Ireland

PizzaXO: Scott Wiener

Interview with Scott's Pizza Tour founder Scott Wiener, June 2017

Ireland

Grazing horses at the Cliffs of Moher - in pursuit of a photo like this one, I touched my forehead to electrified wire and was shocked. The feeling wore off an hour or so later :-)

"People don't go to Ireland for the food, Petal."

That's what my friend Angela said to me when I'd mentioned, while planning last summer's family trip, that I wasn't excited about the eating options I was finding online: very little variety, + the more differentiated and interesting restaurants were pricy (and their foods looked to be a little fancy-for-the-sake-of-fancy, due to flourishes like balsamic glaze and edible flowers – in other words, shit I'm not fooled by). One notable exception came from food writer David Leibovitz, who had written a story about his stay at the Ballymaloe Restaurant & Hotel – alas it was out of our budget range.

With our Irish adventure now long in the rear view mirror, I have this to say about Ireland: it's a lovely country with warm people and insanely beautiful landscapes and seascapes – and perfectly fine food. Angela was right: don't go to Ireland with food as your primary mission. But also, importantly, don't be deterred by this information. Visit Ireland! Not every place one travels to has to be just about food. That said, truncated as the food choices in Ireland may be in the budget range, I nevertheless continued in my habit of mapping out and over-discussing meals in advance.

Here then, is a brief semi-cohesive account of our eating and travels in Ireland last summer.

An Irish traffic jam, Connemara

We had one day in Dublin, two in Cork, two in Dingle, and three in Galway. Our travel involved a circular route through the southern half of the country in a rented car, with me driving on the left side of (often narrow) roads in chilly and windy, often rainy weather (map of basic route here). I imagined seafood would figure prominently since we were never to be far from the ocean, so I hadn't planned on any Italian food or pizza. But given the repetitive nature of pub menus (and because, of course, I am pizzacentric in my food wants), it didn't take long for us to seek out pizza. It happened on our third night there.

Being used to the great variety and high quality of pizza in New York and, given that I've had good pizza in plenty of places including Italy – and, recalling what Angela had said about Don't Visit Ireland For The Food – my pizza expectations were pretty low. Before I get to details on Irish pizza however, here's the quick skinny on where we went, plus some non-pizza food observations.

Dublin is a fine, very walkable city. It rained on-and-off throughout our one full day there, but we didn't mind – it was the first day of vacation! When we got tired of walking we headed to the Guinness Storehouse, which is awesome. And yes, Guinness does taste better in Ireland.

Hanging at the bar while we waited for a table at Market Lane, in Cork.

We loved our hotel in Cork, the Lancaster Lodge – great location on the River Lee, across a small bridge from Cafe Depeche (a good coffee shop completely themed on the 80s new wave group Depeche Mode) and n acclaimed vegetarian restaurant called Cafe Paradiso (we didn't eat there). Our first dinner was at Market Lane, a good restaurant with super reasonable prices. I had pork confit. It came in the form of a free form crisp patty and had much more going for it than your usual pile of juicy pork meat ("Confit pork shoulder with succotash of flageolet beans and sweetcorn, fennel and grapefruit salad and an apple butter sauce" - €17.95). Our second dinner in Cork was when pizza-crave had struck, and we ate at a place called Uncle Pete's. More on this further down.

The view from our hotel room in Dingle.

Dingle is a touristy town in a breathtaking setting: colorful buildings, old pubs, and a small harbor whose quaintness seemed no match for what was a very choppy sea – I don't recall seeing any boats sailing during our visit. We dined in pubs each of our two nights there. The better of the two was the Marina Inn, where I overdid it by beginning with their hearty and excellent bowl of seafood chowder and then following up with fish and chips (the best I had in Ireland, by the way – and that's saying a lot!). We stuck around after each of our pub meals to enjoy the free, live music.

The amazing steak sandwich at McCambridge's, in Cork

Galway is known for its pubs and music but we'd just come from Dingle and had pubbed it up two nights straight, so here we ate in regular restaurants. By accident, I had booked our stay just outside of Galway, at a B&B in Salthill, a waterside ex-resort area. Galway itself is charming (in that cute-European-city-with-pedestrian-zone-souvenir-shops-and-street-performers sort of way). Salthill connects with Galway by an easy bus ride, and feels like a separate town. It has a commercial area of its own that includes a couple of casinos, seve

Imperatives 4 - The Pines of Rome

My dad follows DC-area real estate news and for several years he has warned me that the Pines of Rome might not be around for much longer. Properties adjacent to it, he told me, had been sold to developers. Ultimately, he said, someone would purchase the Pines of Rome’s building because it’s in the center of what could be one big development. I've lived in New York City for many years, so I'm no stranger to the phenomenon of long-beloved restaurants and shops closing not because they aren't doing good business, but because they don't own their buildings and the rents are about to skyrocket.

But last November, when my dad dropped the bomb on me — that the Pines of Rome’s building had in fact been sold — my feeling of devastation far exceeded that which I'd felt for any similar loss here in New York. 

If I had to whittle down my childhood food experiences of memory to the most important one, without doubt it would be the culmination of my visits — and all of the food I’ve eaten — at the Pines of Rome over the years. 

Enter the Pines of Rome in Bethesda, Maryland, and you feel like you’ve just stepped back to 1975. I refer not only to the decor (wood paneled walls, blue plastic table coverings, vintage posters promoting travel to Pisa, Rome, and the Florence), but also to that amazing feeling many of us of had, of experiencing pizza for the first time — not frozen pizza, but homemade, fresh authentic pizza — and of being a child who gets to eat in a restaurant where the owner and employees there know you (and by they know you, I mean that they know you well enough to correctly predict what you’re going to have before you’ve said anything; of course, they don’t bother to bring you menus).

Even today, decades after first opening its doors in 1972, the Pines of Rome continues to serve excellent pizza and other Italian and Italian-American standards. Its prices remain inexpensive compared to other restaurants in the area (a large pizza is $12.95 and, I swear, it had been $7.50 for at least 10 or 15 years, well into the ‘00s). Many folks — us, and plenty of others included — returned again and again, at least once a week, for decades. (I find it strange that since the late 1980s, food writers have in essence ignored the Pines of Rome. Rarely is anything written about the place, even though it's been going strong, both food-wise and crowds-wise, throughout its existence.

Did the waiter named Pepe, who supported his family and put his kids through college with his earnings from the Pines of Rome (and he still works there) always bring the food too fast? Yes. Did it bother me? Not at all. We learned to order in increments.

Did the Pines of Rome offer all sorts of things that were not on the menu, not on the specials board, but popular with the regulars? Of course.

Was there ever a time when we went there and my parents did not run into people they knew, thereby delaying our chance to sit down and get things underway? No, never. Good thing the waiter was Pepe.

The Pines of Rome’s red pizza is thin, has a crispy bottom, an even crispier edge, and a perfect amount of juicy tomatoes that get built onto the pizza atop the cheese by being pressed in by hand — a method I’ve seen just once before, at Pizzeria Angelo e Simonetta, in Rome. (Click above photo for a peek at pizza-making at the Pines of Rome.)

The Pines of Rome’s white pizza, which is made with two types of fontina (Italian and Swedish — each contributes a different flavor and level of oiliness, according to Marco Troiano, the owner), is as important to the menu as the red pizza is. For some reason, it is cut into squares that get stacked onto a small plate so that — if not grabbed quickly enough — they can stick to each other. Fortunately, the Pines of Rome’s white pizza is too addictive for that to ever happen — especially when paired with strips of garlicky, parsley-laden roasted red peppers, which we like to lay on top (my brother invented this move years ago; kudos, Jeffrey :-).

I have brought Pines of Rome pizzas and roasted red peppers back to New York many times before. But when I heard that the building had been sold, I began to stockpile both pizza types in my freezer — and even more than what would fit in my inadequate New York apartment freezer, in my parents’ otherwise empty basement freezer back in DC. Now, my supply is running low. I may have to road-trip just to replenish. Because the end is near and customers haven’t been told when that’ll be, the final bomb could drop any day. Any day!!

One time last year, I invited my friend Scott Wiener (a bona fide pizza expert — he conducts history-laden pizza tours in New York and is in the Guinness Book for the size of his pizza box collection) over to my place for some Pines of Rome pizza from my freezer. Pretty bold of me, given that I was feeding him pizza out of a freezer. He liked it, though he told me that he enjoyed witnessing me and my love for this pizza as much as he enjoyed the pizza itself. Oh: he couldn’t get enoug

Quick Rec - Armando's in Canarsie

Here's a cheery way to start a food story: I had a root canal a little over a year ago. More traumatic than the procedure itself was the realization I had after those three or so visits to each of two dentists: that I now have a “post” and a “crown” instead of one of my upper teeth. Looking at the dentist office poster of what a post and crown actually are freaks me out to this day. And a new reality sank fast into my knock-on-wood previously good physical existence: teeth and people are vulnerable and aging is real. Yikes.

Thus, I was not excited to discover last weekend that the gum above the crown-tooth had become inflamed. Monday, I went to my dentist, just a short walk from where I live. He couldn't tell from an x-ray what it was, and he thought I should return to the root canal dentist, so I did. And that's what brings me to today's story: the office of that root canal dentist (Dr. Justin Cohen; nice guy, by the way) is located deep, deep in Brooklyn on Ralph Avenue – practically Canarsie!

In order to make the ordeal not just bearable but also rewarding there was but one thing to do: have pizza. Brooklyn’s southern reaches are loaded with pizzerias that I assume (and have verified in plenty of cases) are very good. I aimed to make it a 3-slices-in-3-stops lunch, one before the appointment and the two afterwards. I only made it to two, but it was the first place that blew me away.

I had probably passed Armando’s Pizza a dozen times or more over the years, because back when I worked for newspapers I was all around Brooklyn, including Canarsie. But I had never eaten at Armando's, which is located next to the Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway station (the Brooklyn terminus of the L train subway line). It kills me that for years I had missed out on this place. Who knows how many times I must have settled for a so-so Boar's Head sandwich instead of a slice or a square from Armando's. It makes me nuts that instead of sitting in my car dripping mayo onto my lap I could have been hangin' on a shabby stool in front of Armando's stone countertop, gazing through the huge bank of windows that faces all the action on Rockaway Parkway and eating lunch, both at the same time. Oh, the fun I could have had!

To tell the truth whenever I had noticed Armando’s during those years I had not given it much thought. Maybe I hadn’t had the time. Doubtful, but perhaps I hadn’t been hungry or in the mood for pizza. Maybe I had (unfairly) assumed that because it’s right next to a subway stop that the pizza would be just average, the owner one of those dudes that lays low on quality because he thinks location can carry the weight. Maybe it was too difficult to park or there were too many buses to make sense of the options. Whatever the reason, I hadn’t gone. Regrets? Yes. But life goes on.

I read a number of reviews online and had decided, based on the emphatic words of Yelp reviewer Paul E., that I should try Armando's square. According to Paul E.: “The square is transcendent. The regular slice is great, too, but I think the square is what really makes Armondo's special.” Solid rec, right?!

It turns out that Armando’s, like many NYC pizzerias, offers multiple “square” styles of pizza. There's a Sicilian square and a grandma square. The grandma looked much fresher and better than the Sicilian so that’s what I had. 

It turned out to be one of the best squares of grandma I’ve ever had! On top, chunky bits of tomato, chiffonade of basil, ample and good fresh mozzarella, and an undercurrent of garlic together hooked me at first bite. The crust is a little thicker than most grandmas I’ve had, but nowhere near Sicilian thickness. Some places make their grandma crust extremely thin, and that works well as long as the pie isn't overcooked (leads to brittleness). Armando’s is chewy and crunchy at the same time: in other words, what I call perfection when it comes to pizza crust.

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After my square at Armando's, I headed to the appointment. I won't get into details about my tooth situation, except to say that I have three appointments still to come and unfortunately, they'll be in Manhattan not Canarsie :-)

Imperatives 3 - Rented Room Thanksgiving

Every year we head to DC for Thanksgiving where my parents, my aunt, and my uncle take turns hosting the big meal. The number of guests has varied ever since grandchildren arrived on the scene, and sometimes there are too many people to fit easily into someone’s dining room. My parents will host at their place when it’s not everyone; my aunt is more game and always hosts; and my uncle — since his house is too small, when it’s his turn he gets a rented room in a building in downtown DC and has it catered. This year, though it was my parents’ turn to host, they did it in a rented room. Twenty-five people wouldn’t work with their setup.

