Pizza: A retrospective
What’s new in pizza this year? I’ve been thinking about the origins of my obsession. As an American kid growing up in Berkshire, England, I discovered the kitchen and to some degree Americanness through The Paul Prudhomme Louisiana cookbook (a tethering point to my maternal family) and via clueless attempts to make Chicago-style deep dish pizza in a cast iron skillet. The choice of style was borne of necessity, though my dad’s family are from northern Illinois, so maybe to a 12-year-old that connection implied relevance, or desirable quality. I can’t remember the outcome of these early experiments. I doubt it was much above edible. But England didn’t have edible pizza in the 1980’s. It’s the truth, I’ll fight you if you say otherwise. Lord knows I looked around.
I’m not even sure why I wanted to become a chef, but it was my first credible pre-adolescent dream job, after aspirations like “rich guy” and astronaut faded from view. I think I simply wanted autonomy, the ability to feed myself. In the years where I shot up to six feet tall seemingly overnight, it was a matter of some urgency.
A decade later in the muddled inertia of post-collegiate life I’d barter surplus used cds with the kitchen team at Pepper’s Pizza, across Franklin St. from the record store where I worked. It was a good trade. Pizza (along with burritos and soda) formed the core of my diet. You had to take what you could get when the currency was an unloved Offspring disc, which meant learning to find happiness and sustenance in pizza’s lesser iterations. Chicken and banana peppers stick in my memory as a not altogether terrible combination. When your bank account is empty and cash is rolling in at a steady rate of $6.25 per hour, a slice of pizza does really feel special. I think I understood pizza’s origins as street food in an essential way from that moment. For a hungry worker in Napoli, this portable food could be a universe to obsess about. Financial insecurity, fleeting in my case, made sense of the passion people can feel for their essential daily foods. In the same way that pizza isn’t the coarse black bread and polenta that formed the real ballast of the early 20th-century working class Italian’s diet, it wasn’t the stolen 1/4 lb. handful of dried Muller’s pasta and cheap olive oil that I subsisted on while living in a rented room in a falling down house in Carrboro. It was an indulgence within reach.
To lift a truism from A.J. Liebling, it’s difficult for a wealthy person to gain an appreciation of food. If there is no counterweight to your choice, no bargain to be made, even excellent food becomes tedium, and dull hedonism ensues. In some ways the search for ever-better pizza in my post-poverty years has been fueled by desire to connect to a pure form of daily happiness. The skill to take wood or coal and a brick oven, add a minimal collection of ingredients to it, and bring forth a complete, perfect food: that’s magic.
Reference points stay in flux. A couple years after dropping the record store gig and joining team wine, it was a coal-fired seafront hole-in-the-wall pizzeria in Nice (name-dropped in Saveur) that expanded my universe. Was it salinity from the Mediterranean that made the crust ethereal? In 2005, a pizzeria in Ragusa moved my understanding of what’s possible in pizza. The name of that place is bleached out by more essential memories of sundrenched coastline and eroding baroque facades, but the quality of every ingredient served is indelible. I can nearly taste it.
Recent obsessions: Scarr’s in NY, Pepe in Grani in Caizzo. Both places are wholly immersive. They present different-but-complete pizza universes. I love both equally.
It has been a difficult year to love pizza. What I make at home is… fine. Good, but my family are not pizzaioli. We do our best, and it keeps the frozen pizzas at bay. In light of these difficulties, here’s an incomplete pandemic Top 10, shaped by the inability to move farther than my old Honda can safely travel. I suppose it’s good to have a list that reflects the year we’ve had. Let’s hope the 2022 rankings can be more expansive.
Pizzeria Mercato
Pizzeria Toro
#10: Sausage pizza, All Souls Pizza in Asheville, NC. It’s one that my teenager chose, and it was the complete experience. We ate some tasty more esoteric pizzas from there, too, but this was perfection.
