Jersey Slim

As an amateur pizza maker, the major problem I have is not getting my dough stretched thin enough.  I always end up with a crust that's too thick.  So, the photos in this article absolutely blow my mind. 

A Pizza Recommendation

I can safely recommend anything and everything at Grandaisy Bakery on W. 72nd St., but I recently found something new that might be easy to overlook: celery root pizza.  A small, thin square, but loaded with a very nice mix of sweetness and herb flavors.  They didn't offer to heat it up for me, but by the time I thought of asking, I was too far in to turn back.  Delicious, even cold.

Notes From The West Coast, Part Two - Food

The second installment of my notes from a recent trip to the SF Bay Area and points north, in which The Selected Ballads tries his hand at food writing. The third and, mercifully, final installment will be stuff I drank.

Acme Bread - Berkeley, CA
I've been describing this place to people as looking like the photos in coffee table books about bread - everything about it is pure, archetypal artisan bakery. This location (the original?) is mostly a working bakery with only a small walk-in sales area, leading to a perpetual line out the door. I tried Acme a few times during my stay in the Bay Area, but on my first visit I was thrown off by the local convention of labeling non-sourdough breads as "sweet" (as in "sweet baguette" rather than just "baguette").

I've eaten a lot of bread in NYC, and I'd say that only Almondine and Sullivan Street are in Acme's league. Unfortunately, I didn't get to find out who else in the Bay Area is in Acme's league - maybe on my next West Coast trip.

Flour + Water - San Francisco, CA
Apparently, this place has had a lot of buzz in SF food circles over the past year, as evidenced by the crowd assembled outside the door 15 or 20 minutes before they opened for dinner. The menu is split evenly between pizza and pasta, with some ambitious appetizers and mains, but I seemed to be one of the few diners who ordered pizza. Maybe pizza as an upscale dinner option hasn't quite caught on in SF the way it has in NYC. In any case, the pizza (size and shape conforming to the lately en vogue Neapolitan style) was quite good, especially the crust, as might be expected from the restaurant's name. (Adam Kuban of Slice was not overly impressed, though he also noticed that most diners didn't seem to be there for the pies.)

What I tasted of my dining companion's pasta was also good - pastas made in-house from unusual ingredients (like beets) seem to be the focus. We also had a lamb's tongue and potato appetizer. I was initially thinking that lamb's tongue might be a green (turns out I was thinking of lamb's ear), but of course it turned out to be exactly what it said it was - the tongue of a lamb - and it was delicious.

Cafe Reyes - Point Reyes Station, CA
I had another good pizza at Cafe Reyes, near Tomales Bay, one of the major spots for oysters on the West Coast. I was slightly disappointed the cafe didn't offer the local specialty, BBQ oysters, but in the end I was happy I ate them raw. I'm not really a great oyster lover, but eating these was an intense sensory experience, tasting so strongly and purely of the ocean that they produced sense-memories of childhood beach vacations (seriously).

Returning to the pizza, I ordered it because it was clear that they took their pizza (a little too?) seriously - prominently displayed peels, wood-burning oven in full view, flour info on the menu. As with Flour + Water, the crust was the highlight, though I may have erred in ordering sausage - the overgenerous portion of crumbled topping caused severe "tip dip" and overwhelmed the sauce and cheese.

El Dorado Kitchen - Sonoma, CA
The trendy boutique hotel vibe of this restaurant was cause for trepidation, but it turned out to be a good experience, with some well thought-out food and old-fashioned good service. Cheese and charcuterie plates were the highlight, each meat and cheese successfully paired with some complimentary flavor (honey, sauerkraut, and prunes were involved, among other things) instead of just being sliced and arranged on a board.

Eaten Lately, NYC (#4 in a Series) - John's

With all the new pizza places opening around town, old-time Village landmark John's on Bleecker Street has now become old hat. Already viewed by many as just a tourist joint, the opening of the much-hyped, much-debated Keste across the street has set up a face-to-face old school vs. new school showdown (although Keste and many of the other new schoolers would probably argue that the Neapolitan style they're trying to replicate is actually older and more "authentic" than what's served at old school places like John's).

Every time I've even thought about going to John's, the down-the-block lines have put the idea right out of my head. And for what it's worth, those lines usually do appear to be populated by tourists, including large tour groups. A couple of Saturday nights ago, though, there were only a handful of people in line at John's, barely spilling out of the vestibule, while Keste had a disorganized mob in front with 45 minute waits (or so I overheard from a few people who had given up and crossed the street).

I haven't tried Keste yet, but I've seen some of the press it's been getting, following the classic hype-to-backlash pattern that seems to happen faster and faster these days with restaurants, bands, and anything else that can generate an online buzz. Una Pizza Napoletana's Anthony Mangieri said Keste's pizza "tastes like shit" in the New York Magazine profile that preceded his departure from the NYC food scene. Robert Sietsema generated a great comments thread by leaving Keste out of his Top 10 NYC Pizza list in the Village Voice, saying in response to commenters shocked by the omission that "they can't control their oven" and "their crust is not up to par".

I have to admit that Keste was the original destination on that Saturday night (I'm not immune to hype and wanted to see what all the fuss was about), but seeing the relative size of the crowds made it an easy decision to hit John's instead. I was a little surprised at the weird decor, something like a cross between an old-school Italian restaurant and Southern college town staple the Mellow Mushroom, but I guess the whole hippie-mural-next-to-ancient-brick-oven vibe could be seen as a charming palimpsest of Greenwich Village history (or something like that). Anyway, nobody comes to John's for the ambience, so here are my impressions of the pizza (a half sausage, half basil):

• just the right amount of char in the crust

• good, slightly (and naturally) sweet tomato taste in the sauce (a sauce that tastes first and foremost like tomatoes, pure and unmuddled by other flavors, is one thing that most of the classic NYC pizza joints have in common - the original Totonno's might be the best example of this that I've tasted)

• good ratio of sauce to cheese - I like to see some "exposed" sauce in this style of pizza instead of wall-to-wall cheese
  

• toppings - not a lot of basil and what was there was pretty shriveled by its time in the oven, but just enough to make a solid contribution without dominating - the sausage was very flavorful and seemed fresh

Overall, an excellent pizza and definitely not the product of a place resting on its laurels. As St. Louis frozen custard impresario Ted Drewes used to say in his low-budget, high-energy local commercials, "it really is good, guys!" (he later added "and gals" in the name of inclusion).