The following rant is about these lists ranking pizza places in new York...
My philosophy on pizza is very plural, the more the better! I don't think authenticity should win over taste, or longevity over experimental... just because you have been around longer, or your pizza is more authentic, doesn't mean you should dominate lists, Especially when the market has so much more to offer... You are depriving all of us!
On two recent published lists, four out of the ten pizza places on that list were big no-no's, I personally believe that the only reason why they were on it, was because of their history and what not... And nothing to do with the deliciousness of their pizza's. I can guarantee you that a lot of the dollar slice pizzerias will beat these four in a pizza competition... I simply don't get it, this is new York for **** sake! We are blessed with so many options, and if you are not happy with the current options, there is always a new pizza place opening up down the block, so why not diversify these lists??
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| Frank pepe's in new haven CT |
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| Frank pepe's white clam pizza, with the juicy bacon on top |
In order to understand where I'm coming from I want to make a distinction between pizza and the rest of the food industry.
I'm happy to live in a place and time were most restaurants are trying to push to envelope, invent new dishes, come up with a weird ice cream flavors, (did you know that "black sesame seaweed" is one of those weird flavors?), combine ramen and burgers, sushi and burritos, etc. It's really amazing and mouth watering to watch this new wave of gastronomy where the sky is the limit... I don't believe authenticity, or old school cooking plays a big role in those restaurants, lol.
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| Antonio's with over fifty options... |
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| Antonio's, Amherst, Massachusetts |
Now to bring it back to pizza, the difference between these restaurants and pizza is that when it comes to pizza your range of improvisation is much larger, their almost isn't any rules to what can, or "should" be called pizza, it's one of the easiest dishes that people go crazy for, so why not encourage the masses to play around with some dough?? And mainly pizzerias to think outside the box?
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| Omg! Their pepperoni... |
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| Prince street pizza |
To give you a more detailed and more down to earth understanding, I would like to compare it to "ramen" mainly because it's considered the pizza of Japan.
ramen is the antidote so to speak of pizza, it's really hard to make, and to perfect it is even harder.
Here are a few reasons why I say so:
1) the broth, you have to cook the broth for hours, some times 12 hours if you want to get that creamy texture.
2) the noodles are at times hand pulled, go look up online Gordon ramsey trying to do it,
3) the complexity of the ingredients.
I believe if you start looking into good ramen, or follow some bloggers that write about ramen, you will get what I'm talking about. it's known in Japan that you can not have a good ramen place, if the chef is also serving something else... Ramen needs to have its own place! And for the Japanese culture that says a lot.
But pizza!
The only somehow hard thing to do is the dough, the rest has no rules, you can add whatever... El forno grills it, forcella deep fries it, Frank pepe's almost burns it, there isn't one way to great pizza! we are seeing an explosion of toppings all over the United States, from eggs to fruits and vegetables, I have recently visited a pizzeria that had over fifty types of pizza on their menu, and In my opinion he didn't tap into ten percent of the toppings we can use, so as you can see there is room for every body in the pizza game, it's easy and limitless, from the toppings to the dough to the way we prepare it.
So my message to those who compile those lists is: don't get stuck in nuanced details, or authenticity of a certain style, explore and let others explore their pizza boundaries...
BTW for those who made it to the end, if you want to comment below, please do.
Also what was the weirdest toppings you had on a pizza?
