The Charles Dickens of Pizza

I testify (having dined with him and others here -- and traded wit, which is more important -- Rahsaan is a gentleman and a scholar, a sportsman at repartee, and one of the more flavor-conscious people I've met.

I have always been impressed by Rahsaan..never a troll.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Best: Valentino's in Gloucester Ma, and Elvio's in North Conway New Hampshire

Worst: Some vender in Venice. Pizza (shockingly) was uniformly bad in Italy.

Hi Maria,
Many good pizzarias in Chicago now - Spacca Napoli, A Part Pizza just to name a couple. Renaldis is disgusting, Ginos, Giardanos, Pizzaria Due/Uno all rest on their corporate laurels. Gotta find the new small places for good za these days.

Let me know when you're in town and Sandy and I will find a good one for you.

Best: Valentino's in Gloucester Ma, and Elvio's in North Conway New Hampshire

Worst: Some vender in Venice. Pizza (shockingly) was uniformly bad in Italy.

Hi Joe

If you read through the topic -- I think you were the victim of bad luck, or bad "terroir" in Italy. There are some very good pizzas to be had there.

F

Hi Maria,
Many good pizzarias in Chicago now - Spacca Napoli, A Part Pizza just to name a couple. Renaldis is disgusting, Ginos, Giardanos, Pizzaria Due/Uno all rest on their corporate laurels. Gotta find the new small places for good za these days.

Let me know when you're in town and Sandy and I will find a good one for you.

Thanks Howard! That's great to hear. I hope to be out there sometime in June or July...I'll let you guys know, I would love to do an off-line with you and Sandy too.

About the best pizzas I can recall were actually made by me.

I worked my way through part of university by being a pizza cook at a local restaurant in the evenings in order to make entry fees for my car racing hobby. At around $1.50 an hour plus a share of the tips, it took me about a week to make an entry fee, much less buy parts for the car.

Needless to say, I cut down on my food expense by eating from the restaurant whenever I could. They made their own dough (well, I made the dough) and while they had the usual toppings, I used to sneak in my own sometimes to use different cheeses (Gruyere added and edge, I recall) smoked oysters etc. I'd make my own dinner right at the end of the shift at 2 AM right before we shut down the ovens, and they were some of my best pizza memories.

What is up with these stuffed crust versions, and crusts thick as a loaf of bread, and stuffing as much caloric and fat content in there as you possibly can? A reasonably thin crust with interesting toppings is so much better, IMHO.

Domestically, it was pizza from Mama Nina's, long gone from Yountville, CA. When I worked at Mondavi, we'd get pizza from there on Fridays as the restaurant wasn't open for lunch Monday thru Thursday. Three pizzas were offered: one with Black Forest ham and goat cheese, a vegetarian, and a third which I don't remember. Wonderful, fabulous pizza, a thinly braided edge to the crust - just perfection and a calamari appetizer was equally memorable.

On a trip to Italy, cousins took us to a pizza place (I "liberated" a menu that is somewhere in my files) down in the Canal Naviglio Grande area of Milan. I had a quatro staggione pizza which was an eye opener, but what others ordered (and I tasted) and what I'll order if I ever get to return was a prosciutto and arugula pizza. They'd take the pizza out of the oven, partially slide it under a meat slicer, pile thin slices of prosciutto on top as fast as they could run that leg through the slicer, and then it was ready to eat. To this day, I still have a problem with prosciutto baked into the pizza.

Worst was in Florence on our last trip. The slice we ordered on the run was reminiscent of the boxed pizza mix that's been mentioned in this thread and I swear the cardboard was left somewhere in that crust. So bad.