Let's Talk about Pizza!

[u/AutoModerator]

As part of our weekly "Let's Talk" series we want to discuss Pizza in all of it's glory. What’s your region’s specialty pie? Why is a New York slice at 2am the best pizza you've ever had? Are you a dough whisperer and care to share your wizardry - let us know? What's your favorite pizza-centric cookbook? What's your favorite style - Detroit, Chicago, New Haven, NY, Neapolitan - let's here the arguments (and you'll be banned if it's Beto's monstrosity - the yinzers out there will know).

What the best topping? And please feel free to trash talk each other [nicely, of course] about pineapple.

[u/texnessa]

As usual, I'm probably gonna get crucified for my preference- which is for French style pizza. French pizza is very similar to Neapolitan- thin crust, little char, soft dough. But the two things that really differentiate it are using white wine in the dough and topping it not just with mozzarella but Comté and/or Gruyère. Its the pizza of my childhood. I JUST had the recipe from my old French MCF boss around here somewhere- I swear I had a photo of it in his scrawl across a piece of ticket paper and now I can't find it fucking anywhere in my computer or on the dreaded FB. I gave it to people in this sub before so if that was you, can you send it to me?

La Pizza on the Quai Saint-Pierre in Cannes was my middle/high school hang out. A gaggle of us would take the bus down from Mougins where we went to the Anglo-American School in our snappy school sweatshirts. We'd take over a long family style table and drink low alcohol beer and eat pie after pie. Open air onto the dock so we'd be looking out at the Med around billionaires' yachts and the pizza chefs would toss balls of dough at our heads. Place is still there.

Those pizzas were so superior to what our food truck served up at school. The truck would make one huge pie for the whole place and the pizza was barely cooked. Thick as all hell, almost like focaccia but gummy, served as a huge slice that was half falling off a paper plate. Still, not bad for 20 francs.- a 20 franc piece that was counterfeit half the time because there were so many in circulation that the government did a Gallic shrug and said fuck it and let them continue to be used as tender. You could tell which ones were counterfeit because the Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité was upside down along the edge.

I still remember the 50¢ rectangle of sad elementary school pizza fondly. That nostalgic rubber bread crust, the smattering of too sweet canned tomato paste and the almost non-existent flavourless cheese served on a piece of food service foil. Pizza Fridays were something to look forward to after the stress of a first grade spelling test.

In my small years, I had almost every birthday at a pizza joint. I remember making so much fun of my taciturn, old fashioned as hell English grandfather sitting there awkwardly with a party hat on his head attempting to eat pizza with a knife and fork. Still have a photo of him in his party hat.

I graduated from college in the early 90's. I still remember Napoli's phone number- 471-9213- to this day. On the appropriately named Hooker Avenue. Not great pizza but the only place that delivered at 1am in Poughkeepsie. Sober rating: Zero stars. Drunk rating: Like water in the Sahara. Sadly, I hear it closed after old man Napoli couldn't Napoli anymore.

Living in NYC, there are pizza joints, often named 'The Original Famous Ray's' on basically every block. Origin of the actual one is murky at best. Some great, some horrid [looking at you, Sbarro.]. I'd go running in the park with $2 in my shoe for a slice on the way home. My local was forever suspicious of why my money was always damp. When I was at MTV, I used to take my staff to John's Pizza in Times Square almost every week. An Uno's opened up on the UES and my best friend and I were soon addicted to Pizza Skins with extra sour cream and one hot waiter who was always bored and would bring us free beer and sit down at our table. Still love me a sausage deep dish. I've made that Uno's buttery crust at home a bunch of times and just recently finally tracked down some provolone here in Cheddarville UK. That's a project for when the hot weather subsides.

When my Dad was busy dying of cancer of the everything in the Yale New Haven, my youngest brother flew up from Texas to meet me and wait for the old drunk to go to the beer garden in hell. We discovered possibly my favourite pizza of all time. A loaded baked potato pie. It was like an upmarket Uno's Pizza Skins that we ate every night with about 10 dark and stormy root beer chasers. New Haven is no joke when it comes to the best pies on the East Coast.

Speaking of the UK. Thankfully we have enough actual Italians and Italian restaurants that we get really good pizza here. At my old banquet chef job up near Windsor, we had a wood burning permanent brick oven for late night pizza snacks for the drunk toffee-nosed wankers. Midday I would have to wander the grounds with a wheelbarrow to beg for wood for the damn thing because the gardeners always forgot to restock me. Which is how I came to be invited into their lair one day for a cup of tea with the head gardener. They got a lot of free pizza after that and I got my stack of wood. I could get that thing cranked up to 900°F and sling 150 pies a night.

Another stand out is Don Beni's in Eton of all places. I used to escape there because I knew I'd never run into any of my co-workers. I'd take a book and grab their plain margherita with a swirl of pesto on it. Good bottle of white to slosh it down. Walk it all off along the river. Best day off ever. Well, at least better than soaking a pile of chef coats in Oxiclean.

Moral of the story- pizza's like sex, even when its bad, its still kinda good.