A Review of Orthodox Pizza

Spent the day indoors with the Bird, leaving only to vote and read in the park next door, and when B got home from work, I jetted off and met in Williamsburg for a trawl through the religious section looking for good pizza. The first place we went was the only kosher pizzeria in Williamsburg that had any sort of presence on the internet, and....it was now a schwarma and schnitzel joint.

This was on Lee Avenue, the central business strip of the religious neighborhood, with lots of black coats and frumpy dresses and quadruple-wide strollers everywhere. I leaned out of the window of L's car and called to the group of Orthodox men sitting on the stoop, "Excuse me, do you know of a kosher pizzeria around here?" They said ah, your looking for the pizza place that used to be here! One guy asked if we liked schwarma, as this new place has the best. One gave me instructions for another place a few blocks away. I asked if it was kosher, one guy said yes, the other guy wobbled his flat hand to indicate "kind of", whatever that implied.

So me and L were off, slowly driving to a 2nd place, looking closely at the storefronts , the make up of the retail business. Every block had about 3 bakeries, 1 "dry goods" store (old fashioned term for clothes), every other block a hat store or a Judaica shop. After parking and stopping more random men on the street for directions, we found our first open kosher pizza place, a "Dairy Restaurant & Pizza". This did not look promising. Bright lights, dirty linoleum tile floor, cheap fake wood furniture uncleared, lots of people crowded in (mostly women and their many kids), pizza boxes stacked up in weird places. One side of the room was one long service area, 3/4 dedicated to a hot bar full of things like liver blintzes and eggplant souffle. (I assume the liver was vegetarian.) The other 1/4 in the corner was a fairly standard pizza set up, with a crappy 2-deck Baker's Pride oven and 3 South Americans making the pizza. The front guy, an older Yiddish gentleman took our order and were served our undercooked, pale slices on red plastic trays. $2.50 a slice, and quite horrible.

L & I walked out and started stopping random Orthodox gentlemen about where to find pizza in the neighborhood. Many directed us back to where we came, but we said we were looking for other pizza. One young man asked us what was wrong with where we were, and when we said it wasn't very good, he said, hey, that's good pizza, it's what you get for Jewish pizza (his term). Other men we stopped didn't have much of a grasp of English, a few seemed, quite honestly, mentally retarded. But everyone was actually pretty cool, helpful and didn't judge us for our lack of religious apparel or head covering (though we were both sporting full beards!)

We got directions for a 3rd place finally, and we were quite confident that this must be it for Williamsburg. We trawled down Lee, popped into one of the many bakeries for a black & white (L has a sweet tooth equal to mine), and made it the pizza place, oddly called "Cafe Au Lee", a French name but the food was again 3/4 dairy restaurant and 1/4 pizza, with South Americans churning out deli-quality stuff.

We were impressed that this very low quality pizza was so popular -- on an early Tuesday evening, they were all doing booming business. So I asked L, really, is this population really looking for better pizza? Between the high bar set for entry by the religious crowd, the low bar set for quality expectations and the seemingly total lack of profits from alcohol, is an Italian-style pizzeria here really viable? After a bellyful of some crap pizza, I think he may of lost a bit of enthusiasm for the neighborhood. But it was a fun trawl.

BREAKFAST: 9am, organic cheerios with the good milk, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was going to buy the organic dead (i.e. homogenized and cooked at the hotter faster temp) but the expiration date was so close to the good stuff, it just didn't make any sense.

LUNCH: 12:45pm, large green salad, hot dog with kraut, mustard, onion relish, Gatorade, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, risotto, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6-7pm, 2 kosher slices of pizza from 2 different joints, half can of kosher cola, 1 black & white cookie, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5
The three issues with the quality of the kosher pizzas was, umm, the crust, the sauce and the cheese. Both crusts were slightly crumbly/sawdusty to the bite, indicating fresh dough that did not rest or proof. The sauce was oddly sweet, probably sugar or corn syrup was added to allow the sauce to taste 'fresh' longer. The cheese on both were surprisingly normal, by crappy standards. Both slices were of the quality of any deli in Manhattan that happens to have pizza.