Pizza Hut 1999

[Eryn]

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As is being discussed elsewhere in these illustrious forums, Alan Richman recently wrote an incredible roundup of his top 25 pizza picks in the United States. The night after it was published, I had dinner with Adam Kuban of SliceNY, who reminded me that one of my first attempts at food writing, a decade ago, was a New York-area pizza roundup that I published on my Fat-Guy website. We didn't have the word blog in 1999, we just called them websites usually with a capital W. Adam, whose website, I mean blog, is the best pizza blog out there, said I should republish my early effort. So on its tenth anniversary I'm doing that.

To be clear, I'm not actually sure of the publication date of this item. I wrote it in 1999, that much I'm sure about, but for the next three or four years I made updates to it. This version probably reflects changes I made through about 2001. I don't know. I was a little hesitant to publish this, because my early food writing efforts seem in retrospect to be weak in places, but so be it. I think overall what I was saying was right, even if some of the details are a little screwy in retrospect and some of the writing is weird. If a student in my writing class today wrote this, I'd probably think he or she had some potential, maybe. Anyway, here it is for your consideration.

DO YOU remember what great pizza tastes like? When all the elements of pizza excellence come together, the resulting pie is so irresistible, you abandon all self-restraint -- you can't even forbear until it cools down -- and so, having been reduced to your dumb animal essence, you scald your mouth on the bubbling sauce and cheese. But that doesn't slow you down: Slices disappear into your gullet one after another without a second thought -- no matter how well you ate that day, a great pizza compels you to tear into it as though you'd just been rescued from a desert island. The crust alone is an independent food product and the notion of leaving the edges behind on the plate is simply ludicrous, while the saltiness and lusciousness of the toppings trigger addictive behavior such that you can't stop eating until every slice is gone -- and after that you sniff and scratch, junkie-like, in eager anticipation of more, more, more, as though you're certain you'll never be fed again. Have you had any pizza like that lately?

Good pizza has become so rare in New York City, most of us are no longer able immediately to identify bad pizza as such. Without a frame of reference, New Yorkers -- including some in the professional food press -- have slowly embraced mediocrity, not just with resignation but with enthusiasm for the now-embarrassing pizza specimens being peddled by, among others, John's, Totonno, Grimaldi's and the Patsy's franchises. And those places are among the top pizzerias in New York (in the entire United States, no less) on today's undemanding relative scale, the situation at the by-the-slice shops being even more depressing.

The conventional wisdom -- that you can walk into any New York pizza shop, grab a slice, and confidently assume that it will be pretty good -- is manifestly no longer true (if it ever was), and it should come as no surprise to any long-time New Yorker not living in denial (though it might be news to tourists and newcomers) to hear that pizza in New York today is, overall, terrible. In 1998, there were hints of a pizza renaissance, when many new brick-oven pizzerias opened and some of the old guard began to franchise, but few of the newcomers maintained their flash-in-the-pan high levels of quality (they quickly learned that the consumer would settle for less) and the franchise efforts ultimately destroyed some of our best pizzerias. I'm now of the sad opinion, after years of struggling to find consistently reliable counterexamples, that New York isn't even America's top pizza city or state anymore. That honor has to go to nearby New Haven, Connecticut. And some of our other neighbors, such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, possess examples of pizza greatness that should make proud New Yorkers wince.

Pizza as we know it today, without getting into too much history and etymology, is basically dough, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, assembled by the pizza maker and baked in an oven. Additions (sausage and other toppings; additional varieties of cheese; herbs and seasonings) and subtractions (as in the sauce-free white pizzas and sauce-and-cheese-free clam pies popular in Connecticut) are possible, but these three ingredients define the species. That there can be so much variation within such seemingly simple parameters should come as no surprise. After all, wine is just fermented grape juice; cheese is just curds; and bread is just flour, leavening and water. It is indeed in these most basic of foods that the slightest variation becomes most important and apparent.

Great pizza comes in many forms, and anybody claiming that a particular type of oven or flour or cheese makes the best probably hasn't taken the time to sample a variety of pizza specimens. Scores of pizzeria visits over the course of a lifetime -- and especially during the past few years when I've paid more careful critical attention -- have convinced me that the skill of the pizza maker and the quality (as opposed to exact nature) of the ingredients mean much more than adherence to any particular set of strictures.

