My mention of good and bad pizza brought the inevitable flood of messages from civic partisans, including the usual insistences from some that all pizza stinks unless it's thick crust and you're in Chicago. Meanwhile, Shmuel Ross writes…
I entirely agree that you can find lousy pizza in New York, and that it's very easy to do so. Sturgeon's Law applies; in a city where there's a pizza shop on practically every corner, most of them are going to be meh. Sure, we have Sbarro, though only the tourists and the hurried go there. Yes, there are dollar slice joints everywhere; the slices are salty and completely lacking in subtlety, but they're cheap and filling. (When a friend from Minnesota came and tweeted that she'd had her first "New York slice!" with a photo showing her at a dollar slice joint, I died a little inside. And then I took her to a coal-oven place that makes its own mozzarella, and she was enlightened.)
What's ridiculous about Tripadvisor's rankings is that while they were "based on the highest average rating by city for all restaurants that serve pizza," the analysis is exclusively focused on the outliers. Is it true that "some of America's best pizza is being tossed on the West Coast"? An average spanning the best and the worst each place has to offer can't tell you that, but that's the evidence they're using to make that assertion. It's kinda like ranking the top 10 cities for beef based on rankings that include fast food joints, and then claiming that ranking tells you where to find the best steakhouses.
I haven't been to San Diego or LA, but I have spent a few years in Boston. They cite the original Regina Pizzeria — which, to my shame, I never actually got to — and Santarpio's. I will cheerfully grant that Santarpio's is a must-visit for the pizza tourist, a trip back in time. I would also cite The Upper Crust and Pizza Pie-er as places worth checking out. (Pizza Pie-er's original location is in Providence, and I mean to visit it someday.) But, again, we're speaking of the good ones here, based on a survey that Tripadvisor itself admits is based on a much broader average. Boston doesn't have as many crappy pizza joints, because Boston doesn't have as many pizza joints, period. Boston doesn't have a culture in which people will grab a cheap slice while rushing across town.
On the other hand, if we were jettisoning the overall average and looking at the good places, then I am comfortable asserting that you will find more really good pizzerias in New York City than in any other U.S. city. I refer you to Jon Stewart's most excellent rant, which on the one hand notes the existence of "convenience pizza" in NYC, while listing a half-dozen places with the good stuff, and he could have added at least a dozen more without trying too hard…
All of that having been said… I doubt I'll ever get out to West Hollywood, but if I do, I'd like to visit Vito's. I'd really like to visit Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, which is said to be the single best pizzeria in the nation. And more attainably, I have got to contrive a reason to go to New Haven, so I can try the pizza there.
You, umm, might get the impression that I like pizza. :-)
Thank you for adding that because I never would have known.
I have zero problem with people saying that New York has more great pizzerias than any other city. It's probably so. I'm not about to go on a fact-finding mission but I suspect the city also has more bad pizzerias than any other city.
There's a big difference between "You can find great pizza in New York" and "New York pizza is better than any other pizza in the world." If someone wants to claim the latter, they can't just decide that places like Ray's and Sbarro don't count when they measure New York's finest against every single pizza sold in some other town. My own observation is that it isn't just tourists and "the hurried" that eat at those places…unless of course you want to take the position that in New York, darn near every native can be counted among "the hurried."
I think I told this story before here once but several years ago, Sergio Aragonés and I were walking back from Marvel's old offices on Park Avenue South to our hotel in Times Square. It was lunchtime and we decided to stop for some pizza. I asked Sergio if he knew of a good place. He said, more from reflex than any actual belief I suspect — "Every place in New York that serves pizza has great pizza." We went to the first shop we passed and each ordered two slices and a large Coke. We each wound up taking but two bites. Like Sergio, I took the second because I couldn't belief how lousy the first bite was. Then the slices we'd bought went into the trash and we carried our drinks out and walked to another pizzeria in the same block and bought two somewhat-more-edible slices apiece.
The bad places, I suspect, can thrive because of this silly rep that all New York Pizza is grand, and because most people really don't taste that much difference between the best and worst. The "hurried" people who go to Sbarro can't be in so much of a hurry that they don't walk four doors down to what we connoisseurs would call a better place. Sbarro, especially because they've heard of it, is just fine by them.
For what it's worth, the best pizza I've had in New York or anywhere was at Joe's at Carmine and Bleecker. But Vito's out here compares favorably and so do a lot of other places outside the tri-state area. Grimaldi's, which is one of those N.Y. places that makes most "best pizza" lists, is now expanding to other cities in which they claim to be precisely cloning the cuisine of their location 'neath the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm curious as to how many who've sampled the pie there and elsewhere think they've managed it.
Actually, I think the distinction needs to be made between "traditional" pizza and the more elegant variations. We have a couple of places in L.A. like Mozza that have received raves for their pizza. A lot of folks think Mozza has the best pizza in the country…but it's not the thin-sliced kind with cheese, tomato sauce and one or two toppings. It's like pizza with "long cooked broccoli, caciocavallo and chiles," to cite just one variation from their menu. I actually prefer (and judge) pizza plain but an awful lot of the acclaimed places anywhere are acclaimed because they don't serve the basic kind.