While I’m happy, regardless of the venue, to see everybody, nothing beats a home for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in a rented room doesn't feel as warm. There's no couch to kick back on, no TV for watching football, no kitchen to go into when nobody’s looking to steal a bit of skin or grab a pinch of stuffing. Plus, the presence of catering personnel makes me uneasy. I’d rather not be served by people on Thanksgiving. I find myself wishing that they could be at their homes with their families having Thanksgiving. Also, rented room Thanksgiving has an ending time. When time’s up, everybody must go. No lingering, no post-meal pre-dessert walk to “work off” the food, and no shenanigans — like the time many years ago when everyone except my aunt (it was her host year) was watching football after dinner, it seemed that a long time had passed and we were starting to wonder when she would offer dessert, and then she entered the room carrying a plate with wedges of cake and pie and melting scoops of ice cream just for herself. She sat down and went at it, unaware of our stares. No, in a rented room it’s unlikely that awesome stuff like that will go down.

What can happen in a rented room on Thanksgiving... is mishap. With the earnest goal being to address my unsated wish to have had Thanksgiving in my parents' house and to have cooked the entire meal for the goup, my mom had asked me to make and bring a butternut squash soup. So I made it, with curry and onion. The flavors weren't perfectly right for Thanksgiving but it did taste good. However, no one got to try it because all two quarts of it wound up spilling all over the passenger-side floor of our car across the street from the rented room building. (The building, by the way, is owned by NYU, where I went to college. Getting the room wasn't technically a rental but rather, a donation. In, since I'm the alumnus, my name. Apparently there is now a chair with my name on it somewhere within NYU's vast empire of university buildings.)

I know that not everybody celebrates Thanksgiving in someone’s warm and cozy home. My friend Chris and his family, I remember, were always quite content with their tradition of having Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant in DC called Mrs. K’s Tollhouse. The name itself, perhaps due to the cookies, always sounded fun to me. They did it, he recently told me, because Thanksgiving (and Christmas) were set aside as days to give his mom a break from cooking. I totally get it! 

Whenever I express to my dad my hope that an upcoming Thanksgiving will be in a house not in a rented room (and that I'll do all of the cooking), he always says the same thing: it's about the people not the place. I agree, of course, that it's about the people. But, and I always say this and I'm not sure he agrees, the type of place does affect the type of experience had by those people (see paragraph 2). 

I say all of this and write on this topic not because I feel a need to prove a point to my dad or to anybody. But rather, because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and my favorite thing about it is the feeling I've experienced so many times during my life, where it just feels right to be there — when it's a house, not a rented room.

I hope that next time it’s my parents’ turn to host, it’ll be at their house. I would love the chance to proceed with the plan I did not get to execute last year: I was going to bypass making a whole bird and instead just make turkey breast for the turkey, but then also make confit duck legs. As a decent enough cook willing to try just about anything, I honestly don't see enough payoff from roasting a whole turkey — if you aim to cook the dark meat enough but the white meat not too much, it's too complicated. Tradition be damned — I can make the stuffing in a pan with homemade stock. White meat eaters will have turkey meat that's not dry. And dark meat eaters will have crispy and rich duck legs that I think are way better than turkey anway. 

It’s a few years to go until that opportunity will again arise and, in the meantime, I can say with certainty that whenever we go to DC for Thanksgiving — whether it's to occur in a house or in a rented room — I'm legitimately happy to be there and to see everybody. On the flip side however, here's a confession. Thanksgiving or not (and if it is Thanksgiving it doesn't matter where it will be held), when I visit DC I'm not there just to eat some turkey (or duck), nor just to see family and friends. All that stuff is great, true. But also on my mind — perhaps dominantly, even, and certainly lately — is something entirely separate from all that: it's my favorite Italian restaurant, the Pines of Rome. And given that the Pines of Rome will probably not be in business too much longer, getting there top eat at every opportunity is severely on my mind.

LAST CHAPTER: (My) Childhood Foods
NEXT CHAPTER: The Pines of Rome