I have two meal reports to go from our week in Seoul in July and another two to go from our two weeks in Delhi after that. And I still haven’t started on the meals eaten during our brief stay in Kyoto between our time in Seoul and our time in Tokyo in June. It makes sense therefore that today I have for you a report from a weekend trip the missus and I took to New York/New Jersey in October. Our fall breaks lined up again this year and we took the opportunity to abandon our children and go enjoy ourselves by ourselves. This involved a fair bit of eating out and my first report is of a casual lunch eaten just a few hours after our arrival, at the West Village location of L’industrie. This was one of a few places recommended by my friends on Mouthfuls when I asked for suggestions for pizza by the slice within walking distance of the Whitney Museum. As it happens, we didn’t actually end up going to the Whitney that afternoon (we ended up at the Brooklyn Museum instead) but we did eat pizza at L’industrie. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Pizza
Del Popolo (San Francisco, June 2024)
Staying in San Francisco, here is a quick write-up of the dinner we had after a hike through Muir Woods after a visit to Rancho Gordo in Napa after lunch at 606 in Chinatown. San Francisco has no shortage of strong options for pizza and if you ask people in the know for short lists of recommendations you’ll likely get lists with quite a bit of variation on them. Del Popolo, where we ate, is unlikely to show up on many of those lists. Why did we eat there anyway? Well, it’s primary virtue as far as we were concerned is that it is located a hop, skip and jump from our hotel on the edge of Union Square and it would be a quick walk there and back after what was scheduled to be a long day. That part of the promise was kept. The pizza was not bad either. Here are some details. Continue reading
La Divina Pizza (Florence, June 2023)
Here, finally, is my last report from Florence. We are now close to the end of June, travel-wise. As you may recall, we actually spent most of our last full day in Florence in Pisa. We picked up sandwiches from the Mercato Sant’Ambrogio that morning and took them with us for a casual picnic lunch. Dinner after we got back was casual as well: we picked up pizza from La Divina on Borgo Allegri. Why didn’t we eat in? Well, it was hot, we were tired and La Divina being located only about 50 feet from our door meant the pizza took only a slightly longer trip to our dining table than it would have to a table outside the restaurant. How was it? Read on. Continue reading
Pizzarium (Rome, June 2023)
If you ask people with a decent knowledge of Rome’s food scene for recommendations of places to eat pizza, odds are good that Pizzarium will pop up on the top of everyone’s list. Unlike at Emma—where we ate the previous day—they do not do whole pizzas with thin, crisp crusts. Their specialty is pizza al taglio (or pizza by the slice), on thick bready crusts, cut and served in rectangles or squares of a size of your choosing and priced by weight. This is basically the model followed by a place like Mama’s Too in New York. The difference here is that at Pizzarium the experience is less hectic—despite the place being even more crowded—and the staff are patient and not at all unpleasant. And, oh yes, the pizza is a lot better. Continue reading
Emma (Rome, June 2023)
On our first full day in Rome we had an excellent lunch in the middle of a very hot day of hardcore touristing: the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, the Forum etc.. It was hot, hot, hot in Rome, with blazing sun and no little humidity, and what had seemed like an easy 15 minute walk from the Forum to Emma turned into a bit of a trial. We arrived hot, sweaty and cranky but unlike a number of fellow tourists waiting at the door, at least we had a reservation. Alas, this reservation—made weeks before—didn’t get us an indoor table under the air conditioning. We were shunted instead to an outdoor table—covered seating, yes, but still very hot, and with the sun advancing on our table, not the most comfortable situation as the meal went on. The food, however, was very good indeed. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Starita (Naples, June 2023)
My first restaurant report from this ongoing Italy trip was of excellent pizza eaten in Naples (at Attilio). I posted that as we were leaving Rome more than a week ago. My second restaurant report from this ongoing Italy trip is also of excellent pizza eaten in Naples—indeed on the very same day as that first round of excellent pizza. But now I am more than one city behind. From Rome we went to Florence and from Florence to the Tuscan countryside. (We ate pizza in Rome and Florence as well, by the way, though not in the Tuscan countryside.) We are leaving the Tuscan countryside tomorrow for Padua and the wifi has finally perked up enough for me to be able to upload a lot of pictures. And so here you are. What a lovely birthday present for America. You’re welcome. Continue reading
Pizzeria da Attilio (Naples, 2023)
We are currently in Italy and will be here a little while longer. As I type we are getting set to leave Rome for Florence. But we started our trip in Naples. Which is also where we started our over-eating. This lunch at Pizzeria da Attilio was not our first meal in Naples (that was dinner at Mimi alla Ferrovia the previous evening) but it seems right to begin an account of eating in Naples with pizza. And so.
