e-rock's Profile
The Ten Most Recent Posts By e-rock
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, June 20, 2005 at 8:30 AM
The editor & publisher of this site has been a bit neglectful of his first child as of late, paying more attention to his burger baby. As such, I've done a great disservice to Slice fans and to the site's staff members, one of whom, E-Rock, submitted this piece back when the first signs of warmth were hitting the city (and at a time when he had some weird fixation with X Files re-runs). Let this piece by E-Rock, then, signify a return to renewed posting vigor on Slice.
WORDS BY E-ROCK .::. Ah, the first days of summer-esque heat in Manhattan. You start to smell certain aromas in the city that were hidden by the cold. Pretty ladies are wearing less clothing. And people start acting like jackasses because portions of their brains are thawing out and unleashing long-dormant chemicals. What better place to experience these first days of what looks like a string of consistent warm weather than the East Village?
E-Rock was strolling around the neighborhood with an out-of-town buddy, soaking it all in on an not-so-recent early evening. Always looking for a good deal, we headed to Avenue B to enjoy the two-for-one happy hour at the Lakeside Lounge, one of E-Rock’s favorite places in the world. We sipped Sierra Nevada beers, listened to the Stones, and watched the world go by through the back room’s large windows.
E-Rock could have spent hours there, but it was a weekday night and I had to be up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning. And besides, my friend Putney was hungry. "Why don't we get some good New York pizza?" he asked. E-Rock scanned his brain, thinking of places in the area, coming up with a blank Rolodex. But then it hit: Vinny Vincenz, an establishment often recommended by readers of this site.
Continue reading »
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, March 4, 2005 at 1:13 AM
[For those of you new to Slice, let me introduce E-Rock. E-Rock is our roving reporter. While the rest of the Slice staff remains safe and warm in New York City, with easy access to some of the world's best pizza, we send E-Rock out to do our dirty deeds: eating at and reporting on pizzerias in other parts of the country—and the world—that might not have the greatest pies. Most of his missions end in disappointment, but he seems to cope by viewing these crazy assignments as being more about the journey than the destination. Hunter S. Thompson has long been E-Rock's idol and, it's fair to say, has had great influence on E-Rock's writing. At Slice HQ, we've often called E-Rock "the Hunter S. Thompson of pizza writing." So it was with great sadness that we heard the news of Hunter's suicide almost two weeks ago. I asked E-Rock if he might like to write a fitting tribute for these pages. After some thought, a little recollection, and a lot of Wild Turkey, here it is. —Adam K., editor in chief]
A Rocky Mountain Downer Like No Other
"The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad."
— Dennis Hopper, in Apocalypse Now
Hunter S. Thompson, 1937–2005; photograph from HST archives
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY E-ROCK .::. Last month I was in the home state of my recently deceased idol, Hunter S. Thompson. E-Rock wasn’'t there to see the Good Doctor—I never had the pleasure of knowing him. I was in the mountains on other business. However, I wish I had made the journey to the Woody Creek Tavern, his favorite haunt, to possibly get one last drink in his presence.
E-Rock was lucky enough, however, to have had two encounters in the past with Mr. Thompson, once in Woody Creek, Colorado, the other in Lawrence, Kansas.
The first time I ran into Thompson was while driving across country from Las Vegas, fittingly enough, about 10 years ago. Some friends and I decided to take a detour to Woody Creek. We drove around the town, and finally found the Doctor's “fortified compound,” where we left a Smith & Wesson baseball cap and a bottle of whiskey near his front gate. I was too terrified to approach his home, known as the Owl Farm, the grounds of which were famous as home to roving packs of peacocks, Dobermans, random explosions, and heavy substance abuse.
