New York Pizza
The secret of New York Pizza is not the pizza. It’s New York.
There is an old saying that in order to make an apple pie, you must first invent the universe. In order to have a proper New York-style slice, you need to conjure the city around you.
The right oven can get the crust crisp. The right water can add breathiness to its yeasty crack. The right cheese, timing, heat, paddle, and handling can ride the knife-edge balance of puffed dough and melty cheese that folds and slips but never falls apart. But no recipe, no tool can make your face numb from the cold, fill your eyes with the otherworldly glow of neon-lit fog far above you, put miles into your calves and steam into your lungs, and deposit unforecasted snowflakes on your sweater as you take your first bite. They can’t make you lean out so far forward that you forget to eat all day, forget you even have a body, until the glorious reminder of greasy cheese hits your tongue.
The right cook can make it right, make it hot and filling, but they can’t make you need it. They can’t make their pizza the one thing you have time to eat when you’re already late for work. They can’t make power walking the fastest way to get it. They can’t put Hell’s Kitchen at your back, fill your stomach with cheap beer and free hot dogs. They can’t put themselves between home and a Bushwick all-nighter, giving you an excuse to make it all the way to Brooklyn tonight. Most of all, they can’t style the hair and clothes of the people around you, paint their faces and carve their cheekbones, put that neck-on-the-line look into their eyes, make them alternate between impersonal brusqueness, stunning smiles, and unprompted kindness.
You are one of those faces, now at the front of the line, barking with an expressionless guy in a T-shirt, a guy with a monosyllabic name you know without asking. As you lift your triangular flop, feel its heat on your hands, and take that first bite, you hardly taste the pizza. The taste doesn’t matter. What matters is the spark in your chest, wanting to move, needing something to burn and finally finding it. You know as soon as you wolf this thing down you’ll be off again, giddy and urgent, chasing that constantly receding, just-out-of-reach moment that will make your night transcendent, that might even change your entire life. The kind of moment where you catch the roiling wave of the city and ride it with teary eyes and a full heart. A moment that, if you stopped to look at the faces of your friends as they chow down on slices of their own, you might already be in the middle of right now.
New York pizza is a life preserver. It doesn’t make sense in the desert. Do yourself a favor and get a little lost in the ocean before you try it.
