(Also really enjoy Prince St., haven’t tried Bleecker St. to date.)

Re: NYC Slice

#327

Post by jagthebeetle »

nemo44x wrote: post #190
_elkue wrote: post #111

Hello, I am the maker of the website. I'm sorry to hear it's crashing some browsers, I'll try to figure out what's happening. It's a clean install of wordpress so I'm confused what I did wrong. The reason there is an odd amount for dollar slice total is that one place had the nerve to charge me tax ($1.09). I concede that the quality at Joes has gone down over the years. I am closely noting the recommendations in thi…

Do you call it a "plain slice" for everyone else? Everyone I know in NYC calls it a "regular slice".

I'm from NYC and call it "plain" or "cheese." "Regular" makes me think too hard as to whether the "New York thing" is to say "regular" or "plain." It's also a lot of syllables.

A similar phenomenon occurs with waiting "in [a/the] line" vs "on [a/the] line." I think I say either, but I'm "supposed to" say "on line."

Re: NYC Slice

#328

Post by vineyardmike »

robbyking wrote: post #166
billiam wrote: post #90

Native New Yorker here. Out of towners are obsessed with the BEST slice, but the true measure of NYC's 45 degree greatness is the decent quality following a Poisson distribution. My tip: just travel to any random spot in the five boroughs. First; you will be impressed how close you are to a pizza spot wherever you are. Second: you will be impressed with the slice, and with the variety of people who are good at making…

That's what I used to tell people about San Francisco when I lived there twenty years ago -- the high end restaurants are great, but what's more impressive is that the average neighborhood eatery is more often than not really amazing, too.

> the high end restaurants are great, but what's more impressive is that the average neighborhood eatery is more often than not really amazing, too.

Absolutely! I share the same.

Part of that is the fine dining though. Fine dining is its own culture, and just like other Bay Area industries, once you get some good chefs in the city, they'll train people who open their own restaurants. Then the quality expectations go up among residents... and everything ends up better, even "down market".

Re: NYC Slice

#329

Post by vineyardmike »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #70
kasey_junk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not just NY. I suspect it’s basically all of the US.

Absolutely not. I've lived in a lot of places in the US, and almost none of them outside of a couple of major cities in New England had the equivalent of a NY slice. This has only changed somewhat recently (maybe past decade or so). Even still, it's not nearly as ubiquitous. It's kind of similar with bodegas, a lot of people will say "we have corner stores too" but that's not a bodega. It sounds snobbish sometimes bu…

> I've lived in a lot of places in the US, and almost none of them outside of a couple of major cities in New England had the equivalent of a NY slice.

https://www.gawker.com/the-pizza-belt-the-most-important-piz...

This has a (in)formal name, The Pizza Belt.

Also I totally agree, North East or bust pizza-wise.

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