Not quite satisfied with our visit, we headed to the Woody Creek Tavern (right), a small, shacklike bar. We pulled into the parking lot and knew right away that we were going to have a fucked-up experience: Parked out front was a red Chevy convertible, an early '70s model. It was a replica of the Red Shark, one of the vehicles Thompson rented and trashed during his masterpiece saga, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I can'’t remember the exact circumstances anymore. For some reason, my buddy "Jackknife" went into the bar a full five minutes before E-Rock did. Maybe I was rearranging the luggage in the trunk. Who knows. Jackknife walked back out into the parking lot, stark white with a terrified look in his eye, like he had just watched one of his pet cats get raped and impaled in front of him.
“He'’s here,” Jackknife wheezed. “It'’s him.”
Continue reading »
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, September 14, 2004 at 10:30 AM
Mean Mister Mustard sleeps in the park
Shaves in the dark trying to save paper
Sleeps in a hole in the road
Saving up to buy some clothes
Keeps a ten-bob note up his nose
Such a mean old man
Such a mean old man
—The Beatles, "Mean Mister Mustard," Abbey Road
words and photographs by E-Rock .:.
It took E-Rock less than two hours to get robbed in Liverpool.
She-Rock and I (left) had just closed out a great weekend in Northern England’s Lake District, where we had attended my stepsister’s wedding and stayed in a castle that would have made a good home for Black Sabbath's early years. With a couple of days to kill before heading back to the Manchester Airport, we decided to hang out in nearby Liverpool with our good pals Steve Marsh and Sarah, his girlfriend, who is originally from New Mexico. It had been a long three days of severe partying, and we blazed through the English countryside in his Renault, listening to Sticky Fingers at high volumes—one of the great ways to recover your sanity and beat the fatigue.
Marsh, it so happens, is the manager of Liverpool’s Cavern Club, famous for regularly hosting the Beatles in the early ‘60s. (I guess they played during lunch. Can you imagine watching the fucking Beatles during lunch? E-Rock can. During lunch a couple weeks ago, I went to my favorite street-food cart, the Trini-Paki Boys, outside the Grace Building on 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue. A Beatles cover band was playing in Grace Plaza. Scary stuff. I think these weirdos had even had plastic surgery to look like the Fab Four.)
We got into town, and Marsh (right) zipped about the city like a drug runner, winding around ancient, narrow city streets. As he maneuvered the vehicle, Marsh also served as tour guide. “That’s where Lennon used to get pissed,” he said. “McCartney used go there for a massage,” etc. The man can tell you anything Beatles-related about the city. I guess that’s what happens when you work at a club frequented by drunken tourists from Wyoming and other strange places who wear “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” T-shirts.
We parked the Renault in the middle of downtown and started walking. Marsh had to stop by HMV to pick up a disc that came out that day by his friends’ band, The Open. (E-Rock bought a copy too, and it was pretty good for a random pickup.) Then Marsh wanted to show us the club.
We walked down what seemed like six flights of stairs to get to the place. E-Rock often gets into phases where sunlight is not a priority, so the club suited me; it had a good, organic feel to it, even if it was a little touristy. But then I saw a flyer posted indicating that the Crazy World of Arthur Brown was playing there in a week. Holy shit. I thought Arthur Brown was dead. For any of you not familiar with his self-titled album from 1968, grab it if you want to get seriously twisted on silly, evil psychedelic craziness.
The Cavern Club closes at 6 p.m. on weekdays, so we only had time for a quick beer before heading back up its dark staircase and out into the city. When our party reached the car, something seemed wrong. The Renault looked as though it were rear-ended; the hatchback appeared rattled, and the things inside were strewn about. Upon opening the door, though, it was obvious that some little bastards had been in the vehicle. We had a lot of valuable stuff in there—She-Rock’s jewelry, our plane tickets, and my prized Joseph Abboud jacket. All those things were still there. The scum ended up taking three bottles of wine, hair products, and my Mets cap. (Note: If anyone in Liverpool reading this happens to see a little punk wearing a Mets cap, please kick his or her ass. A reward will be involved.)
