Monday, May 24, 2010

NEW YORK PIZZA: OPENING A PANDORA'S BOX

Periodically, somebody runs a who-has-the-best pizza in New York list. But it’s pizza, pizza is ubiquitous, anyone can have a valid opinion on pizza. So here is simply my choice of the pizza I like best. It requires a context.

Where I’m coming from on pizza is where I came from, the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s, the Paradise Pizzeria, about a five minute walk from the Loew’s Paradise Theater. Everyone who ate pizza, which wasn’t everyone in this working class Jewish-Irish Catholic neighborhood-- pizza was still considered exotic to some-- but everyone who ate pizza ate there. You could have the humiliating experience of running into members of your family while you were there on a date. Or more humiliating, you could run into the girl who turned you down in life or for that evening-- sitting there eating pizza with some other guy.

This is total recall, the place has been gone from the neighborhood for decades and so have I, but I have confirmation from my sister who ate there on dates many times herself. The pizza was old-style New York pizza, the pizza of its day, meaning a balanced blend of tomato sauce and cheese, meaning you could actually taste the tomato sauce, meaning the tomato sauce wasn’t ovewhelmed by the cheese.

If this is the pizza by which I was imprinted, the pizza of my youth, if I prefer that kind of pizza, then I will necessarily eliminate nearly all the pizza currently made in New York, the myriad pizza joints and pizza restaurants, all the Ray’s original or otherwise, the newcomers like Artichoke Basille’s on 14th Street in Manhattan, where the pizza is droopy with cheese. New York pizza today is all about maximum cheese, you can barely taste tomato sauce.

I have to stop here to say I understand pizza brings out people’s passions and people can get competitive about their favorites. I respect that. And I offer my bona fides on respect for the rights of others on pizza. What I offer is how my wife and I and our two kids ate pizza. We would eat take-out from four different pizza places in the neighborhood. That’s right, four people, four different places. One didn’t like the pizza the other liked because it was too oily. The other didn’t like the pizza the other liked because it was too spicy. You get the idea. I would walk around the neighborhood picking up slices from the different places and then we would eat together. So if you’ve got a favorite and it’s not mine I’m happy for you that you’ve found something you like out of the vast, banal New York pizza universe.

I should include that nowadays fancy-pants restaurants serve designer pizzas. It’s a bit of a reach for me, eating pizza in places like that. There’s even an argument to be made that pizza tastes best while eaten standing. But for me those restaurants really serve pizza-type pizzas.

Joe’s, at 7 Carmine Street, the corner of Carmine and Sixth, often makes it into the top pizza lists. Baked in a gas-fired oven, the pizza ($2.50 the slice) has an excellent crust, crispy, the crust alone raises it above most New York pizza places. Alas, the ingredients aren’t as good as the crust, and it is not the ghost of my pizza past.

Di Fara in Brooklyn on J Street and East 15th has the press clippings to endorse its reputation. This is artisanal pizza, made slowly and carefully with superb ingredients. After baking in the gas-fired oven it is finished off with additional cheese and then with fresh basil cut by hand with scissors by the artisan, Dom DeMarco. Di Fara is famous beyond its excellence because of the price, reflected by the quality ingredients, $5 a slice, $25 for a pie. Even the making of the pie is a kind of food performance art. I wouldn’t argue with anyone who thinks this is the best pizza in New York. And I’m sure other people’s favorites have not been described, places like Grimaldi’s, Lombardi’s, Arturo’s, John’s on Bleeker Street, Lucali, Totonno.

But we’re talking Paradise Lost here and for that old style pizza I go to Patsy’s on First Avenue and 117th Street in Manhattan. There are other Patsy’s, this is the one to go to. Thin crust charred by the high heat of the coal-burning oven, (actually the Paradise was gas oven) but there it is, the distinctive taste of tomato sauce co-existing with the cheese, as it should, as it once did decades ago. A slice is $1.75, $11 for a pie. It’s my best pizza in New York, and, who knows, it might even be outstanding if it didn’t remind me of the Paradise. Adjacent to the by-the-slice store is Patsy’s restaurant where you can order Italian food other than pizza, or the pizza, of course. The decor is so wonderfully no-frills it looks like the place where Michael Corleone bumped off Captain McCluskey.

