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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, May 24, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Editor's note: It's May 24, Bob Dylan's birthday. And as I do every year, I like to trot out and republish Seltzerboy's pizza-related birthday tribute to Mr. Zimmerman. Buon appetito! —The Mgmt.
Ever wonder how a shy Jewish kid from Minnesota’s Iron Range ends up becoming one of America’s most profound cultural figures? Slice offers no novel answers regarding Bob Dylan’s ascension to a pinnacle attained by few others. Still, now is a fine time to offer an interesting clue—well, interesting for pizza-blog-reading Dylanphiles.
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, June 22, 2006 at 3:01 PM
In an earlier post, I complained about the wait at Di Fara, prompted by a recent thread on Chowhound. Slice's city editor, Seltzerboy, responded in the comments section of that post. But his words are too good to be buried there. Dig ... --Ed.
WORDS BY SELTZERBOY .::. Di Fara is not the problem. It's the victim of a much larger problem. Too often, pizza is viewed as fast food. Di Fara is anything but fast food. In pretty much any restaurant, people are used to having their food delivered in less than 30 minutes. When someone says a restaurant has "good service," what they mean is the food made it from kitchen to table in short order.
The problem isn't Di Fara; it's our culture, which demands speed in everything. Yes, it takes longer for Di Fara to produce your pie—a lot longer, in fact. If time is your primary concern when eating out, there are no shortages of other places that will meet your needs. But when you go to Di Fara, you are engaging in something other than fast food. When I go to Di Fara, I know what I'm in for. I bring a book. But even without reading material, there's enough to keep you busy there. Commisserate with fellow patrons; share your Di Fara strategies with others; talk with Mr. DeMarco about his tomatoes or his family or whatever; pick your own herbs from the plants in the window; learn to speak a little Italian; uncork a bottle of wine; do some shopping along Avenue J and learn to speak a little Hebrew or Yiddish; study Mr. DeMarco's every move as he makes a pie (amazingly, this never gets old); grab a rag, and clean the tables; take out the garbage. Over the years, I have done all of these things while waiting for a Di Fara pie. It has become part of the experience—an experience I wouldn't change a bit. There's a group of off-duty cops who pass the time by playing cards. Waiting an hour for Mr. DeMarco's pie makes you appreciate it even more.
I could list a dozen ways in which Mr. DeMarco could speed up his operation. But all of them would hinder the final product. To me, that final product is what's most important. Why the hurry? Life's too short. Throw out the cellular phone, unplug your laptop and television, and wait an hour for your pizza. Slow down; you just might enjoy it more.
From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, June 19, 2006 at 9:00 AM
GREEN DOOR PIZZA
Location: The Muslim Quarter, Jerusalem.
Getting There: From the Damascus Gate, make the first left off El Wad.
Telephone: 02-627-6171
Hours: Fluctuates depending on business. On busy days -- en Shala, Mr. Ali says (Arabic for "G-d willing") -- 7 a.m. to midnight. On slow days, he closes as early as 6 p.m.
Do the time warp: Abu Ali greets visitors to Green Door Pizza from his "pizza pit." After cooking an egg-and-cheese pizza, Mr. Ali coats it with uncooked tomatoes just before serving it.
WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY SELTZERBOY .::. Let's say you've just traveled 5,600 miles, becoming the first person in your family in 2,000 years (give or take a few hundred) to return to your homeland. Would grabbing a pizza be on your mind? It wasn't on mine, either. Alas, duty calls.
We all eat pizza on the road. Not just to see how it measures up; we like to be reminded of home. But this wasn't one of those trips. Surrounded by the beauty and vibrancy of Israel, I never felt like I wasn't home. So I waited until home took its weekly vacation -- on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, Jerusalem grinds to a halt -- to explore the local pizza trade. The only place to do that on Shabbat is the Old City. Aside from the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall, life there beats as usual.
Holy land: A view of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. The Dome of the Rock, Islam's third-holiest site, was built in 691 C.E. Below it is the Western Wall, the only surviving portion of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.; it is Judaism's holiest site.
