January 2006

I had someone tell me that Frankie's has great New York Style pizza. I've eaten it before but I don't remember it being anything special. It's a kiddie park with go-carts, games, & lots of noise. But now I'm starting to doubt if we'll make it tonight. But what is very cool is that I'm posting to the blog from my Pocket PC phone, sitting at the Olive Garden waiting for a seat. The plan is to have bread & salad & still have room for a slice of Frankie's. We shall see!

   A good Sicilian pie can be hard to find, but when you do find it, it's usually because you've found an authentic New York Style Pizzeria.  Generally, a Sicilian pizza is about 18" x 18", square, and cut into nine or sixteen square slices.  When I walk into a pizza place that has both traditional thin slice (Neopolitan) and also Sicilian, I know there's a good chance of getting a good slice. 

  A traditional pizza oven is one where you can put several pizzas in at a time, and a human is required to check on the pizza and remove it when it's done.  The pizza sits on a deck with no pans underneath it. 

  The reason this is important is that, nowadays, people cook pizza in other ways.  Some cook theirs on a conveyer belt even.  Wacky...

A large pizza (18+") should be sliced into 8 slices max.  What's up with these places that cut their pizzas into 10 or 12 slices, or maybe even more? 

A medium pie should be sliced into 6 slices max.

I really can't figure out why this is so important, but I really belive the pizza tastes better when it's cut into big slices.  When I try to think rationally about this, I know that the proportions are the same no matter how many slices, but still, when you have big slices, it seems to be cheesier or something.  I don't know why this is im

   Pretty much this disqualifies all chain pizza places except maybe Sbarro which is found in a lot of malls and airports.  I grew up in New Jersey, where I could always grab a slice between meals, late at night, whatever.  I went to college in South Carolina and I'll never forget my first night there, I was at orientation or something.  I walked down to the closest pizza place to get a slice. 

   It was 1981, and the place was called Domino's, and I had never heard of it before.  Little did I know it was a successful national chain.  I went inside and asked for three slices.  The person behi

This might seem redundant or overly obvious, but the place has got to have pizza that is made in the New York style, which to me means a thin crust.  Ultimately it's all about the pizza, right?

 This is where it gets kind of tough for me to put into words what makes it "New York" pizza.  A lot of the chain pizzas have thin-crust, but does that make it New York style pizza?  Definitely not.  Now, I don't want to be too rough on the pizza chains, because there have been times and places where they were the only pizza I could get, and they came to my rescue.  A day with chain-pizza is better tha