Random Slice Wednesday: A world-famous plain pizza--is it fabulous, is it fantasy, or is it just plain feh? A journey to New Jersey...

It’s his favorite pizza. His wife loves it, too. For years, they’ve been telling me I have to go there. And after always driving past the joint at times when it’s closed or when there’s no time to stop—we had the window. Mission Control finally allowed that we could get there without being hurled out of Earth’s orbit on an irreversible course bound for the Galilean moons of Jupiter. So we exited I-95 into Central New Jersey, drove into town, parked the car, walked inside, sat in the booth, ordered the world-famous pizza, and we waited. Then it arrived.
 
How was that pizza? After all, That Famous Pizza Guy gave it one of his highest scores ever. Well, it was surprising. It was a letdown. It was unexpected joy. It was great. We loved it. It was an emotional roller coaster ride that demonstrates the real problem with The Best Pizza: there is no such thing and there’s a good chance you will always be disappointed—at least for a moment.

Any time someone breaks the mold, you’re not going to be sure what to do with it. And pizza has become such an epic movement that commands so much share of mind and emotion that it is fraught with baggage, inconsistencies, confusion and misunderstanding.
 
This disease of Pizza Greatness suffers a series of inevitable problems, ranging from elevated expectations of whatever a “greatest pizza” might be to pizza fatigue, from startling divergences in texture or appearance to personal preferences in taste perception. What a mishigas! (That’s Yiddish for crazy behavior, nonsensical situations, or a general state of confusion or absurdity. Says AI. And it should know. It’s the cause of most mishigas at the moment.)

There are even people who become enraged at how this pizza I’m eating is sliced. (Like some famous New Haven pizzas, it is sliced once across the diameter, then sliced randomly in the opposite direction. It results in slices of varying sizes and no symmetry. Go ahead, get pissed, all you anal retentive miscreants with no joy in your lives! Satan’s own slices from Hell abound! Mwahahaha!)
 
There is no way to please all of the people all of the time. Especially when someone is a victim to a staunch sensibility of what pizza must be, disappointment is inevitable.
 
I’ve eaten pizza all over the US, in Mexico, and around Europe. Most of it was good. Some of it was great. Some was forgettable. Others remain guilty pleasures. One of them was truly bad. Several are catalogued as unique and distinctive experiences dating back to childhood recollections.
 
And I do not keep those childhood recollections catalogued as overimagined, dangerous nostalgia moments petrified in amber the color of a fine ale. I know that when I was four years old, I had no clue what pizza was or tasted like. That first remembered bite of pizza was a sensation of the moment. I remember the surprise for what it was. It had come from a local pizza joint and it was a joy.
 
And here, decades later, is my experience with that much anticipated pizza in the wilds of Central Jersey: I took a bite and was surprised.

I didn’t love it. I began to analyze it. I kept eating it. I finally put down the slice and ate some of the salad. My wife and I looked at each other. We were in silent agreement that something was amiss.
 
But after a few minutes, something happened.
 
The moment passed.
 
As the pizza cooled and set some more, the flavor evolved. So did the texture. The initial, crackery quality gave way to a pleasant al dente sensation leading into a delightful crunch. As the tomatoes cooled, their bright umami punch become more apparent.
 
It was a simple delight that had evolved into a synergistic experience greater than the sum of its parts. Allowed to cool into its own for a minute, it become a crusty, chewy, savory sensation with just enough to cheese to remind you that it was pizza while the star of the show was the tomato on top.
 
There will be more about this pizza to come. In the meantime, beware anyone who tells you a pizza will change your life. They’re being honest—but raising your expectations and setting you up for a fall. It’s not fair, but if you have pizza mindfulness and a sense of wabi-sabi (that being the Japanese concept about the beauty of imperfection), you’ll be OK.
 
Nobody ever wants to walk away from an ostensibly great pizza saying that it sucked. It’s much better to be able to describe it as much like this blog: an acquired taste that others may love but most of us are too unsophisticated to appreciate. Free the pizza!

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​A lot of big-time professional artisan pizza makers once made their first pizza in a home oven just like yours. You can do it, too. My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. The book is about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​