Patsy’s, 2287 First Avenue at 117th Street, various bus lines, nearest subway, 6 train to 116th Street and Lexington Avenue. 212-534-9783. Di Fara 1424 Avenue J. 718-258-1367. Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to Prospect Expressway which becomes Ocean Parkway, left at Avenue J. By subway, Q train to Avenue J. Joe’s, 7 Carmine Street, corner Avenue of the Americas. 212-255-3946. By subway, West 4th Station.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

THE BEST PASTRAMI SANDWICH IN NEW YORK?

Ben’s Best in Rego Park Queens is something that might be out of the Smithsonian, a time capsule deli. Hot dogs on a grill up front, a narrow corridor with a glass case to the side displaying knishes and other deli items, the space opening to a seating area with restaurant supply-functional tables and chairs. New York was once home to an abundance of these neighborhood Jewish delis. In some neighborhoods there were competing delis. They may have been supplied by the same purveyors with little to distinguish between them, but some were more discriminating in their purchasing, the quality delis of their day. Better or ordinary, most are gone, casualties of changing demographics and brutal profit margins.

In Manhattan a few brawny Jewish delis remain, Katz’s, the Stage, the Carnegie, Ben’s (no relation), the Second Avenue (no longer on Second Avenue.) But they are not really the kind of local neighborhood deli that is Ben’s Best. Ambience and size aside, they don’t serve the peppery, smokey, old fashioned kosher pastrami you’ll find there.

The pastrami is cured to the deli’s specifications and served in a manageable sandwich size and it is delicious. In its location for decades, this would have been, as it is today, your quality deli. If you have roots in neighborhood New York, this is the pastrami sandwich you grew up with if you were lucky enough to have an outstanding deli in your neighborhood, and if you don’t have New York neighborhood roots, this is the sandwich you missed, the sandwich that once was.

Lately, Mile End in Brooklyn is gathering up publicity as a representative of the Montreal-style deli. With its crisp, cool interior the place is more Nouveau Brooklyn than a traditional deli. They serve a “smoked meat sandwich,” a sort of corned beef/brisket prepared pastrami style. It’s just okay. It isn’t a pastrami sandwich.

Katz’s has its pastrami loyalists, but I don’t know why. Their huge pastrami sandwich is banal. If you go to Katz’s, which is more theater than anything else, buy a hot dog.

Outside of New York, Langer’s in downtown L.A. does a wonderful pastrami sandwich and, as with Factor’s, located west of Beverly Hills, the rye bread is outstanding, actually better than anything in New York. In Miami, Michael Schwartz, the chef at Genuine Food and Drink, has re-imagined the pastrami sandwich, and it is very good unto itself, although it’s not the pastrami sandwich of this discussion because it’s, well, re-imagined.

The pastrami sandwich at Ben’s Best ($9.95 served with cole slaw that isn’t mayo-ed up and pickles) has been praised by such passionate food people as Ed Levine and David Sax. People’s backgrounds and tastes vary so widely, I wouldn’t presume to say-- this is it, this is the unquestionable Number One pastrami sandwich in New York. What it is-- is my personal favorite. In the old days if you went to the next neighborhood for something because it was better than what you could get in your own, it was a big deal. In this time of vanished traditional Jewish delis, we have a rarity here, a destination pastrami sandwich.

Ben’s Best, 96-40 Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, N.Y. 718-897-1700. By car: Midtown Tunnel to 495 East, Queens Boulevard exit, right turn off ramp, three traffic lights. By subway, R train to 63rd Drive, Rego Park.