Old City is the part of Jerusalem that dates 4,000 years and draws religious pilgrims and curiosity seekers from around the world. It's easy to get lost amid the narrow streets and alleys, each filled with a different story from the city's compelling past. Following the action in this one-square-kilometer town, it's little wonder I ended up deep in the Muslim Quarter -- the largest and liveliest section of the walled city. What's surprising is that with nary a tourist following me, I ended up eating something called Arabic pizza. Much of Old City involves visiting ancient places; in the Muslim Quarter, even everyday life looks probably just as it did when the Ottomans ruled. Except that for most of the Ottoman Empire, pizza didn't even exist.
Not far from the Damascus Gate, Green Door Pizza is a respite from the bustle. Whereas all the action in the Muslim Quarter takes place on the street ("streets" are about 10 feet wide), the Green Door does its business in an actual sit-down restaurant. It's near the intersection of El Wad and Suq Khan ez-Zeit, but good luck finding any street signs. Most outsiders just call this the Arab shuk, using the Hebrew word for "market." You'll know you've found the right place when you see its large green doors, unmistakable amid the seemingly endless paths of stone.
Down a few steps are a few mismatched plastic tables and chairs. As I enter, an elderly man is eating a whole fish from a frying pan at the table nearest the door. From the next table, two middle-aged men look up with large smiles. "Welcome," an Arabic-accented voice says from the back. "Come." It is Abu Ali, standing ten feet back from the entrance -- and three feet down. Mr. Ali, who runs the Green Door, works from a three-foot-cube "pizza pit." In the hollow with him is a wood-fired oven (powered by a combination of olive wood and lemon wood); the oven's opening and Mr. Ali's waist are level with the restaurant floor. Talk about working in the trenches.
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, May 24, 2006 at 6:43 PM
As Slice metro editor Seltzerboy points out, today is Bob Dylan's birthday. In honor, I'm going to reach into the Slice Archives for this reheat. —The Management
Words By Seltzerboy .::. Ever wonder how a shy Jewish kid from Minnesota’s Iron Range ends up becoming one of America’s most profound cultural figures? Slice offers no novel answers regarding Bob Dylan’s ascension to a pinnacle attained by few others. Still, now is a fine time to offer an interesting clue—well, interesting for pizza-blog-reading Dylanphiles.
Before hitchhiking his way from Minneapolis to Greenwich Village, Mr. Dylan toiled at any number of below-the-radar joints around the Twin Cities, including a St. Paul pizza shop known as the Purple Onion. In fact, after a gig there on a snowy winter’s night in 1961, Mr. Dylan shacked up in the back room of the restaurant (cut him some slack; these gigs paid no more than $5 a night) to catch some shut-eye. At the crack of dawn, Mr. Dylan awoke, suddenly realizing that “the Twin Cities had gotten a little too cramped, and there was only so much you could do. … The town was beginning to feel like a mud puddle.” Next stop, West 4th Street. While Chronicles: Volume One, Mr. Dylan’s long-awaited memoir, is filled with scintillating scenes, this one jumps off the page—well, at least for pizza-blog-writing Dylanphiles.
Most people think it was his thirst to find Woody Guthrie [Himself a longtime resident of Coney Island, home of Totonno's—Ed.] and Joan Baez that brought him here. We don’t doubt the veracity of that notion. Still, we couldn’t help but wonder if sauce-and-cheese dreams sealed the deal for his sojourn east. Considering his vast societal contributions, we’ll look past Mr. Dylan’s soporific experience during his final night at the Purple Onion and even forgo any implications about the pie quality in the North Star State (having never been to the Midwest, I’ll leave the pizza brouhahas to the Slice maven). Besides, while New York may have pizza and music written all over it—with little doubt that both scenes were far superior in 1961—I’d like to give a tip of the pizza peel to any place that combines these two elements. Come to think of it, if something like this existed around these parts, I’d probably make such a restaurant my overnight quarters, too.