As you would expect, there is a lot of good pizza to be had in Naples and probably almost as many opinions on which the best places to eat pizza in Naples as there are pizza-eating people in Naples. We were staying on Via Duomo, very close to the two most famous places: Antica Pizzeria da Michele and Gino e Toto Sorbillo. We did not, however, eat at either of them. This was largely because both are so popular that you have to wait a really long time to get a table—and if there’s something we don’t like to do when traveling with the kids, it’s waiting at restaurants. But we couldn’t have eaten at both anyway, as one of our two pizza meal slots in the city was spoken for by Attilio. Continue reading
Pizza Karma (Apple Valley, MN)
By the time this posts we’ll be off on our summer travels. But I have a couple of Twin Cities restaurant reports cued up to post while we’re gone and here is the first one: a an account of a couple of lunches at the new branch of Pizza Karma in Apple Valley. The first Pizza Karma opened in Eden Prairie in 2017. We had been interested but it was a long way to go for what seemed then like an uncertain proposition. During the height of the pandemic we did make it out to Eden Prairie to eat Indian pizza at Bombay Pizza Kitchen. We mostly enjoyed that meal and it strengthened our resolve to eat soon at Pizza Karma. But for one reason or another we never got around to it. That is until they opened a branch much closer to us, in Apple Valley. We’ve now eaten two lunches there in the last month. Herewith my report. Continue reading
Bombay Pizza Kitchen (Eden Prairie, MN)
Bombay Pizza Kitchen opened late last summer in Eden Prairie. As their name indicates, their thing is Indian-style pizza, a genre with an established history in India. Indeed, on our family trips to Delhi the boys much enjoy eating Indian-style pizza at outlets of Domino’s or Pizza Hut in malls (take a look at Pizza Hut India’s options here). I would imagine the genre is already quite widespread in places in the US where large populations of Indians and other South Asians can be found. The Twin Cities is increasingly one of those places and so it’s not a surprise that it should be here too now. Of course, they’re not the first such place in the Twin Cities metro; they’re not even the first in Eden Prairie: Pizza Karma, which opened a year or so previous, is less than a 10 minute drive away. We had been planning to go eat at Pizza Karma before the pandemic began and it’s entirely by happenstance that we ended up at Bombay Pizza Kitchen first. We stopped in for lunch with friends this past Sunday, after a 3.5 mile walk around Rice Marsh Lake on the border of Eden Prairie and Chanhassen. We were hungry and got a fair bit of the menu. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Ian’s Pizza (Madison, Wisconsin)
And so now I am at the midpoint of my meal reports from our trip to Madison in early August and this is a report on our first non-Asian meal in the city (see my earlier reviews of Strings Ramen and Bandung). Ian’s Pizza—recommended by a commenter, Todd—was not originally on our itinerary but it was our fallback option when one of the places that had been recommended from multiple directions didn’t work out: The Old Fashioned. We’d planned to eat dinner there on this Monday evening but when we pulled up alongside we couldn’t see any sign of the outdoor seating that they were supposed to have. We called them from the car and were told they were not doing outdoor seating on account of the storm about to roll in. Now, while weather on our trip was not great, this evening actually was completely rain-free. The sky was blue, the sun was out. Indeed, after dinner we repaired to the Memorial Union Terrace at the University of Wisconsin for ice cream and sunset by the water. Far more likely is that they didn’t want to deal with staffing outdoor seating with enough people willing to eat indoors. So we ate dinner instead at Ian’s Pizza instead. And a very good dinner it was too. Continue reading