#9: Roasted garlic pizza, Mother in Asheville, NC. This sourdough crust grilled pizza was whipped up by Heidi Bass, who makes brewer’s yeast by day and necessary baked goods as a side gig. Seek out her Mother-brand English muffins and burger buns if you live in Western NC need more better carbs in your life.
#8 “Margherita” Pizza, Pie Pushers in Durham, NC. This highly non-traditional riff on a Margherita pizza sends my children into fits of ecstatic joy, and saved many lunches from frustration and ruin in 2020. It’s so satisfying. You will eat for days, there will be harmony in your house, happiness in every seat around the table.
#7 Funghi Pizza, Benny’s Big Time in Wilmington, NC. It’s easy to remember because Biden was finally declared winner while we were driving down I-40. My mom had never been to Wilmington, it was an unseasonably warm November day, breezy, sunny, perfect to sit on the beach and let the sound of waves wash away stress. The giant round booths and 20’ ceilings gave us necessary Covid cover. It was a respite from life. The funghi pizza was rich and umami-laden. It felt special.
#6 Pepperoni Pizza take-and-bake from Benny’s. They get a second mention because Ben Knight sent me home with an experimental version of his frozen pizza, and it was really good. Perfect pepperoni cups, solid quality crust for a pizza made in their kitchen to heat-and-serve at home. In most years this would not be my preferred way to get pizza, during the pandemic it seems like a really good idea.
#5 White pizza w/arugula, Pizzeria Faulisi in Cary, NC. I admit that a part of the joy of visiting this spot for take-out is Amber Faulisi’s irrepressible positive energy. In October I went twice in a week, the second visit necessitated by excellent pizzas that coworker Amy and I ate on a nearby park bench, minutes after ordering on the original outing. The creamy/bitter balance of this pizza was memorable, and the crust was as it should be.
#4 Spicy Vodka, Hutchins Garage in Durham, NC. PWI sales rep/delivery driver/bartender triple-threat Warren describes the pizza from Hutchins as “perfectly crunchy and chewy crust, topped by a generous, but never sloppy amount of fresh ingredients.” Exactly what it should be. The spicy vodka comes with Fresno chile, fennel sausage, ham, mozzarella, basil, and vodka sauce.
#3 Portafoglio, Mission Pizza Napoletana in Winston-Salem, NC. In light of the Covid-shortened pizza-eating season I’m giving Peyton and co. a shout-out for their off-menu portafoglio, a folded pizza stroke of genius that checks out as a legit piece of Napoli street food lore (di Matteo on the via del Tribunali makes a legendary version.) Creamy, messy, a bomb. Exactly what I want in utensil-free, plate-free dining.
#2 Margherita pizza, Pizzeria Toro in Durham, NC. We always throw a Margherita onto any pizza order, and sometimes it’s the forgotten item, wolfed down immediately in anticipation of grander things to come. One night in abstemious January my daughter and I shared “only” a Margherita from Pizzeria Toro, and it was outstanding. Probably always is. For once we were hungry and paying attention.
#1 Marinara pizza, Mission Pizza Napoletana in Winston-Salem, NC. It hits you all at once: fragrant basil and oregano, then something in the co-mingling of those herbs’ exotic and earthy aromas with the sweet-and-acidic sauce that generates sensory overload. I struggled to understand what was happening here. There had to be more, a hidden ingredient. Puffy charred crust, tomato and garlic, oregano and basil: an absolute distillation of summer. At the end I felt great, and not overly full. It’s the sensation I’m searching for in food, satisfaction divorced from gluttony.
Honorable mention - Pizzeria Mercato in Carrboro, NC. Since an epic pre-Covid staff lunch at this farmer’s market-adjacent restaurant I haven’t been able to get back, for stupid reasons. But the memory of that tremendous meal earns a spot on this list, and sets a bullet point on my to-do list for the weekend. The uncompromising quality of Gabe Barker and his team is transparent in every bite they bring to the table.
Sources:
Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen by Paul Prudhomme
Between Meals: An appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling
Garlic and Oil: Politics and Food in Italy by Carol Heltovsky
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
Pizzeria Mercato memories Pre-Covid staff lunch