Two years passed before Mr. Dylan would conclude side two of his second studio recording, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, with “I Shall Be Free. Included in that song was what we believe to be his first mention of our favorite delicacy in song:
Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote/
He’s a runnin’ for office on the ballot note/
He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple/
Tellin’ me he loves all kinds of people/
He’s eatin’ bagels/
He’s eatin’ pizza/
He’s eatin’ chitlins/
He’s eatin’ bullshit
A politician preaching in front of a steeple? Where have we heard one that before …
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, January 6, 2006 at 1:02 AM
Or, 'Solidarity Through Pizza'
When the subways stopped rolling, everyone tried to roll with the punches. Some people pounded the pavement while others simply slept in. I ate pizza.
Two weeks ago, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority illegally refused to negotiate a contract with the workers who move New York. This courageous yet unfortunate work stoppage brought the city’s transportation infrastructure to a screeching halt. It was like Independence Day without the bombs. For the Slice czar, it meant a treacherous commute by shoe leather. For me, it meant a car ride from Queens and an impromptu commuter club with three colleagues.
The commute was surprisingly pleasant, at times evoking memories of college road trips. Packed in a carful of strangers, after an hour or two—the time required to reach the Williamsburg Bridge from Chelsea Piers—we all needed to get out to flex our cramped muscles and recharge with food. This, however, beat any highway rest stop (with apologies to the Roscoe Diner).
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, January 4, 2006 at 10:30 AM
WORDS BY SELTZERBOY .::. Confetti falls in Times Square, the band plays that Guy Lombardo song, and The Honeymooners airs on WPIX. It must be New Year’s.
Some traditions are more well known than others, but for residents of the New York area, something would seem awry without the latter, which ritually kicks off the television year with several hours’ worth of the seminal sitcom.
It’s still easy to appreciate the timeless humor of these 50-year-old episodes, even when you know all the plots and punch lines. And held above the fray of our tawdry popular culture, The Honeymooners assumes a level of sophistication that was probably unimaginable when CBS launched The Jackie Gleason Show in 1952. Equally jarring is how these two couples, who spent $75 to rent a pair of one-bedroom apartments in Bensonhurst (that’s for two apartments, and even after a 15 percent rent increase, which Ralph uproariously protested by living in the street), depict a New York City more realistic than anything on the air today.
With that, Slice has decided to kick off the year with a slice of this landmark show. No, this does not involve Ralph’s ill-fated plan to open a no-cal pizzeria, a scheme cited in more than one episode but one that never made it to script. Taken from the episode in which Ralph learned that Alice was planning a surprise birthday party for him, it involves a diet-conscious Ralph being tempted by Ed’s indulgence in our favorite food. At this point in the show’s run, Ralph and Alice were using a red-and-white-checkerboard tablecloth, making this pizza scene even more tasty. Bang, zoom!
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, June 23, 2005 at 10:00 AM
Or, 'Back in the New York Groove'
Following the biblical precept to visit the sick, the Slice czar found his way to Queens last weekend. Surely, he must have been wondering, where have all his stringers gone? At least one—me—has had his pizza appetite bedridden the past six months.
Our Leader even armed himself with a remedy for my ailment: the hair of the dog that bit me. Thanks to the good folks at AstraZeneca, however, the prospects of a revitalized pizza weblog have improved dramatically. With my high-acid diet having dissipated considerably, so have the pangs that accompany it, a doctor's OK notwithstanding. I had actually dipped my toes in the pizza water six weeks earlier at Di Fara, following Slice's fifth-annual warm-weather welcome party at the Cyclone and the Coney Island boardwalk. With nary a hint of heartburn found in the aftermath of beers at Ruby's and artichoke pie from Dom DeMarco, I have recently reactivated myself from the disabled list.
This reunion took place in Forest Hills, home to one of the city's finest pizzerias. These pages have long had an unspoken affection for Nick's Pizza. Each of us had been several times previously, but never in a journalistic capacity. It's particularly poor reporting on my part—Nick's is but a few subway stops from Casa Seltzer.
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, June 21, 2005 at 12:24 PM
Trying to cut down on your subway and bus fares? Stop eating pizza.
There are, it would seem, eight million half-baked theories to chronicle New York life. The Pizza Connection is one of them. As explained by columnist Clyde Haberman in today’s New York Times, this is one that has been around since the Koch administration.
Mr. Haberman points out that a slice of pizza near the offices of the Gray Old Lady can run as much as $2.25. (It has been that high at Di Fara for a couple of years—and well worth it. But we digress.) If history guides the future, the $2 base fare may soon be a thing of the past. Many have heard this theory before—red army loudmouth Curtis Sliwa has often claimed it as his own.
Apparently the source we can thank for such careful observation is Eric M. Bram, a Bronx native who concocted the rising-fare recipe in 1980. At the time, pizza slices were averaging 60 cents while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was charging 50 cents per token. According to today’s report, the theory holds true going back to the early 1960s.
What we’re wondering is if you take the Bram formula and add some Adam Smith, would the quotient be a less expensive ride to work? Probably not. Subway fares are actually much simpler to explain than this quadratic equation–like mess. The city and state governments have other priorities than funding public transportation. So when the bill comes due, the MetroCard takes the hit. It would seem that there is no free lunch—especially if it’s a pizza lunch.
From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, May 20, 2005 at 10:30 AM
Wednesday night, this site's editor in chief and I finally caught up with Jim Leff, who decided to stop by (well, near) our place of business for a little chat at Coliseum Books. Good thing it wasn't the other way around, because the much-admired food sleuth does his business seemingly in every corner of the tri-state area.
What a treat to talk turkey (well, not exactly) with Mr. Leff, whose populist spirit for a better way of eating infused the room with endless possibilities for elevating the way we eat. Mr. Leff, who wears a hound mask to protect his identity, may well be the city's most offbeat food critic, a moniker he would likely shun—and who could blame him. The mental muscle behind Chowhound.com, he is more than just another guy with a palate and a pen. Mr. Leff is a careful observer of the many nuances involved in cooking, and treats it more like an art form than the science fiction to which it is customarily relegated. He looks beyond atmosphere and other Zagat niceties in favor of restaurateurs who pour their souls into their frying pans, whether they cook in star-bestowed kitchens of distinction or turn out seemingly impossible delights in out-of the way greasy spoon diners. In this world, nothing trumps eating well.
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From Slice
Posted by seltzerboy, May 18, 2005 at 3:58 PM
You know Slice is asleep at the bandwidth, or that the pieman who spearheads this fine service has been moonlighting for another, when we miss some important pizza news breaking from our nation’s capital.
As first reported in last week’s edition of the Onion, the senior circuit of Washington’s bicameral legislature cajoled its members to an after-hours session by fronting the bill for burning the midnight olive oil.
Senators Lured Back To Emergency Session By Promise Of Free Pizza
WASHINGTON, D.C.—U.S. senators from both parties, tired and eager to go home to their families after a hard day of legislation, were enticed back into the Senate chamber for an emergency budget session Tuesday by the promise of Little Caesars. "I know it's been a long day, but if you stay late, there's gonna be pizza," said Majority Whip Mitch McConnell at 9:30 p.m. "Don't tell [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist, but stick around, and I'll make sure you all get an extra order of Crazy Bread with sauce." The senators only relented when McConnell promised that if they hammered out the budget by 1 a.m., they could rent Glengarry Glen Ross and watch it in the hearing room.
Far be it from us to discourage our leaders from indulging on our favorite food. But if Little Caesars is the "pizza" of choice, this undistinguished gentleman from New York might have to mount a filibuster—or stage a Capitol Hill news conference deploring this wasteful use of the taxpayers' money, which amounts to nothing more than logrolling for the chain-pizza industry. We wonder if Senator Robert Byrd knows of some obscure Senate rule forbidding chain pizza from the hallowed chamber’s halls. On second thought, Mr. Byrd would probably be in bed by the time the sauce hit the gavel.
If our esteemed representatives would like to chow on some pie while in session, they should head over to Macomb Street in the Northwest quadrant of the capital. In Ed Levine’s fine new book A Slice Of Heaven—a long-awaited Slice review is coming soon—he speaks highly of the pie at D.C.'s 2 Amys. We can’t speak first-hand of this business, which many readers based in the District have told us to check out if we're ever down D.C. way, but it boasts of a wood-burning oven, San Marzano tomatoes, and two types of fresh mozzarella (including buffalo mozzarella).
That’s our idea of bipartisan legislation.
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