After that, it was time for some serious beer drinking, so Marsh took us to Asda, the U.K. version of Wal-Mart, to grab a slew of Carlsberg Exports. The place was great, kind of like Costco , with a lot of fresh, high-quality goods. It was kind of surprising because, as the legend goes, it’s really easy to get a wretched meal in England, but it’s not because there’s a lack of good ingredients at hand. (E-Rock did have some ass-kicking Indian food in the Lake District, though, and some top-end Chinese in Manchester. She-Rock got a huge and wonderful plate of fish and chips one day that I thought would make her pancreas fall out.)
And that, finally, brings us to pizza. Had we stayed in Manchester the night before coming back to NYC, She-Rock and I would have gone to Matt and Phred’s, a jazz club there that gets talked up for its pizza. Instead, we ended up getting pies from what Marsh described as the “second-best place in Liverpool.” Pizza Santa Lucia, on Lark Lane, is just a few blocks away from his apartment in the Aigburth neighborhood.
There is an evil and frightening back story to Pizzeria Santa Lucia. A few weeks before we visited, Marsh and one of his coworkers walked by the establishment. Out of nowhere, some dude comes out and pinches the coworker’s girlfriend’s ass. The coworker said something like, “Hey what the hell are you ...?” and he gets punched in the jaw and has to go to the fucking hospital. (She-Rock and I noticed that Lark Lane, though a pretty street that’s kind of a hip business district, had a lot of men between 18 and 40 getting lit around 2 p.m. on a Tuesday.)
Well, the same coworker was there with us the night we went to pick up our order. His jaw still wasn’t right from the previous episode. The coworker and I were standing outside smoking while Marsh negotiated the bill, and I could tell that the chap was on edge. He went into the liquor store across the street and picked up a twelve of Stella Artois, I hung around out front, and we met Marsh in the car.
“I saw that motherfucker standing on the corner,” Marsh’s friend said.
“Hell,” I said. “Let’s smash his teeth in. Play ‘piledriver’ with his ass.”
Marsh calmed us down and convinced us that the guy wasn’t worth it and that the cops wouldn’t do a damn thing, anyway, even if we cornered the scum like the syphilitic brute he was. My adrenaline was still on overdrive from getting robbed, so I was up for anything. And Marsh’s friend definitely was. But Marsh has a good talent for crowd control and said that listening to ’70s Neil Young, eating pizza, having some beers, and hanging out with our significant others was always better than violence. Isn’t it? We probably would have been taken over by a huge gang of brass-knuckle boys, and who knows what would have happened then? My modeling career would have been shot.
But after eating the pizza, E-Rock thinks, in hindsight, that it would have been better trying to kick that honky’s tail around the city for a while.
Not that the pizza was surprisingly bad. I mean, who in the hell would think pizza in England would be any good? You’d have to be out of your fucking mind!
But here’s what we had, all 12-inch pies:
1. A Cheese and Tomato (plain pizza; above left) for £5.60 ($10.03).
2. A Vegetarian (right) for £6.50 ($11.64). This thing had cheese, tomato, mushrooms, olives, green peppers, onions, pineapple, and “sweetcorn.” The “sweetcorn” was basically corn. And don’t ask me how the crazed Hawaii pizza pineapple thing made its way over the Atlantic.
3. Finally, the Mafioso (above right), a “hot and spicy” veggie pizza without the peppers, sweetcorn, or olives but with Tabasco and chili, for £6.50. E-Rock thinks they took a veggie pizza and simply dusted it with cayenne.
Like our editor, I grew up in Kansas, so I can tolerate things like this if I’m hungry, as long as it doesn’t have worms crawling all over it. But it was pretty bad. I won’t spend much time here explaining it, but in a nutshell, the pizza tasted like a cross between a frozen pie and Domino’s with way too much stuff on it, baked in an electric oven, with thick, half-done crust.