Motorino (New York, August 2019)
Here finally is the last meal report from our trip to New York in August. This was our last meal out in the city and another round of pizza. We’d spent the day hanging out at Coney Island and at the end had been thwarted in our attempt to eat pizza for dinner at Totonno. The Upper West Side location of Motorino—just a couple of blocks from our flat—was our fallback option and as it turned out it wasn’t a mere consolation prize. It is likely that Totonno is as good as everyone says it is and quite a bit better but we rather liked Motorino’s pizza—which, like that at Totonno, is in the Neapolitan vein. And we much preferred the atmosphere at Motorino to the frenzy at Mama’s TOO! where we’d had our first meal in New York— coincidentally and fittingly, also pizza. Here is how it went. Continue reading
Wandering and Eating at Chelsea Market (New York, August 2019)
This was actually our second full day in New York, and our first Sunday. The major plans for the day involved a walk on the High Line followed by a production of Puffs (a Harry Potter parody/tribute we took the boys too and which they loved). After that we were scheduled for early dinner with an old friend at Bombay Bread Bar. Those dinner plans changed later—we ended up at Ippudo Ramen instead and ate at Bombay Bread Bar the following weekend—but we needed to grab an early lunch before getting on the High Line. Looking around on Google Maps, Chelsea Market looked like a good place to get a range of things we might all like. Continue reading
Pizza at Mama’s TOO! (New York, August 2019)
Our first meal in New York, eaten shortly not too long after arrival from DC, predictably/stereotypically/appropriately/conveniently involved pizza. We were staying on the Upper Westside, in a neighbourhood described by my primary sources of New York food recommendations as a bit of a food desert. But a short walk north from our apartment put us at a pizzeria that has received a lot of attention, and a New York Times star, in the last year: Mama’s TOO! at Broadway and 106th Street. As the name indicates, this is an extension of an existing brand. Mama’s Pizza, not too far away, has been serving up traditional New York slices for a long while now. Mama’s Too! (the exclamation mark is part of the name) takes that pizza in some new directions, both crust and toppings-wise. I do not pretend to be a pizza savant of any kind—if you’d like to find out more about where they fit in or depart from the larger New York scheme of pizza please take a look at Pete Wells’ review. Read this only to find out what four people who do not have any sort of firm ideological position on pizza thought of their offerings on one hot August evening. Continue reading
Young Joni (Minneapolis)
This has been our year of catching up on buzzy restaurants that have opened or been re-tooled in the Twin Cities in the last year or three. Such have been our meals at Hai Hai, Grand Cafe, Hyacinth, Popol Vuh, In Bloom, Handsome Hog and now Young Joni. The restaurant has been open since late 2016. We’ve wanted to eat there for a while but they started out without reservations and those who read my local reviews know what our problems are with no reservations restaurants: our long drive and our young children. But like Hai Hai (and Saint Dinette), Young Joni has relaxed its “no reservations” policy. This may have happened a while ago, actually, but it has only recently flashed on my consciousness. And so we decided to go. Right around then, Ann Kim got nominated for “Best Chef: Midwest” at this year’s James Beard awards. Also nominated were Jamie Malone of Grand Cafe and Christina Nguyen of Hai Hai and we liked both those meals very much. The odds therefore seemed very much in our favour; especially when Kim beat out Malone and Nguyen, and the rest of the competition, and took the award home. How did things pan out in reality? Well, it was a fine meal but, on the whole, not as good as our dinners at either of those places or some of the other new openings. Continue reading