The Mirrorhas a story about a fake-brands mall in China, where food options include McDnoald's, Bucksstar Coffee, and—the best one—Pizza Huh. The pictures on the site are just crappy enough to make me think this might be some sort of Photoshop hoax, but the website reports that there's been some anger about the venture: "City bosses are under pressure to ban the soon-to-be opened mall after pictures of the fake stores were leaked, causing uproar amongst angry consumers who feared they'd be ripped off." [via Phauxtoe]
"The window paper is finally down (after what seems like years) at Ignazio's under the Brooklyn Bridge: http://twitpic.com/zw25." So sayeth Savory Cities' Chris McBride in a tweet sent to the Eater blog.
Not years per se. But the place was first reported on by the Brooklyn Eagle August 2007.
I had thought it just ran into money troubles and halted its opening. But it does look like there are tables set up in there. We'll see.
Ignazio's Pizza
4 Water Street, Brooklyn NY 11201 (under the Brooklyn Bridge; map)
The Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani, the Italian "pizza police" (they certify pizzerias as being authentically Neapolitan), is opening a restaurant and pizza school. It will be called Kesté Pizza e Vino and hopes to be open by the end of February, according to the New York Times.
And then, according to an email I just got from Roberto Caporusico at the Associazione itself, "Down the road we also expect to have classes for nonprofessional 'pizza lovers.'"
That would mean you and me, folks.
What up with the name? Caporusico explains: "Kesté (spelled 'cheste é') means 'This is it!' in the Neapolitan dialect."
271 Bleecker Street, New York NY 10014 (between Jones and Cornelia streets; map)
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GenealogyBank.com (a subscription service) has been adding the Boston Journal. I went through it and found the following long, interesting article [subscription required] on pizza, from 1903. This is two years before Lombardi's establishment opened on Spring Street in New York City, the so-called first pizzeria in America.
I'll be speaking as part of a fun year-end wrap-up at Union Hall in Park Slope. My topic? Pizza, what else?
Also speaking will be Patrick Di Justo with "Things We Lost" (the bygones of 2008) Joe Garden with "Welcome to the Night" (the year in vampires), and Marian Salzman with "The Year of Payback" (why the buzzword for 2009 will be "reboot").
The retrospective will be 2009's first installment of Adult Education, self-described as "a useless lecture series" and also as "a monthly event series where various speakers present brief, multimedia lectures on a shared theme."
Attendees are advised to eat a slice of garlic pizza beforehand to ward off any vampires who show up to hear Mr. Garden's presentation.
Adult Education Presents: The Year in Review
Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30)
Union Hall, 702 Union Street, Brooklyn NY 11215 (near Fifth Avenue; map)
$5 cover
I recall a certain episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the android Mr. Data is told that although his recital of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is technically perfect, it lacks soul.
That's how I feel about most of the Neapolitan-style pizza I've tried. When it's done right, it's delicious but often lacks a nice crispness, and its daintiness is almost always just a little less than satisfying.
So when Girl Slice and I met up with some of her friends at Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco's Mission District over the holidays, I was prepared to be mehhed.
The photos I'd seen of Pizzeria Delfina's pies all said Neapolitan, and San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer described it as "thin crust, Neapolitan style with a nod to New York."
"Nod to New York," I thought. We'll see. It seems that when I travel outside New York, the pizza I eat falls into three categories:
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