So what’s the South Park-esque moral to this story? E-Rock isn’t quite sure, but here we go anyway. Get ready for violence in Liverpool if you ever travel there. If you go to England, stick with ethnic or pub food—and certainly stay away from the pizza, unless you want to seriously test your luck. And if you live in New York and have friends from the Island in town, be sure to take them to one of Gotham’s pizza Meccas. They will probably cry and go into violent fits or seizures, but who knows? Maybe they’ll light a fire under someone’s ass over there to start up a good joint. I’ll bet if Marsh ever visits, we may one day see a brick oven in the Cavern Club.
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, July 29, 2004 at 8:39 AM
P As In Pizza, That Is
BOSTON RECON Slice Roving Reporter E-Rock swooped in on Boston (above) for his latest Slice To Go report. His adventures are detailed below. [This image from USGS satellite via Microsoft TerraServer website.]
WORDS BY E-ROCK | PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRIS NAU
How does one prepare for the coming shitstorm next month called the Republican National Convention? The one that will snarl our streets, shut down our trains, and fill the streets with folks who don't like our city anyway? [Oh but they will love New York, E-Rock, once they get a taste of our delicious pizza. See G.O.Pizza for details.—Ed.] Go to Boston a few days before the Democratic National Convention, where essentially the same thing is happening, except that the drunk guys in suits are having a lovefest fueled by parties in Cambridge with mounds of cocaine the size of Pamela Anderson's implants.
E-Rock had a long weekend a few days ago, and it takes more than a throng of juiced-up politicians and their boot-licking servants to spoil that. I go to Boston a couple times every summer to visit my twisted abstract-painter friend Chris. In the past we would wander around the streets of South Boston with open containers and watch huge artist-loft buildings get demolished by wrecking balls to make way for high-end condos. But now he and his girlfriend Lesley have a place in quaint Somerville, Massachusetts, just north of the city, so we decided to settle for a Saturday spent wandering around the more well-traveled areas of the city, capped by a pizza freakout.
First of all, though, E-Rock had to get there. I usually take the Fung Wah Bus, which runs between New York and Boston's Chinatowns for $10 each way. Some people are fond of making fun of these buses, but the rich, racist pricks who love to criticize it have obviously never taken the Greyhound to Boston. E-Rock, short on time Friday and near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, opted for the $35 Greyhound ticket instead. I waited in an enormous line in the bowels of the terminal for the 7 p.m. bus. At 7:30, we were informed that they "didn't have a driver" because of "traffic," and we'd have to wait until Greyhound located one. Is Friday-night traffic on northbound I-95 something new? They don't know about these things? E-Rock's bus didn't leave the city until 8:30. I drained my flask of Famous Grouse into a half-empty Pepsi bottle and endured the smell of an overflowing toilet and the sound of cell-phone ringers turned up to the volume of a Who concert for five hours. When I got to Boston's South Station, one of the first things I saw was a young, suit-wearing delegate yelling at a homeless person. At times like these I wonder why I ever bother leaving New York.
When I got to Somerville, I found out that Lesley was going to volunteer for the proceedings at the convention on Sunday as a "city guide." Her required attire? A white golf shirt with the logos of corporate sponsors like Gillette (it said nothing about the convention on it) and khaki pants. Did the fashion people setting this up have the right convention?
We started Saturday with a stroll near Boston Common and into the city's South End. Chris, on a Francis Bacon binge, wanted to go to an art-book store in the neighborhood. We then went to J. J. Foley's and watched the beginnings of what proved to be a completely insane Yankees-Red Sox game. We saw the A-Rod vs. Varitek bloodbath, and it made E-Rock glad he's a Mets fan. The last thing I needed was to cheer for an opposing team deep in the heart of rabid Boston sports mania.
IRAQI ARTIFACTS E-Rock met an Iraqi-based contractor in a Boston bar who showed him Iraqi money (left) and wild pictures on his laptop (right).
