Saturday, March 7

Accidentally ate pizza twice today

AM SNACK: 5:30am, 1 tiny dark chocolate cornflake cluster

BREAKFAST:
8:45am, cheese grits, 2 pork sausages, 1 piece of french toast, hashbrowns, pakora, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Out of the buffet bar at Wholefoods.

BIKE SNACK: 1pm, 1 slice streetza, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On today's bike ride, I stopped by the slice joint I've hit up every time I come off the Triboro Bridge in Astoria -- John's. It's pretty generic looking, except for the fact that there is a Papa John's 1 door down. I haven't been through here in a while, and at first I thought, eesh, this is going to be the only day this week I'm not going to eat pizza....but I want a slice!

The slice was surprisingly good, but then I remembered it was always pretty good. Crisp snap, nice chew, sauce pleasantly tangy. The cheese is inferior but they don't try to make up for crappy cheese by adding a ton of it, therefore making it nastier and strictly for tourists. Good balance. Looking around behind the counter, I recognized the different pieces of equipment essential for operating a pizzeria.Near the cash register, they had taped up an old article out of the NY Post about Sal DeMarco and his DiFara restaurant, about how his $4 slices are the most expensive in the city (outside of ballparks and airports, where the artificial setting allows for gouging.) DiFara is the best slice joint in the entire city, and John's of Astoria, you ain't no DiFara!

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, baby carrots, piece of soft stinky cheese, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4:15pm, 2 pancakes, glass of cider, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Damn, amazing pancakes from last week outta the freezer. I gotta make a large batch and sell them on the corner, they're addictive.

PM SNORT: 6:15pm, glass of prosecco
B and miniB had a sip, too.

DINNER: 7:30pm, bread, "focaccia," Cesar salad, Rustica pizza, piece of Vegetariana, piece of Diavola, water, bite of octopus, 1.75 bowl, hunger 4/5
Escorted B to see her friend and friend's family out on south Court Street in Gowanas. First a drink at a bar, then next door to Luna Rossa, a Neapolitan pizza joint in a similar style to the Prospect Heights restaurant I toil in. Wouldn't be my first choice, but when in Rome...

Hands down, their oven and their crust is some of the best in the city, second only to maybe Franny's. They're running wood-burning brick oven, the pizzas were getting cooked in under 2 minutes, beautifully pillowy and charred and smokey and chewy and crisp and brrrrr...everything a pizza skin should be. The waiter dropped a basket of "focaccia" on the table, but it wasn't, it was a pizza dressed with only olive oil, salt and pepper, cut into rectangular strips, and it was fantastic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the pizza simply pulled the pizza down. I ordered a white pie with mushrooms and sausage. He laid raw sliced white mushrooms under the moz, which caused them to steam in their own moisture and turn the majority of the inside of the pie to flibbidy flobbidyness. The sausage looked like industrial pellets and didn't taste much better, and it was over-cheesed with aged moz, not fresh. The other two pies I sampled suffered from bland tomato sauce and crappy cheese. Too bad, it's a good oven and a deft crust, marred by skimping on the quality of topping and the technique of topping.

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