The best way to make pizza better is to drink more.
I’ve eaten some fantastic artisan sourdough wonders here in London but nothing compares to being wasted as fuck and finding the one place that’s open at some ungodly hour after a heavy night of eating fuck all and getting your teeth into some greasy monster made of the worst possible ingredients.
I'd vote for roadside BBQ mystery meat on a stick (烧烤 shaokao), but street food in China is quite regional. For me, a Shandong-style steamed big bao (savoury, not sweet dough) stuffed with all the things hits the spot.
Good mexican food is hard to come by, particularly texmex, and you can't find any texas style queso at all. People in the bay area have never heard of the stuff, even though it's on the menu at even non-mexican resturaunts and pubs in texas. I've seen it on the menu in seattle, idaho, north carolina, but the bay area is an absolute queso desert for some odd reason.
Americanized Mexican food should be distinguished from formerly-Mexican food. The southwest has it's own food traditions which are often similar, but distinct, from contemporary Mexico-Mexican food. Dismissing those traditions as "TexMex", like they were made up by Anglos is both offensive and inaccurate.
Depends on where you're at - in Metro Detroit you can usually find shawarma, Indian, Pakistani, or Thai curry, pizza, taquerias, and a Coney Island within a mile of any random place, and poutine is just a drive across the bridge.
In Beijing, in '96, it was Weiwuerzu (Uighur) rouchuanr. Cheap-ass fatty lamb on sticks, fast grilled over charcoal. Seasoned w/ chilli, cumin, and salt I think. Buy 'em by the fistfull.
I know the reputation burritos have but if you compare classic burrito to classic kebab or pizza. Nutritionally burritos are a lot better.
I am not saying they don't have calories. They have lots of calories but that's because they are filled so much and are heavy.
Burrito has a lot smaller portion of meat then kebab because of the filling. It probably has fresh vegetables (great), beans (good), rice (ok). Sauces are less fatty too often being fresh hot salsas. Guacamole is good too.
Kebabs served in bread (doner, shawarma, gyros, shish) are grilled meat dripping in fat. The vegetables might be fresh but often are pickled and (usually mix of acid/salt pickles) making whole thing saltier. There are no fillers so you have more meat. Because of the meat fat proper kebab might not even use sauces but it often does and they are based around something very fatty too.
Kebab per weight is less balanced and less healthy than burrito.
Pizza is generally even worse its just thin bread with mountain of cheese and some tomatoes.
Depends if you are going for portability. If you want something for the walk home it’s got to be a kebab really. But if it’s the middle of the evening sit down meal before getting a taxi home then it might well be a curry.
The best way is to sit at the dining table with a glass of cheap wine, watching pizza being made in the kitchen, as I happen to be doing at this very moment.
Interesting comment from an interesting username. Antihero, a somewhat strong IPA, from Revolution Brewing in Chicago is my favorite beer. I’ve definitely craved pizza after downing one too many antiheros.
That being said, the Chicago version is still better.
NYC pizza is a bad joke. As long as you're only paying $1 it's not that bad for the price. That price point and the places that offered it are going extinct unfortunately. The "slice" is dead.
Imagine having to fold your "pizza" because it's just a nasty mess of sauce and cheese.
It’s ironic because those $1 slice places that popped up in the mid 2000s are what actually destroyed decent NY slices which couldn’t compete because transplants and students would rather pay $1 for garbage than $1.50-$2.50 for a true classic NY slice. Very few of them remain now.
Instead there’s this divide with crappy $1 joints (that are now a little more expensive) and good $4-5 slice joints that had to differentiate themselves. The workingman’s NY slice might not have long to live.
All that said, it sounds like maybe you’ve not had good NY pizza the way you’re describing it. The sauce and cheese should not be messy, it should be minimal. The fold is so you can walk down the street while eating it in one hand.
Just want to say that I love your videos on YT, thanks for all the hard work you put into everything. You've really helped me and my family learn to cook better. My SO has a few dietary issues [0] that limits the ingredients we can use down to ~1 side of a double spaced page. So really learning how to cook and prepare those few ingredients in a LOT of ways has been super important to keeping the simple diet workable. You helped us do that. Your super welcoming tone, words, and just down to Earth demeanor have made a world of difference to us. Thanks for all the hard work you put into it all. You've made our lives better through more than just your recipes.