We then walked northwest through the city toward the Charles River—cruising by plenty of people in white golf shirts and khakis—and ended up at another bar, the Crossroads, at the foot of the bridge connecting the two cities. Thinking we would just settle for a pre-pizza shot of Jameson, it was supposed to be a quick stop. But things changed when Mariano Rivera blew the Yanks' lead and Chris started talking to a guy who had spent months as a contractor in Iraq. That part of our journey was punctuated by the guy showing us newly-minted money from Iraq, freaky pictures of what's happening in the country and telling us about the general insanity going on over there. (I guess it's legal to walk around with an automatic weapon in clear view.) Red Sox third baseman Bill Meuller slammed a two-run shot off Rivera, and the bar erupted. We decided it was time to leave and walk across the Mass. Ave. bridge to Cambridge before people started lighting cars on fire.
What's the deal with Boston and why don't they just call the whole place Boston? Whenever E-Rock's there, he thinks he's in Boston and later finds out he was in Somerville, Jamaica Plain, or Roxbury—the place is so damn confusing.
Anyway, the pizza siren called, and we walked to this place called Cambridge and through the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We witnessed some MIT weirdness—ballroom dancing in some student union type of building. Ballroom dancing classes on a Saturday night in the summer? Is this what Noam Chomsky does for fun?
Our destination was Emma's. Chris loves the place and assured me its pies had thin crusts and great toppings. Having been to Cambridge a few times and having seen some of its glassy-eyed residents, I feared one thing—hippie pizza.
Emma's does have a bit of a hippie vibe to it, but the restaurant is more upscale than most places one would find in a college town. The joint was packed, but we waited only ten minutes for our table.
We ordered a small, 12-inch pie with basil, garlic, traditional sauce, and mozzarella ($11.75, below left) and, at Chris and Lesley's suggestion, we got a large, 16-inch smorgasbord—half of it topped with thyme-roasted mushroom, baby spinach, garlic, traditional sauce, and mozzarella and half with feta, scallion, garlic, gorgonzola, traditional sauce, and mozzarella on the other half ($16.25, below right). (See, E-Rock told you there was some hippie-ness going on here.)
It was all good, but comparing it to any of the top-notch places in New York is completely irrelevant. Apples and oranges. Monkeys and airplanes.
Emma's crust is indeed thin, but it's more like a soft Carr's cracker than the crisp-chewy perfection one finds in Gotham. Plus, those combos of toppings are so far afield from what E-Rock orders in NYC that it was like a whole different experience. This is what I've always imagined California-style pizza to be. The menu also offers pagnotelle sandwiches and salads.
But the topping combos were tasty, and even the plain pie had a nice flavor. The ingredients were fresh, and, hey, at least it wasn't deep dish. There is the possibility that E-Rock was just drunk, too, [That's a very good possibility.—Ed.] and anything would have been good at that point.
I'll recommend Emma's, though, if you're ever in Cambridge, for a good pizza-based meal, but not if you're looking for a New York–style pie. That is something E-Rock will try to find on his next trek up north. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?
The next day, Chris and I ventured to Chinatown to get Fung Wah tickets and had lunch at a great Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Pasteur. The food was flawless if you could get over the fact that the floor tiles seemed to be covered in some kind of oil. E-Rock nearly broke his hip.
I left amid the beautiful chaos that is the line for the Fung Wah, something E-Rock would take any day of the week over the pain that is Greyhound. And, no, I didn't see Bill, Hillary, T-Kenn, Kerry, or Edwards drunk on power and whooping it up. I didn't see them at all, in fact. But in the parking lot of a rest stop somewhere in Connecticut, E-Rock saw a busload of Falun Gong devotees, the same ones who were protesting the day before on Boston Common.
When the Falun Gong gets going, that's usually a good sign that it's the right time to leave.
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, July 20, 2004 at 1:53 AM
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY E-ROCK
The Port Authority Bus Terminal gives birth to few good omens. Anyone who spends time there on occasion has a "let's get it over with" attitude because of the lines, the smell, and the facility's confusing layout.
E-Rock was faced with one of those occasions on a recent weekend and tried to make the best of it. I went there after work on Friday to catch a bus to eastern Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. While waiting for She-Rock to join me for the trip, I headed to the Silver Bullet Saloon, a bar next to the Eighth Avenue entrance, and ordered the $3 Heineken pints on special. After throwing back a few and admiring the chaos of drunken commuters, E-Rock noticed something—the place serves free pizza for happy hour. Granted, the stuff isn't superb, but it can keep you from getting the woozy on the bus ride. It certainly tasted better anything E-Rock thought the Port Authority would spawn, and it beat what many dive bars try to pass off as trail mix.
Would this omen be sign of good fortune for the rest of E-Rock's journey?
We were going to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to visit my grandfather, whose legal name is Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop is kind of a Pennsylvania version of Yogi Berra. Out of nowhere he says things like, "That water is wet" and "The problem with this town is that there's too many old people around." (He's 85.)
Bethlehem was once a major industrial town. Home to Bethlehem Steel (where Pop-Pop was a machinist for something like forty years). The company was the point of origin for many American landmarks, including the George Washington and Golden Gate bridges. The factory, which once employed most of the entire region, started laying off workers in the 1980s and finally closed in the mid '90s. You may recall Billy Joel's '80s ballad Allentown, an ode to the largest city in the area, just a few miles from Bethlehem. The place, economically depressed for years, has recently improved due to flocks of new residents dodging the high housing prices in the New York and Philly metro areas.
Aside from all that, though, it's E-Rock's Hamptons, where he goes to relax and kick back a few Yeungling black and tans in the summer heat on Pop-Pop's front porch.
E-Rock had never bothered to seek out good pizza in the Lehigh Valley, as the area is known mainly for its variations on German food and cheesesteaks, but on his last visit he was determined to find a good slice. E-Rock's research (Chowhound) pointed him to a joint in Allentown called Salvatore Ruffino's Brick Oven Pizza, just east of the city's downtown. E-Rock thought, The place isn't really that far from New York. It's gotta have some good pizza.
Right?
When we pulled into the parking lot, I was instantly disappointed. The restaurant has been around for a while, but it obviously has been through a Nunzio's-esque remodeling, making it look suspiciously snappy. Pop-Pop, who normally eats at the area's many great diners, was a little intimidated: "Geez. I thought we were goin' to an everyday pizza joint. I didn't know you were takin' me to a fancy Italian restaurant." Neither did E-Rock.
When we walked in at 2 p.m. on a Saturday, the place was dead. Not a very promising sign, but it's not like we were dining in SoHo. We were in Allentown.
The air conditioning was blasting so fiercely that She-Rock was close to hypothermia. After we ordered our drinks, she immediately went outside to "check the car" and have a cigarette.
E-Rock figured the best way to test the waters would be by ordering a large pizza marguerita ($16; marinara, fresh mozzarella, basil). She-Rock may have been hitting the bong in the parking lot because she insisted on ordering a large "stuffed" pie—crust on both sides, a more structured form of Travolta's slice on slice action—with mushrooms and onions.
The thin pizza (above) came out quickly. E-Rock didn't have his stopwatch handy, but the timing was comparable to a good brick-oven bake in NYC.
When one has been to the better pizza establishments in New York, analyzing the pies in other cities is tough work. E-Rock's going to call it "The Wilco Problem." Wilco is arguably the best mainstream, country-rock band right now. You can pretty much line them up against any band on commercial radio that practices the genre, if there are even any others. Hands down. But if you've ever listened to Gram Parsons, you'll always long for something more than Wilco.
The crust at Ruffino's was thick, about three Di Fara crusts mashed together, without the proper amount of light scorching you should get from a good brick oven. The sauce popped a little too hard. The mozzarella was nice and creamy, but too chewy.
"Tastes bland," She-Rock hissed.
On a lighter note, the stuffed pie was a disaster, as one would expect. E-Rock despises the practice of eating pizza with a fork, but his many attempts of Pilates-like arm movements to steady the slice from an avalanche of tragedy weren't sufficient. Sigh. Pop-Pop's pronouncement: "It's like spaghetti."
