What's more fun than a make-your-own-pizza party? Not much. My friend Austin was in town from Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches Spanish, Latin, and mythology. Often when we get together it's an excuse to do a lot of cooking. Throughout college he would make Nick and me ridiculously good brunches with fresh chorizo, eggs, and breakfast potatoes, and occasionally expose us to hi...
I hadn’t been to New York since my exodus in July and I returned with a plan. I wasn’t going to waste any moment visiting attractions, or seeing a Broadway play. I lived there for two years, so it felt right to walk back in and get to what I spent most of my time doing: eating. And with the Paupered Chefs reunited for the first time in half a year, it really wasn't that hard for ou...
Earlier this year, Blake and I stumbled upon an astonishing pizza making technique - one that allowed us to create restaurant-worthy pies at home using nothing but a cast iron skillet and an oven. The cast iron skillet was warmed over high heat on top of a stove, while the broiler was preheating. Then the skillet was turn upside down, the pizza put on top, and then stuck underneath a p...
Perhaps spurred on by Blake’s admittedly tasty-looking pickle butter , I finally caved in and decided to write about one of my favorite snacks. Though a tad less refined, and even a bit shameful, it’s something I absolutely adore. I wish it were more interesting. But it’s simply a thin crust pizza with a fried egg on top. Not exactly a revelation, but it’s quick and surprisin...
Ever since writing about New York pizza and our travels from borough to borough on an insistent quest for the best possible pie, a steady minority of nagging naysayers have quietly made their case in a different direction. No matter how many subways, buses, or ferries one takes, they say, you'll never find the best pizza in New York. That's because it's in New Hav...
_ Check out Day 1 to figure out why Nick is spending so much time on lunch spots in Manhattan . _
Of all the foods I could nosh on in NYC for a quick, cheap lunch, nothing was as obvious as pizza. The capital of that tasty dish, New York should have had interesting pizza places pouring out of its alleyways, with enough springy crusts, milky cheeses, and bright sauces to keep me filled...
Mark Iacono, chef and owner of Lucali's, began making pizza publicly 4 weeks ago. "I didn't even tell my family that I was opening this place," he claims. When he pulled the brown paper down off the windows on Day 1, he was hoping a few neighbors might be curious, and he'd have a few weeks of experimenting and tinkering with the pizza formula before he officially opened.
Literally 30 minu...
Eating Nick’s we decided that our favorite pizzas don’t have a uniform cheese layer--as you take bites they change, from sauce and fresh basil to an all-mozzarella mouthful, and the flavors really develop in your mouth.
But we’ve gotten to the point where food can make or break the entire evening. We’d been having slice after pie after slice after pie, and they’d all been so abo...
After the transcendence of Di Fara’s, we knew our search would have some kind of lull. After that fateful Sunday our quest changed directions, conceptually and literally. We called up our friend Paul who grew up on Staten Island, the place nobody from Manhattan goes--maybe for the free ferry ride by the Statue of Liberty, then right back again to Manhattan.
Like any local New Yorker...
1300 Crosby, Bronx, NY
We awoke promptly at 9. We decided this time to eat some breakfast before we left, slumped down into the plastic bench, and buried our head in books, our ears stuffed with headphones. The subway didn’t emerge from the ground until halfway through our ride into the Bronx, and we couldn’t see any traces of the large skyscrapers that grounded us to home.
Much like o...
