Pizzacentric

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

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

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

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 :-)

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 

Here’s what kids do: they categorize meaningful occurrences in terms of extremes: up or down, love or disappointment, sweet treats or disgusting vegetables, the best day ever or the worst day ever. As adults we yen for a return to some of those objects or places or people or foods we’d defined as good stuff back when we were younger. Perhaps the best word in English for this sentiment is “nostalgia” – or maybe a string of words along the lines of “relational food memories of fondness.” I imagine in Russian there must be a single word that expresses it just right. I asked my friend John. He speaks Russian. He said he didn’t know such a word.

I’ve just spent a few minutes sitting still, eyes closed, thinking back to my childhood and trying to recall which food memories have stuck with me through the years. Here is a list of those foods, along with some updates on their status in my rotation:

* Bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a fresh onion roll (or toasted whole wheat). While I'd like to relive this sandwich with some frequency, at age 47, with slowing metabolism and concern for overdoing it with saturated fats, I don't have it too often. When I was in my 20s I worked near 23rd & 5th, and this was the breakfast that I rewarded myself with every Friday morning. I picked it up from Eisenberg's – which, by the way, is still there and, I know for a fact, still makes sandwiches (of all sorts) right. Photo above shows my daughter at the Eisenberg's counter having a bacon & egg sandwich (sans cheese) on a non-onion roll, 2013. But yes, Eisenberg's still has onion rolls – and I love that about them!

* Tuna salad sandwich on lightly toasted seeded rye with a piece of lettuce (classic prep = tuna, mayo, celery, pepper, squeeze of lemon, optional chopped pickle or relish). While I still appreciate the simplicity of tuna salad served with few accoutrements - heck, put it on white bread even! - I have graduated from Bumble Bee to fancier tins (or jars) of (superior) Italian tuna packed in olive oil. Also, over the years, I got into making tuna salad with a number of add-ins. The above photo shows Greg & Gary, the "Christmas Twins" of Amsterdam (both now deceased; photo by Bob Bunck). Why this picture? Because I ate at their boutique/coffee shop at Ultrechtsedwarsstraat 67, in 1996, and was blown away by their rendition of the tuna sandwich. The tuna salad itself was spicy (prepared with cayenne pepper, I think), and was served grilled panini-style with slices of prosciutto and some sort of cheese on the inside. Absolutely incredible.

* Breakfast of toast with butter, or butter/jam; or a bagel with butter or cream cheese and sometimes smoked salmon. One of my favorite foods from childhood, toast with butter and jam holds a strong position in my daily eating repertoire (I have it several times a week). Nowadays, as part of my "plan" to eat healthily, I'll often substitute the butter or cream cheese with mashed avocado (to which I add salt, pepper, and a drizzle of good olive oil; it's delicious – and quite filling). But nothing beats butter. A good rule of thumb when shopping for butter is to skip Land O'Lakes or Breakstone's and go European. The best bang for the buck in NYC seems to be Kerrygold. It comes from Ireland and is made from the milk of grass-fed cows. It's great. If you'd rather buy "local" butter, I've found that Vermont Creamery's "Cultured Butter" (it comes in yellow tube-shaped paper wrapping) is also excellent – though it does cost more than Kerrygold. For reasonably-priced jam I recommend the offerings from St. Dalfour, a French brand that instead of sugar uses the juice of grapes and dates for sweetening, and contains fewer grams of sugar per serving (11) than most other jams. I'm fond of their Wild Blueberry (shown above) and Fig flavors.

* My dad’s cheeseburger subs. When I was growing up, my dad didn't cook often. But of the things that he made, his cheeseburger subs stood out as superb. It seems like such an obvious thing, the cheeseburger sub, but I ask you: when's the last time you had one? I can say that in my life, decades went by between the cheeseburger sub nirvana of my childhood and 2014, the year when this food returned to me in the form of an exquisite and urgent food vision. Fortunately, its absence was easy to undo. To keep cheeseburger subs on the "healthy" side, I use turkey instead of beef, but everything else is pretty similar to what my dad did. The process is easy: caramelize onions and cook small burgers in olive oil in a pan; slice bread lengthwise and dig out most of the inside; squiggle ketchup on one half of the bread, mustard on the other; tightly fit burgers onto the bottom half, add a layer of the onions and a liberal amount of shredded cheddar cheese; cook open-faced in oven until the bread's edges are crisp but not dark and the cheese is melted; remove from oven and add cold ingredients (I just use pickles – specifically, BA-TAMPTE Half Sours that I slice by hand – but lettuce and tomato also work); close it up, slice, and serve with hot pepper relish on the side. Note about above photo: behind that nearly-completed cheeseburger sub stands a bowl of homemade oven fries, which I make often. To make them, skin and then cut potatoes to about 1/4" thickness (but into any shape you like), dry them with a towel, hand-toss with salt pepper an

Coffee was the biggest culprit in my regular not-low-acid diet.

For the first time in my life a certain ridiculous thought had entered my head: that a day could come when I might no longer be able to eat pizza. I had gone to the doctor to report on some what-I-thought-were minor symptoms (heartburn and stomach cramp) — and because of this she suggested some changes to my diet. I guess by the age of 47 the chance that one or more of those commercials for previously-irrelevant medicines that you see on TV might suddenly become relevant. But I’ve worked hard, especially in recent years as I’ve grown older, to treat myself decently. Near the top of my list of motivations (aside from the obvious, that I want to stay healthy) is my wish to preserve my ability to eat pizza. So even the slightest warning from a doctor about my diet causes me fear and frustration. Apparently, despite the steps I’ve taken, perhaps I have not adequately forestalled aging.

Dentally, I had to get a tooth implant last year, second from the back top left. Lord knows, Steve Martin’s “Pizza in a Cup” notwithstanding, liquid pizza is not the pizza I wish to look forward to. I’ve also reduced my intake of high-fat foods. In fact, throughout the past two years especially, because I joined a food coop where excellent farmers’ market-quality produce is sold for low prices, I’ve taken my fruit and vegetable consumption to record heights. I’ve also eliminated junk food and most processed foods from my diet (though I sure would like to revisit my old after-school snack treat, Mama Celeste sausage pizza, once again). These days, if I’m hungry between meals I’ll eat some dried figs, salted pistachios or cashews, a banana or pear, or some carrots.

The aforementioned doctor visit occurred in early November 2014. She asked a lot of questions about my diet, when and how much I eat, and my general level of stress. She told me to stop eating high acid foods for two months in order to give my system a rest. 

Okay, high acid foods, what are they… right?

Well, it turns out the list of foods high in acid comprises just about everything I like: coffee, alcohol, sparkling water, spicy foods, cooked tomatoes, mint, chocolate. I’m certain she left plenty more items off the list because she knows about me and pizza. I imagine she saw a look of absolute appall on my face. “You can’t really mean this, what about sometimes?” I protested. “If the tomatoes start off uncooked and are only cooked on the pizza in a hot oven for like two minutes, is that okay?” I queried. “Can I drink kombucha?” I delicately asked her. She had no opinion. I don’t think she knew what it is. Just lay off high acid foods, she reiterated.

I committed — and I sought solutions. Ginger ice cream for when I craved a sweet. Water as my only cold beverage. To replace coffee I switched to decaf; but I still experienced cramps so I switched to caffe d’orzo, Italy’s version of decaf (it’s made from barley) (a quick search reveals that decaf has as much acid as regular coffee). I had tacos but added no hot sauce – a first for me. When my wife made chili for Sunday dinner, it was “white” chili (very good actually – she made it with ground turkey, cannellini beans, quinoa, green salsa, chicken stock, cumin, and kale; here’s the recipe she based it on). Pizza? It would have to be white.

After two months of feeling no symptoms, the doctor gave me the green light to one-by-one add back foods. Be mindful of how they make you feel, she said.

When I think hard on the list and how much of a role these foods actually played in my life, I've gotta figure that coffee was the biggest culprit – well, that and overeating – when it came to antagonising my gut. My habit had been to drink one or two ‘6-cup’ moka pots’ worth of the stuff daily (about 10 oz coffee per pot). So, since the warning from the doctor, I’ve stayed off of coffee and I’ve been pretty firm on it: in the last eleven weeks I’ve had coffee only twice.

I have added back a moderate consumption of alcohol. I don’t drink too much anyway, and it hasn't bothered me. Spicy foods, I’ve dabbled here and there, but I have not loaded up on the habañero as I was once prone to do.

In the pizza category I’ve been okay too. After a solid two months of no cooked tomato, I’ve had pizza a handful of times and, at most, felt a little cramp afterwards. It seems the warning is: pizza’s ok, but don’t have it too much. Last weekend we ordered a grandma pie from Cotta Bene, one of my favorite places that delivers to me. It was the first time I'd eaten more than a slice (or a square) at a time since October. Oh, actually, I'd had a slice and a square from Di Fara the weekend before. I'm gonna have to watch myself – I can't even keep track.