We left, and drove through Allentown's once-vibrant downtown, still burnt out from its years of economic neglect, sporting pawn shops and empty storefronts. But the beautiful, cloudless, summer day cut through the gloom. We went back to Pop-Pop's 'hood, settled into our food comas, and sat on his front porch, enjoying the day, watching senior citizens walk their dogs and unruly teenagers on their way to no good in the sad, imitation punk-rock costumes they bought at a mall. Glorious.
We asked Pop-Pop how he liked the meal. He paused, looking like he was about to say something profound, as if he had just discovered a way to cure the ebola virus.
"I think it was the best pizza I've ever had."
That was enough for E-Rock to happily settle with Wilco.
###
SALVATORE RUFFINO'S BRICK OVEN PIZZA
Location: 1902 Allen Street; Allentown PA 18104
Phone: 610-437-3621
Hours: M through Th., 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; F through Sat. 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m. to 10 p.m.
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, June 3, 2004 at 8:00 AM
Editor's note: From time to time, Slice correspondents leave New York City. When they do, they always bring back the lowdown on New York–style pizza in other parts. Here is the second and final part of E-Rock's Sin City chronicles. Read Part One here.
Fear and Loathing: Pizza in Las Vegas?
Meaningless Streets: From a banner-laden "Brooklyn Bridge" to a half-ass "Grand Central" to a street-scene food court area, Las Vegas's New York New-York Hotel & Casino is a mishmash mock-up of an imaginary Manhattan.
Whenever I talked pizza with my New York co-workers in Vegas (which happened more than you might think), their explanation as to why the pizza in the casino Mecca wasn't up to snuff always came back to one issue—the water. One co-worker remarked, "The water here is so disgusting that you can practically smell it coming out of the tap. The bagels here suck, too." It takes good water to make good pie, so I'm assuming our friends at New York Pizza & Pasta used bottled water or had the stuff imported from the Big Apple. Too bad I couldn't stick around long enough to ask them their secrets.
As I recounted in the first part of this Vegas dispatch, New York Pizza & Pasta was a splendid surprise. But I figured things could only go downhill from there. My next assignment, on strict orders from the top brass at Slice, was to go to New York-New York Hotel & Casino on the Strip and try the pizza. I knew it wouldn't be pretty.
Continue reading »
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, May 30, 2004 at 6:00 AM
Editor's note: From time to time, Slice correspondents leave New York City. When they do, they always bring back the lowdown on New York–style pizza in other parts. Here, Slice roving reporter E-Rock chronicles his recent trip to Sin City. His multipart dispatch coincidentally coincides with the New York Times's own weeklong series on America's City of Lights.
Fear and Loathing: Pizza in Las Vegas?
THOSE WERE THE DAYS: A photograph of a bygone Vegas.
Some people might think Slice staffers have it easy, living the high life, eating every day at Patsy's and Tottono's. We do ride in those circles, but every now and then we have to brush our shoulders off, get our hands dirty, and ride into the unknown.
And so it was with me last week. In Las Vegas for work, E-Rock naturally was curious about the pizza situation in that bizarre town. Facing a week of twelve-hour days, my only window to try something off the Strip (where I figured I would have the best chance of getting a decent slice) was right after arriving, on Saturday afternoon.
Continue reading »
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, November 13, 2003 at 3:02 PM
An alert Domino's employee helped spare two little girls from further neglect at the hands of their mother, TV station KATC reports. The mother had left her daughters, ages 8 and 10, alone for several hours with nothing to eat in a roach-infested, feces-strewn trailer. After the girls tried several times to order pizza, the employee became suspicious and called authorities, who discovered them.
From Slice
Posted by e-rock, November 10, 2003 at 4:58 PM
Toronto Raptors fans got a free slice after the team scored 87 points against the Denver Nuggets.
Used to be 100, but the Raptors don't usually score that much anymore.
The Ten Most Recent Comments By e-rock
Responses to Comments by e-rock
Website:
Location:
About:
Favorite foods:
Last bite on earth: