Pizza My Heart

Despite New York being considered one of the hubs of great pizza in the U.S., I can’t say with any conviction that I’m…especially interested. Perhaps like most people in college, I tired of pizza my freshman year, when every welcome event featured the circular treats as a means of luring in new faces. I thereby can’t say with any certainty that I have a favorite slice of pizza in New York. I thought I once did, but I really hadn't had one that truly made me understand why pizza is so beloved, argued about, and dare I say fetishized across our nation. 

On the day of the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, however, all of that changed. My dear SE, who grew up close enough to that beach to walk there, had been telling me about a mythical pizza joint in the area for about a year and a half. It was his favorite not just growing up but has been consistently throughout his three decades. L & B Spumoni Gardens it was called, and according to him they had the world’s best pizza, a square, Sicilian slice that had no peer. The restaurant had been open since 1939, so they were obviously doing something right. Yet having heard many different answers to the “What’s your favorite New York pizza?” question in my nearly seven years here (and, at one point even having an answer of my own), and love him though I do, I took it with a grain of salt. It was, after all, possible for there to be several different kinds of amazing, world’s-best-quality pizza in myriad styles, each appealing in their own way.

I truly had no expectations when SE, AG, and I walked from the beach to catch the B3 bus to Bensonhurst, hopping off just a block from L & B’s grouping of red tables outside of a brown brick building with two lines of people in front: one for those getting slices, and one for those getting pies. SE got what’s called a half tray, a pie of twelve slices (instead of a whole tray which, if my English-major-level math is correct, would of course be 24 slices) while AG and I staked out a table. 

Soon the box arrived, and I almost didn’t know what I was looking at when I first saw it, this gorgeous fluffy bread positively swimming with deep red sauce and tiny flakes of Pecorino Romano cheese. At L & B, you see, what would normally be the pizza’s cheesy topping, the thing that differentiates the stuff from just being “sauce bread,” is underneath the sauce, baked into the bread. There were three edges of crust and one without so some slice had just no crust at all. Each slice was about the size of a CD case, a giant square I could only imagine holding with two hands—but alas, I am not a native New Yorker and have been told by several natives that one simply does not eat pizza with two hands; rather, one folds it in half. This just seems silly to me. Why sandwich something when you could enjoy more of it for longer by just holding it flat? But I digress. 

Was there a way I was supposed to eat this, a way a native New Yorker would know how to attack this particular pie that I, a mere transplant, would never know? I asked.

“Well,” SE said. “Do you like crust?”

“No,” I said. On the rare occasion that we would get pizza, I always left the hard bits for him to crunch on. 

“Then don’t eat the crust,” he said. 

Oh. 

So I went for the middle slices, the warm sauce almost spilling over the edges of the perfectly square, almost cake-like pizza. I picked it up and took a bite. And suddenly, I understood pizza. Not just this pizza, but all pizza. It was as if I was standing in a tornado of olive oil and tomatoes and mozzarella and herbs and dough, complex mathematical equations flying past me in circles while the secrets of the universe revealed themselves to me. This was it! This is what pizza was supposed to taste like! I didn’t understand for so long because nothing had compared. Nothing was as simultaneously crunchy on the bottom and fluffy, cheesy, gooey in the middle; no sauce was as sweet yet tart and savory. I had never eaten anything like this in my life, so it’s no wonder I never cared about pizza until now. I imagine there are some people who feel about all pizza the way I feel about this one from L & B, who rejoice in all sauce-dough-cheese combinations in one form or another. I found myself lapping up fallen bits of sauce, yelping in despair when I thought I had dropped a loose corner (it was safe), feeling a heaving sense of sadness when the half tray was gone as if I had lost a dear friend because I had to eat him.

I even had a slight pang of jealousy—this was SE’s local pizza place growing up, the place that, if he wanted to order a pizza, would shortly deliver to his home close by. But with a distance over an hour from my house, such a delivery for me would never be. Even now, a few weeks later, I can still taste the cheesy, saucy slices. But it is still summer, after all, and many a slice can still be consumed close to the beach. But what will I do in the winter? 

Top Great Moments I Didn't Write About But Should Have: 2016 Edition

As ever, a list of some of the great moments from the past year that I didn't get a chance to write about as they happened. To compile the list I usually go through all of my social media platforms from the entire year and I pick out the moments, later finding images and doing research (into my own life, which is strange and revelatory each time) about each to make sure they're accurate. The process usually takes longer than a) I think it will and b) than most of my blogs do, but it's the only year-end, or rather year-beginning, list I do so I might as well go big, no? That being said, here they are. Enjoy!

January

9- I had written about porn performer Jiz Lee’s “Coming Out Like A Pornstar” anthology—in which porn performers detailed the times they told their families and friends about their careers— for VICE, and they held a reading for the event at Bluestockings, the radical feminist bookstore on the Lower East Side. The event was packed to the gills, and my friends and I were happy to have found places to lean in the back by some magazines. The readers were incredible, warm and kind, especially Lorelei Lee—her essay about her experiences in porn made me cry and also made me realize I had never wept openly at a reading before. I met her after the reading to tell her how much I loved her piece, and I began to cry again. She cried too, and we hugged. I can’t wait to read more of her work. 

23- In light of the massive blizzard headed to New York, a travel ban was instituted all across the city, from busses to subways to cars to hovercrafts…you name it. But A & T were visiting that weekend and we had all made plans to get together. While my friends across Manhattan weren’t able to make the trek, I pulled on my rubber boots and trudged my way over there. I say trudge more because that’s the motion I was making as I pulled myself through the snow and not because I wasn’t enjoying myself—I was! It was so wild to be able to walk in the middle of a Manhattan street, three feet of snow be damned! Along the way, there were people in the street with toboggans and sleds, children and adults alike frolicking in the snow. I arrived at their apartment with my mascara all over my face because of the snow and wind, but I felt invigorated. We sat and drank wine and ate leftovers, chitchatting until the snow stopped. By that time the snowplows at come through and I was able to walk on asphalt, still in the middle of the street, back home. 

31- HanOre and I visited Patricia Field’s, the legendary bastion of downtown outrageousness on the Bowery, before it closed forever in February. The store was a haven for glitter, spandex, rhinestones, sequins, leopard print, faux fur, vinyl, platform shoes, wigs, and the people who wore them best. I had always wanted to shop in the store, but with everything 50% off I could finally swing it. We tried on all manner of spangled concoctions in a teeny tiny dressing room, and I left with a very important purchase (below), which I think is a perfect way to remember the store. 

May 

5-I was assigned to photograph the band Low Cut Connie, who I love, for Impose Magazine. It was a late show, starting at 10 or 11pm…or so I thought. The band had two openers, and didn’t even end up going on until 2am. I was, to say the least, not amused. But I did my job, of course, and when the band came on they were absolutely electrifying…even though most of the audience had gone home by that point. They performed full-out, as high-energy as they would have been if the place were packed, and they were intoxicating to watch, banging on pianos and bass and guitars in all of their sassy dive bar rock and roll glory. I left the venue at about 3:30am swimming in happiness, and when I finally fell into my bed around 4am, the happiness had seethed into my joints and bones. THAT is what a concert is supposed to be. 

June

10-I don’t remember how it happened or whose idea it was, but HanOre and I ended up hosting The Great Martini March of 2016 throughout downtown Manhattan with a few girlfriends. Though that is perhaps an understatement. As we wrote in the invitation:

We'll start at Art Bar at 8pm then work our way over to Cafe Cluny, across the street to Corner Bistro, and a few blocks south to Little Branch. By that time, we'll be close to Macdougal Street where we will unhinge our jaws and shove however many Belgian-style frites into them as humanly possible. Or just have a nosh, you know, whatevs. 

And we did it. All of it (almost…I think we decided to finish our martini madness at Cafe Cluny where, incidentally, they have a fantastic drink called a Filthy Martini made with garlic vodka and tomato water. What is tomato water, you ask? I HAVE NO IDEA! But it’s very delicious and makes a great drink even better). We finished it up with a visit to the newly-reopened Pommes Frites in the West Village…which, if we’re honest, was the whole reason for the event to begin with.

August

27- One Saturday, AR and I met up in the far reaches of Red Hook for a day of exploration. We started with lunch of brisket and pulled pork at Hometown Bar-B-Que, a vast space with high ceilings that might normally only be in possible in…well, not New York. We then traveled our way through pretty much the entirety of the neighborhood, snacking on soft, warm cookies at Baked (despite the August heat) then traipsing over to the Valentino Pier for sunshine and water and sitting on rocks, stumbling across gentrification porn—really fabulous, modern, intricately designed homes in former industrial spaces that are making rents go up in the area—as well as the Golden Anvil Sculpture garden, the dive bar Red Hook Bait & Tackle with all of its taxidermies and/or mismatched decor from the 1970s, Red Hook Lobster Pound for some of the best lobster rolls I’ve ever had, all followed by a walk through Carroll Gardens to Boerum Hill for drinks at the lushly-couched yet inexpensive Fawkner’s for beverages, and back to Barclays Center to catch the train home. I think we walked over 8 miles all over the Red Hook and then through Brooklyn from the early afternoon to just before midnight. I was having so much fun that I only really got tired toward the end. 

September

9-My lovely friend J was a production assistant on Project Runway this season, and she invited me to come see the show’s finale during Fashion Week. While I hadn’t watched the show in several years, I loved it as a teenager and I thought it would be a fun experience to give it a shot. I was not just invited to the 9am show during Fashion Week, though—I was invited to the early friends and family showing of the top 4 designers at around 6 am, for which I had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It was fun to be a part of the process of having it all come together, to be holding a secret and to be legally obligated to keep it! Heidi, Tim, Nina, and Zac all came out at the end and sat in their front row seats and my teenage eyes were sparkling some 15 years in the past. I was sitting in the second row, with one contestant’s family in front of me and one behind me, so when the show aired on December 22 you actually get a couple really strong glimpses at me and my red lipstick when the families are on camera. My mother and my aunts kept pausing the show OnDemand to squeal and shriek whenever they saw me. 

20- The incredible Taylor Mac, who I have written about before, did his opus “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music” at experimental theatre space St. Ann’s Warehouse, a former tobacco warehouse in Dumbo. The premise of the show is that every hour of it is filled with music from one decade, and Mac sings the entire time in an explosion of wild costumes—decorated with hot dogs or porn-covered potato chip bags or chess boards or chicken wire or all of the above, and more—with an orchestra that loses one member every hour. You could also see the History in shorter, three-hour spurts, and I went with DL, the person who introduced me to the fabulous performer in the first place, for “Act III: Puppets, Whitman, and Civil War” in which “Two men fall in love while escaping slavery; Walt Whitman and Stephen Foster go head to head for title of “Father of the American Song” culminating in the queerest Civil War Reenactment in history.” It was incredible, sitting on the floor on pillows looking up at this theatre genius gorgeously challenge our understandings of history while wearing full drag. 

25- I had dragged SE to a photography event that ended up being a vicious bore and a waste of time, but he ended up saving the day with some really awesome ideas of what to do afterward. Since we were around Brooklyn Bridge Park, he suggested, instead of waiting hours in what was becoming rather chilly weather for a table at Juliana’s, one of the most famous pizza places in Brooklyn, that we order a pizza to go then sit on the pier and eat it there instead. The to-go order took only one hour versus several, and we walked around the pier and the park exploring and taking pictures while we killed time. Then as it grew dark, we sat on this pier overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and the lights of Manhattan and balanced this oh-so-thin Margherita pizza from Juliana’s on a bench, sliding it out of its slim wax paper wrapping and diving into its fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella, and olive oil. I’m not too much of a pizza person, but it was absolutely divine…and maybe made me into a pizza person after all. Afterward, SE suggested the Brooklyn Ice Cream Company, in front of which I had seen people waiting all day to get in. But by the time we got there, we simply waltzed in and ordered raspberry rugalach ice cream, chewing on chunks of the pastry embedded in each bite of the dessert. We traipsed back to the F train in the best of food comas. 

Last but not least, there were also some cool work things that happened this year:

I did my first pieces for Elle and T: The New York Times Style Magazine. I also had a photo I took on the cover of the book The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business by Jessica Berson, published by Oxford University Press. I was a freelance editor at Delish.com; was hired by Sephora to take pictures backstage for them during Fashion Week; did several photoshoots for music website Bandcamp, one for which I spent a day photographing rapper Denmark Vessey in Red Hook eating key lime pies; and got to interview two of my idols, Legs McNeil and Patricia Field. If you’d like to read some of my favorite pieces I wrote this year—including the pieces about Legs and Patricia— here is a link to writer Kyle Chayka’s Year in Review thread on Medium, where he was kind enough to include me.

Have a happy new year, and see you in 2017!

Celeste

When Maw and Paw Manhattan tell me they are coming to visit, two things usually happen: 1) I am delighted, which is then followed quickly by 2) a stab of fear in my heart. I don't worry for their safety, I don't worry for their ability to get around, I worry what restaurant I am going to take them to.

This sounds incredibly insane, and it definitely is, but at least let me explain. I love my parents so much, as we all do, and I want nothing more than when they visit to give them a positive experience. There are so many restaurants in New York, and so many quality ones to choose from. They deserve the best in my opinion, so if a restaurant doesn't meet their standards--which, admittedly, are not very high: does a place have good food and a comfortable atmosphere? That's it, that's all they care about-- it almost feels like I haven't done right by them. Like after all these years, after all they've given me, I still couldn't get my shit together and find something worthwhile. Insane, right? And much too deep, they tell me every time the come visit. "Uh, can't we just go get a burger, Lyss?"

When my parents go out to eat in Florida, where they live, they have a circulating stable of places they pick from, and every so often they'll branch out. They like good Italian food, good French food, good Chinese food, sandwiches, occasionally Greek, occasionally Mexican, and they've recently gotten into Korean and Thai food. They're not especially adventurous eaters, but they also know tasty, thoughtfully-prepared food when they have it. They don't have to be impressed with kale or unpronounceable vegetables or farm-raised this or organic that or locally sourced whatever. If it's delish and it's not too complicated, they can get on board. And when they come to New York, they're on vacation, so they don't need to get fancy every night (one night, sure; every night, no). 

All that being said, the one thing my father asks for whenever he comes to New York is a choice Italian place. (That, and a trip to Nancy's Pig Heaven for some incredible spare ribs). I have not yet, though, been able to deliver on this request. I don't regularly eat Italian food, so finding a spot that's worthy when I haven't been there is a challenge. I have tried bring M & P to some spots but none ever cut the mustard, as it were. Paw likes a down-home kind of restaurant, where the tablecloths aren't white linen, where there are paper napkins, where you don't have to make a reservation and if you tried to they'd look at you funny. He also likes bolognese. I've seen him order it with every kind of pasta from gnocchi to spaghetti and in true connoisseur fashion, tries it whenever it's available in whatever restaurant we go to.

Recently, though, I was able to find one restaurant I think will be a good fit. Though he had had a long day at work and neither of us said we were going to be eating too many carbs any longer, SE let me drag him to Celeste on the Upper West Side. We were easily able to grab a table when we rolled into the unmarked, brick-walled restaurant at around 9pm, flanked on either side by a couple finishing up their tiramisu (which looked incredible) and a woman enjoying a nice dinner to herself (what turned out to be spaghetti alla vongole, or spaghetti with clams). We ordered one of their signature wood-fired pizzas, (Margherita) made in a brick oven, and a dish of their homemade pasta (Paccheri Vesuviana, medium-length tubes of pasta topped with ricotta and tomato sauce). And everything was unbelievable. The mozzarella cheese seeped into the tomato sauce which seeped into the bread and all melted into my mouth at once. I had one of those moments when you finish a slice of pizza and suddenly you're so happy there's one more there waiting for you. The pasta was perfectly al dente, the ricotta and tomato sauce spilling from the tubes and happily onto my fork when I cut into them. When we ate all the pasta, we dipped the bread into the sauce to sop more of it up, unwilling to let it go. We didn't get to try the bolognese, but there's always next time. The waitstaff was kind, the manager was friendly, and we didn't feel rushed during our meal. It was one of these moments of simple pleasures, delicious food in a quiet little brick restaurant, no need for splash or glitter, something perfect after a long week. The next time M & P come to visit, I hope they will feel the same. 

Celeste
502 Amsterdam Avenue at W. 84th St.
212-874-4559