Have your books, watch your YT. Love the science behind the food aspect of it. My whole family does. I am proud to say my daughter, now in college, cooks a few nights a week because she grew up in a family that cooks. I have a challenge for you. In my 40s they figured out my heath issues turn out to be Celiacs. Fun. So do you think you could come up with a closes as possible recipe for NYC style pizza that is gluten free?
Sadly, I think this is true about a lot of the food in Manhattan: the middle got squeezed. There's low end, high volume and high-end, low volume. I'm always amazed Manhattan can support so many on the low end with the economics on the rent, but I think they end up with just truly amazing foot traffic and volume that other cities can't touch.
I appreciate the context you're adding here. I lived in NYC for the better part of a decade. I feel I got a good sampling of the pizza scene. This was in the 2010s though so I can't speak to how it was before that.
I still haven't found anything that beats a Lou's pan pizza.
That's a Tomato Pie. Which is of course a pizza; the name was to avoid scaring off Italo-phobes in the early 20th century. But that particular pizza is its own distinct thing and it does deserve its own name.
Coal-fired slices are rare, now. I tend to like a charred, crisp crust and simple toppings that can be bitten through. This is a city that cares about its pizza. We don’t run impostors out of town. But the pizza is great, and there is no single ideal. Buy it, fold it, and enjoy.
(Grimaldi’s and Joe’s. Di Fara and Lucali rub me like Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Arizona. Pizza isn’t a food for lines.)
These are all Neopolitan style. I've had Grimaldi's and Lucali and enjoyed them.
I asked about a New York slice, which is a style of pizza that people rave on and on about, and has been cargo-culted across the U.S., but one I've never been particularly impressed with. Especially when compared to Chicago tavern style or deep dish.
> asked about a New York slice, which is a style of pizza that people rave on and on about, and has been cargo-culted across the U.S.
You’re being snotty about people trying to answer your questions.
Coal-fired pizza by the slice is a New York City invention. The crust is firmer than what’s served on the Gulf of Napoli, allowing it to be confidently held with one hand (folded).
> when compared to Chicago tavern style or deep dish
Try a New Jersey tomato pie. (They’re good.)
In my experience, a lot of Chicago pizza is more properly pie. Freshness of ingredients plays second fiddle to texture and presentation. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. But I want a crisp crust, not a bready one, and a slice, not a whole pie, and that’s an innovation of New York City.
(As others have mentioned, there is a definite atmosphere element to the experience. You don’t buy a slice to soberly cut up with a knife and fork for solo Wednesday weeknight dinner.)
One problem with tavern style pizza is that you are going to be hard pressed to find someone who really knows the whole city and can really say what the best one to go out of your way to is. Because at the end of the day it’s just what your local pizza spot has. It’s like what you get at a kids birthday party or when you go out after a softball game.
I don’t know even if the spots I picked are standouts. They just are the ones near where I am when it’s appropriate to eat pizza.
Unlike say Chicago bbq a topic on which I have opinions.
I mostly have a no steakhouses rule generally (except when required for business purposes). Sure, there are good ones. But I can get way closer to what a steakhouse can do at home than any number of other recipes.
Into what? I never claimed expertise around Chicago pizza.
The thread I responded on [1] concerned New York pizza. You asked for recommendations [2], ignored and mischaracterised them, and then went on a tirade on a tangential thread. Your throw-out on $1 pizza was shot down by Kenji himself—I’m honestly confused if there is a point underneath this all that I’m missing.
You trotted out the most tired New Yorker meme of all time. "Chicago pizza isn't real pizza, it's pie". Despite the fact that the headline of TFA is clearly about thin crust pizza. How lazy can you be? You absolutely offered an uninformed opinion in the form of a wall of text like you often do on this website. Your attempt to pretend you didn't is pathetic.
The general reputation of New Yorkers in every corner of this country is highly negative. It's well deserved and you're exemplary.
While there are many international institutions in NYC, the citizens are by and large provincial navel-gazers.
You unironically think that NYC invented slicing pizza, and you referred to it as "innovation". We're having a good belly laugh about this one at the bar.
I’ve eaten some fantastic artisan sourdough wonders here in London but nothing compares to being wasted as fuck and finding the one place that’s open at some ungodly hour after a heavy night of eating fuck all and getting your teeth into some greasy monster made of the worst possible ingredients.