For the zillionth year running, Ithaca has once again voted local pizzeria Pizza Aroma as the best pizza place in town.
I don’t get it.
Pizza Aroma pizza is gritty, doughy, and boring. The cheese tastes more like milk than cheese. The tomato sauce is overpowering in its marinara-y blandness. After one and a half slices, you feel like you’re eating vomit.
New York style pizza, it isn’t.
Imagine my surprise when, after I complained to a co-worker about Pizza Aroma’s laudations in the face of execrable taste he disagreed. And when I offered up Gino’s (Ithaca’s only NY style pizzeria, ironically, as Ithaca is in NY) as my favorite local pizza place he went so far as to say the crap pizza in the mall’s food court was better. As he’s generally an okay sort of guy, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and even subjected happicow and Peter to a Pizza Aroma dinner taste test, in case all previous experiences with them (all two!) were flukes.
And we all came to the same conclusion: BLEAAARGH. Ithaca, what is wrong with you? Why must you continue to encourage the perpetuation of such terrible food?
Happicow calls it hippy pizza. Maybe it tastes good while stoned? Maybe the secret ingredient is hemp?
Anyway, I think the local bad taste is because we all hail from the only part of the U.S. that actually makes good pizza, and Ithaca is just far enough away from there to think that their bland pizza is good, and to disdain the flavorful stuff for it’s lack of bland (“The spices! They add flavors! They buuuuurrrrrrn!”) :)
I think I’m taking this all way too seriously, but stuff like this makes me wish I lived in a real city. Sure, all non-NY pizza is terrible, but at least in, say, Chicago, they have the decency to make distinctive terrible pizza; as opposed to pizza that is mostly terrible for it’s lack of distinctness. I can respect that. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t think people who prefer Chicago-style pizza are crazy- just wrong.
Ithacans on the other hand…