The cramp I feel when I feel it is every so slight. But who the heck knows what's going on in there. I'd rather play it safe and keep my pizza consumption under control. Perhaps the silver lining is that less of something makes you appreciate it more. NEXT CHAPTER: CHILDHOOD FOODS

Last week the news came down that Streit’s Matzo factory, which has been producing its crisp Jewish flatbreads on the Lower East Side of Manhattan since about 1915, is leaving New York sometime this spring. They've sold their site for an undisclosed amount of money. Developers will probably turn it into some sort of glass-façaded enormous condo building with apartments "Priced from the two millions.” 

People, myself included, get seriously sad about old places closing, the general purging of Old New York, and how expensive the city has become. In the case of Streit’s it’s important to acknowledge that most of the “Jewish” Lower East Side abandoned ship long ago. True, some of the old businesses remain (Katz’s Deli, Israel Wholesale Judaica, and Global International Menswear — to name a few). And yes, the Tenement Museum stages period reënactments that make for a marvelous history lesson about how people lived in the area during the period of time from the late 19th through the mid-20th century. But most remnants of the old neighborhood by now exist solely in the form of the buildings themselves and the old signs still intact outside of what are now trendy boutiques, bars, and restaurants. 

I have no special passion for matzo except that I eat it, somewhat agnostically (mainly because I like it) during Passover each year (it’s good with butter or as the “bread” for a tuna salad sandwich). It reminds me of Carr's Water Crackers, but it's sold at a much lower price. I feel slightly connected to Streit’s itself only because I lived half-a-block from it back in 1990, when the neighborhood was still quite dangerous. In those days I heard gunshots often, the corner deli ran a numbers racket, and tiny plastic drug bags and vials were always visible along the gutters and sidewalks; I departed for good on April 14, 1991 when my apartment was broken into and burned down by heroin addicts who also robbed my roommate and me of our electronics.

Despite my (unrealistic) desire for all the old places to always remain, I find it difficult to be disappointed in the Streit's family for deciding to leave Manhattan. To state that they’ve remained true to their roots for 100 years and so cut them some slack if they should decide to leave totally understates the level of devotion they’ve had to their business, their location, their employees, their immigrant roots, and to the Jewish and local communities. Throw in the fact that the business persisted for decades in the midst of true danger — and seriously, who can blame them for leaving town. Cash talks, people walk: I get it.

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I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything,” an excellent book about the environmental crisis. We need major changes to the way we live and how we conduct the global economy. First and foremost — and this really is no joke — we need to replace the digging for oil and gas and coal with the harnessing of sunlight and wind and waterflow. A path does exist by which all of our energy needs could come from these types of renewable sources.

So when an old factory like Streit’s decides to shut down the old plant and move to New Jersey, this is an opportunity. The current ovens burn at 800 degrees all day long during most days of the year and are fueled by natural gas. Streit’s could decide to build itself a new factory that is fueled entirely by renewable energy sources. Likewise, whatever gets built by developers on the current site of Streit’s could incorporate all sorts of modern technologies (such as well-sealed passive house construction — which leads to tremendous decreases in energy inputs for cooling and heating — and solar power panels on the roof). In other words, a duel-construction situation of this magnitude (new factory + new condo building) has the potential to make immediate change, and to show others how truly modernized facilities can operate efficiently and be green at the same time. I called Streit’s to ask them if this is something they would consider. It didn’t sound as if they’d given the question of energy supply even a minute of consideration. But they should.

**

Meanwhile, there’s still some time remaining to see for yourself this marvel of a factory. It turns out that anyone can visit Streit’s and see firsthand how matzo gets made. And it’s free! You just have to call to make an appointment.

I visited Streit’s in 2013 as part of my research for a book I did about great New York places to visit with children, and was immensely stricken by its beauty. To state the obvious: places like this factory don’t really exist anymore in New York City.

The two parallel ovens each employ a conveyer system to bring in uncooked dough and send out the finished matzo— 75 feet and two minutes later. As the cooked matzo emerges, a couple of employees break it apart, portion it into correct quantities for boxes, and load it as stacks of squares onto racks that move along a mechanical track to an upstairs area where workers fill and seal matzo boxes, group them into multi-packs, and package those into bigger boxes for distribution. It’s fascinating to watch — so much so that when I was there I made a short video of some of the action. Mesemerizing stuff. Click the top photo to see it. (Larger version viewable here.)

**

Streit's Matzo Factory & Retail Store: 148-154 Rivington Street, at Suffolk Street. Free tour of factory must be scheduled in advance. Tel. 212-475-7000. Tour hours are Monday-Thursday 9am-3pm. Retail store hours (to purchase matzo goods) open Monday-Thursday 8:30am-4:30pm. Map Streit's. Final closing date TBA, but it will be sometime in the spring of 2015.

Focaccia di Recco prep at La Manuelina, in Recco.

I learned last summer, on the day when we had only an hour or two for a stop in Recco because we were on our way from one place in Italy to another, that one must eat focaccia di Recco (also known as focaccia col formaggio) straight out of the oven and not from an old pie that has already cooled to room temperature. This revelation occurred to me in the corner bakery located just next door to my first choice bakery that was, surprisingly, closed when we got there. But in Recco, a Riviera beach town that boasts none of the fanciness for which nearby places (such as Portofino) are known, focaccia di Recco (and farinata, another pizza proxy from the area) is on offer everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. It's a thing.

As I stood in that next door replacement-bakery (which is called Focaccia d’Autore) feigning conversation in Italian with the man in charge, who was happy to share with me details about *his* focaccia di Recco – like, which latteria does he get his stracchino from (he gave us each a spoonful to try) – I started to sense that the shop had become crowded behind me and grew concerned that I was holding things up for others.

 The owner (or is he the manager?) of Focaccia d'Autore explains some of the pizza-like
things made in his shop. Click for detail of focaccia di Recco being made.

What if a hypothetical-Italian bakerygoer were to ask me why I was taking so long at the counter? Could I convincingly explain Pizzacentric, and that I consider this food a serious pizza proxy, and that it's virtually unknown outside of Liguria?

It turns out I need not have worried. Those other people were not waiting for me to finish talking so that they could order. They were waiting for a new (fresh and hot) focaccia di Recco to get pulled from the oven. I had ordered from the one they didn't want.

Focaccia di Recco, which is essentially two layers of thin unleavened dough surrounding an interior of an Italian melting cheese called stracchino, shares more characteristics with pizza than with other, more commonly known variations of focaccia: it's thin, not spongy; and when cooked becomes blistery — even crunchy in spots — with oozy cheese. However, unlike pizza or other focacce, when focaccia di Recco cools, it loses its overall crunch and the cheese loses its ooze.

The people behind me in the bakery knew this. Kristin had figured it out too – from watching those other people. I had no idea.

"I'll go back in and get a piece from the fresh one,” I said, after she had explained to me all of this.

Then Julia, who’s 8, chimed in: "Let's go, Daddy. Don't go back in!"

The beach in Recco.

I didn’t insist. Julia is not a fan of standing around waiting while I speak with restaurant owners. Also, there was one other focaccia di Recco lunch planned for the day – so I had to figure I'd be ok.

It took only a minute to walk to the beach, where we celebrated the warm salty air and the fact that we had finally made it to this area, which we had long discussed visiting but had not yet done.

Focaccia di Recco service at La Manuelina (Click for food close-up)

We finished eating and then drove about five minutes to arrive at place #2, La Manuelina, a swankish white tablecloth restaurant where one must order focaccia di Recco as a whole pie (there are size options) from suited-up waiters who slice and serve it from a tablecloth-laden side cart, kind of like they do Peking duck at fancier Chinese restaurants or how at retro old school places they still might make your Caesar tableside. In other words, it's a level of service not normally affiliated with the distribution of pieces of pizza. I love Italy.

Manuelina's focaccia di Recco, hot out of the oven, is undeniably exquisite. Go have it if you can.

**

Scott Wiener, owner of Scott's Pizza Tours, introduced Slice Out Hunger to New Yorkers in 2009. 

**

Stats are in from Slice Out Hunger's 2014 event, which was held on October 8 at St. Anthony's Church at Sullivan and Houston Streets, in Manhattan.

~ ~ ~

1,000 people through the door.

8,659 tickets sold at $1 each.

50 participating pizzerias donated fresh pizza pies that sold for $1/slice.

Pizza came from all 5 boroughs + Hoboken, Jersey City, and Caldwell, NJ.

$30,000 raised to benefit Food Bank for New York City. That's 150,000 meals getting delivered to people who need them.

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Bravo to everyone who participated! 

Here's a slideshow of photos from the event: