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05/21/2008 Archived Entry: "On Pizza Patrol"

In my recent travels to promote “Jewish Home Cooking” I keep being asked to name my favorite restaurant in Manhattan. Sorry to tell you this, but I have no favorite restaurant in Manhattan. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to name an absolute favorite restaurant anywhere. There are too many I like. And besides, I eat mainly at home these days. I am in the business of producing cookbooks, and when you do that you cook all day and generally eat your own food. If I do go out to eat, mainly to have a cooking day off and perhaps catch a movie, all I want is Asian food or pizza. I don’t cook Asian – Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or Vietnamese, not to slight Indian and Pakistani, which I don’t cook either and sometimes also crave. And although I can make very good pizza at home, it’s never as good as at a good pizzeria. And, no, I don’t order in pizza. I like my pizza straight from the oven, not from a box. In any case, who would care about my neighborhood delivery pizzeria, except my neighbors?

Max Gross, who I call my godson because I held him down while they cut it off, if you get my drift, is a reporter for the New York Post, and although I am of an age at which I don’t trust anyone under 30 -- just as when those of my generation were in our 20s we didn’t trust anyone over 30 -- I trust Max’s taste in most things, especially pizza.

So it was that he was all excited to take me to his latest Neapolitan-style pizza discovery, NUMBER 28, called thusly because it is at 28 Carmine St., right across the street from Our Lady of Pompeii, near Bleecker St. in Greenwich Village. (A cultural aside: Our Lady is, indeed, modeled after the cathedral in Pompeii, the modern town of Pompeii, that is, which is next to the ruins. The bell tower in Greenwich Village is quite similar to the bell tower in Pompeii, which is a major landmark on the landscape.)

The prices range from $10 to $15 for a 14-inch pie, larger than the usual Neapolitan pizza, but you can also get even large pies here – an 18-incher is $15 to $23, and a gargantuan 29-incher is $23 to $31. That’s a bargain if you think about it.

We ordered some perfectly good meatballs and eggplant parm to start, but at $10 a shot I would skip them next time and go straight for the pizza, which was excellent, a variant of Neapolitan, just not quite as puffy at the edge or soft in the middle as the pizza in the city that invented pizza. But, I am chagrinned to say, the soft, breadier qualities of Neapolitan pizza don’t go over very well with New Yorkers who prefer thin and crisp to thin and pliable. I have no idea about the quality of the few pasta dishes on the menu, which are only $11 to $13. I think the reason to come here is for the pizza and calzone, which are also excellent.

I should tell you, too, while on the subject of Max Gross’s excellent taste, that his first book, “From Schlub to Stud: How to Embrace Your Inner Mensch and Conquer the Big City” will be published this August. The bound galleys are sitting here next to my computer. The cover has a photo of Max and his red Jew-fro posing with a blonde babe. It’s a sort of “Knocked Up” type story, but this is real life, the memoir of a 29-year-old who, when he was writing a column for The Forward, the Jewish newspaper, was called The Hapless Jewish Writer. I read the book in manuscript and I am so, so proud. It is funny and knowing, beautifully written and structured. For now, you can check out the preorder page at www.Amazon.com.