Nothing Beats a New York Slice

Even as you prepare to watch Joey Chestnut inhale a human-sized amount of hot dogs, is there anything more American than a New York City slice of pizza? The answer is "no", and here's a history on the evolution of that suuuuuuuuuperslice:

All of these places are what we now would think of as "classic slice shops," and many of them were similarly decorated: wood paneling, a window out front from which slices were sold, Plymold contour booths with bright-orange plastic bench seats and faux-oak tabletops, Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps, and a small display of the different slices on offer—not a piece of pineapple or ziti-topped slice in sight.

As someone who loves wood paneling and hears shit for it, I think this sounds delightful! And does tug at the nostalgia pipes for anyone who has a sense of memory re: the 60s/70s.

Tho this is rather curious, at least to me:

The era of the dollar slice, in the mid-2000s, further undermined the genre; slice places started using low-quality or near-expiration ingredients to keep costs low. Dollar-slice shops flourished after the Great Recession of 2008, as shops were able to pick up favorable leases in the down market—a market that also made their low prices appealing.

But it was also around the height of the dollar-slice proliferation that we saw the debut of what could be seen as its opposite. The first cheffy slice shop, Best Pizza, opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2010, and it was in many ways a throwback to the classic slice places of old. More attention was paid to the ingredients and how the pies were constructed, and deviations from the standard were made not with an eye to the bottom line, but with the idea of improving upon lessons learned from pizza-makers and bread-bakers of yore.

The dollar slice began in the mid-2000s? What? Am I reading something wrong - when I graced the city with my presence on the very first day of 1998 dollar pizza places were everywhere, and I had no sense other than they'd been around forever. And I know it's been a while since I left Williamsburg but I couldn't remember Best Pizza if you had a loaded gun to my head, and not just for the reason that I had a loaded gun pointed at my head. Although to be fair, maybe I immediately dismissed it as one of the ever-newer snootier pizza joints whose slices were in an eternal race to see which could be clever-cleverest with wacky! ingredients.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you have a favorite slice joint back in your Williamsburg days?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did: 

When I moved there in 1998 the only dollar slice place I knew was The Charleston (before they renovated and took out all the fucking charm.) And you could get an entire pizza (even after 14+ years in Brooklyn I can't pull off saying "pies") for just $7. It wasn't world class pizza, but it was very good and had a unique flavor and texture to it. IE, it had a shit-ton of cheese on it. Right after I moved there the fancy-pizza Anna Maria's moved in and everybody went (still, I think) crazy for their barely stopping from buckling under the weight of its 14 toppings slices, but I always preferred the simplicity of the Charleston dollar slice.

Oh, and a certain somebody rocked the house there throughout the summer of 2003. But whatevs.

Then again, there's something about high school cafeteria pizza too...

Enjoy a big ol' New York City slice next and any chance you get! And you're welcome!