Nick''s Pizza

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 above average, this it seemed such a waste of potential.

We knew Queens could do better.  We decided to rely on the experts at Slice and the book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven , and head to Nick's.  Running short on time (and, in all honesty, uninterested in spending another night traveling into deep Queens), we visited Nick’s Manhattan location to test it out.

Of all the spots we’ve  seen, this was by far the nicest.  The waiters are all in black and you are served fluffy bread and olive oil while you peruse the menu.  Three gorgeous hearths line the back wall where four or five pizza men put pies in and pull them out.  We went with half mushroom pie to mix it up, and it came out almost immediately on a nice metal stand, so it hovered eye-level.

At this point, it’s getting hard to describe the pizzas we eat, as it is to remember them.  Frankly, this was stellar pizza of the more authentic-Italian vibe, a la Lombardi’s.  The ingredients were of extremely high quality and the crust was paper thin.  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.  You can't get a pie here, either, but we'd highly recommend going with a few friends.  Just absolutely a great pizza.

We left Nick’s (which wasn’t all that expensive despite the fine service and decor) with the bedrock knowledge that pizza is, indeed, a balanced food.  Both filling and light at the same time, one feels they’ve had a robust meal but never overloaded.  We felt healthy and light and fresh, and the reigning glory of pizza-as-perfect-food, briefly grease-stained by our experience at Tony’s, was returned.  As was our faith in the increasingly spiritual quest.  There was one more borough to go.

Nick's Pizza

1814 2nd Ave, Manhattan

New York, Pizza, Restaurants