For example, many claim with seeming authority that superheated coal- or wood-fired brick and stone ovens are prerequisites for good pizza. Yet real-world examples belie such effortless attempts at categorization: On the one hand, some of the best pizza is not only baked in electric and gas ovens (Nick's, in Forest Hills) made of stainless steel (Di Fara, in Brooklyn), but also isn't even baked at particularly high temperatures (Polistina's). On the other hand, plenty of pizzerias with seemingly wonderful old-style ovens make astonishingly disappointing pies (Totonno, John's). Perhaps at the extremes -- where all other elements of the pizza are as good as can be -- a natural wood or coal oven properly tended achieves just a slight quality edge over a gas oven well-designed to reproduce the same thermodynamic properties (the New Haven pizzerias seem to derive their edge in part on account of their ovens). But this situation arises so rarely that it seems the oven is the wrong place on which to focus so much attention. After all, advances in the construction of ovens have made it possible to simulate most conditions with a variety of fuels (gas, electric, wood, coal) and materials (brick, stone, steel), as my discussions with professional bread bakers and examination of baking texts have confirmed. (That being said, it is nonetheless outrageous that New York City's picayune environmental codes make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired oven today.)

Likewise, many (including some official-sounding associations dedicated to the preservation of what they allege constitutes traditional pizza baking) will make doctrinaire claims about the superiority of fresh mozzarella as a pizza cheese. But side-by-side comparisons of pizza made with fresh and low-moisture mozzarella (a firmer version of the cheese which, in its least flattering incarnation, appears as Polly-O and Sorrento in the supermarket, but can rise to exceptional levels in the hands of a good cheesemaker such as Arthur Avenue's Calandra cheese shop) amply demonstrate that in many cases the low-moisture can be better for this specific application because it exudes less fluid and has a more concentrated flavor, while an even more striking contrast reveals itself with authentic mozzarella di bufala (water-buffalo milk mozzarella), which, though most flavorful, has in the few instances when I've encountered it been far too watery for use as a pizza cheese. (The most important thing is not that the cheese be fresh or low-moisture, cow or water-buffalo, but that it be of high quality.) Similarly persistent myths, with respect to fresh versus canned tomatoes and American versus Italian flour, can be just as easily dispelled by real-world tasting. Sure, fresh San Marzano tomatoes in season are hard to beat -- but so are tomatoes from New Jersey. And at most other times of year canned tomatoes are more reliable. Italian flour enjoys a mystical reputation, but much of the wheat milled in Italy is grown right here in North America.

In the final analysis, there is only one question I think should be asked when evaluating a pizza: Does it taste good? And the answer can be yes across a spectrum of styles: Thin, crispy, high-temperature-baked pizzas with fresh mozzarella and just a touch of sauce; thick, doughy, sauce-and-grated-low-moisture-cheese-drenched pizzas baked at low temperatures; and all pizzas in between. So long as the pizza maker is skilled and the ingredients are of high quality, great pizza remains within reach.

Still, the phrases "skill of the pizza maker" and "quality of the ingredients" probably imply that there is more mystery to making pizza than the reality would support. Though a truly gifted pizza maker can stretch dough just so, and though it is a wondrous thing to watch any true artisan at work, it is also the case that the average moron can learn how to make outstanding pizza in a very short time -- a little more training being required if the oven is coal- or wood-fired, because there are additional intricacies involved in dealing with the fuel and in positioning the pizza in the oven to avoid hot spots. Acquiring good ingredients is no great trick either -- there are only a handful of pizzerias in America today that use better ingredients than you could pick up at Fairway, and no less than some of the best pizzerias have grown lazy over the years and switched to prepackaged, pre-cooked, pre-grated and pre-sliced ingredients. (The standard excuse is that people won't pay enough for pizza to support the use of good ingredients, but with even bad pizza creeping towards $ 20 for a large pie with a couple of toppings, this claim lacks credibility.) Even a standard home oven, properly outfitted with a pizza stone or quarry tiles and allowed to preheat for a good long time, can adequately reproduce the action of a pretty good commercial pizza oven. But because of the perceived labor involved -- especially with regard to making dough and letting it rise -- it's unlikely that people will begin baking pizza at home en masse (if they did, they'd develop a much higher set of expectations).

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