Cheap Pizza as Proustian Reverie
The school where I normally work is having its air conditioning replaced, so I've been exiled to a middle school on Savannah's south side. This means I must find new lunch joints. No longer do I have easy access to Chipotle, or a barbecue restaurant, or the Arby's with the old-timey Taco Bell sign in its parking lot.
Driving to work I saw a pizza place. I decided I could go for some pizza. Let's see if they sell it by the slice. I pulled up. The sign said they did sell pizza by the slice, and also it claimed to be authentic New Jersey pizza. Now I lived in New Jersey from 1991 to 2004, and I ate a lot of pizza. Hillsborough, New Jersey had a lot of pizza restaurants. From chain restaurants like Domino's to Alfonso's and Alberto's and Victor's and Victor's 2 and Frank's In other words, I am experienced with pizza. Some would say that I'm a pizza snob.
I don't eat toppings on my pizza. Only cheese. Because pizza is perfect the way it is. It doesn't need toppings to defile it. Also I believe that there is no good pizza outside of the tri-state area. And really it's outside of New York, New Jersey. Connecticut pizza doesn't deserve to be considered a part of good pizza. Especially when they put seafood on it.
So I went into this little pizza restaurant. The woman, the only woman working there, coughed into her hands and made no attempt to even pretend like she was going to wash her hands. This is a good sign. Good pizza restaurants are filthy, grimy, greasy, disgusting little hovels that only exist because of the quality of bread and cheese and sauce that combines together to make a beautiful slice of pizza.
I ordered two slices of plain and a drink. She rang me up and said the price was $6.40. I was flabbergasted. My order at Chipotle is almost $20 now. A meal at Burger King is $12 or $13. Six dollars for two big slices of pizza and a refillable coke? Insane. Madness. I don't know how they can stay in business.
The pizza was okay. It's not great pizza. Like I said, there's really no good pizza outside of New York or New Jersey. Maybe I'm just a pizza snob. But cheap pizza and the idea of eating slices of pizza for lunch, slices that have been tossed into an oven to get way, way, way too hot before being served, of sitting in a dingy little booth in some scummy little place in a nondescript strip mall, it brought me back. It sent me back through time, through space, through the corridors of memory, reliving all my pizza experiences, seeing them flash before my eyes. Now here's a ranking of the pizza restaurants in my memory.
Worst pizza: Two-for-One pizza. A pizza restaurant in or around New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was popular amongst the clubs at Rutgers because you got two pizzas for one, exactly as the name said. So if you were having a pizza party with your geology lab group after a field trip, you would get two for one pizza because you get twice the pizza for the same price. The only problem is Two-for-One pizza barely qualifies as food. I honestly believe if you ate the box instead of the pizza, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And when it was cold, it was even more inedible. They should make a show like that hot wings show where people have to eat cold two for one pizza. They will die. They will not survive.
Second worst pizza: Pizza and Pipes in Bellevue, Washington. A restaurant that is now, I believe, a parking garage. But back in the day, in the mid to late 80s, it was a place where you'd go and they'd have a bubble machine and some dude would play the organ and then he'd ask you to come up and you'd play the maracas and the tambourine and they had the Star Wars game where you went into the Death Star and they had Joust. So it was a good time. But the pizza was not. Pizza and Pipes still holds a place in my heart, though, as a great restaurant, destroyed by consumerism and the ever-growing sprawl of Seattle's east side.
Next worst pizza: Every other pizza restaurant. They're all bad. People come up to you and say, oh you have to try this place in downtown Phoenix. Oh it's so good you have to wait in line for 45 minutes but they have the best margherita pizza and it's trash. It's California Pizza Kitchen, thin crust, frozen pizza trash. It's garbage. It's crap for people from Wisconsin who don't know what good pizza is. People who have never been to New Jersey. People who have never been to Frank's Pizza. People who have never had a slice. They are fools and their pizza is for fools.
Sardella's pizza. Not that it was good. It's not. But when I worked as an elementary school custodian, every Wednesday was pizza day. They'd order a bunch of pizzas from Sardella's and the kids would get their pizza and they'd drop it on the floor. Then they'd start crying and say, “Shut up. I'll get you a new slice of pizza.” So I'd get them a new slice of pizza. And then they'd still be crying because I told them to shut up and I'd be like, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell you to shut up. It's just, I don't know how to talk to kids.” And they'd be like, “what?” And I'm like, “Yeah, see, exactly. That's the point I'm trying to make.” And so then I'd give them a slice of pizza
But we always had pizza left over. The cafeteria manager was supposed to sell the pizza for 50 cents a slice. However, she did not sell the pizza for 50 cents a slice. She gave it to me. So I went home to my one bedroom apartment with two boxes of mediocre cheese pizza every week for the year that I worked as a cafeteria custodian. Have you ever seen my body? Now you understand. It's made by Sardellas and Mountain Dew.
Speaking of 50 cent pizza that's not very good, Marco's Pizza, the pizza restaurant across the street from the apartment where I lived for two years in college. After midnight on weeknights, 50 cent slices. Not very good slices, but they'd go fast. You'd go in there with all the drunks, get your slices, eat them on the walk home, then watch Conan and go to bed.
But the fun thing about Marco's was that in the summertime, when most college students weren't there, the pizza was actually really good. Like when they're not trying to turn out 50 cent slices for a bunch of Rutgers skanks and frat boys, when they actually had time to make the pizza, it was good. It was a special treat. A summertime pizza. Existing only in the liminal space between semesters. When New Brunswick was quiet, peaceful. When parking was plentiful and the pizza, freshly made and delicious.
Next on my list is Peter Piper Pizza. Pizza in Arizona is often alliterative. Peter Piper Pizza, Hungry Howies, things of that nature. Peter Piper Pizza, I remember because it was where my grandparents stayed in their motorhome when I went out to go to spring training during college. And yes, I spent my spring breaks in college sleeping on the couch in my grandparents' motorhome so I could watch the Mariners lose to the Kansas City Royals and then have Peter Piper Pizza. What I eventually learned, though, is that Peter Piper Pizza also had a lunch buffet. Much like Pizza Hut, but better. So for under $10 you could get all the pizza you wanted.
During my career as a teacher in Arizona, I would often go to Peter Piper on half days when we had a long lunch break. It was good. It was always good. Eating until you were literally, physically incapable of consuming any more bread and cheese. Feeling disgusting, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, for the things you've done to your body with a coupon for a $6.50 buffet at Peter Piper Pizza.
Next on the list, Italian Pizzeria 3. I think that's what it's called. That's what I call it in my mind. It's a place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I went with my friend after his wife left him. It was like walking into a central New Jersey pizzeria. The two men who were serving food were clearly Italian. And there was an old woman in the back, and when they finished serving your food, the men and the old woman would just scream at each other in Italian, just yelling, constantly. Then they gave us a free slice. That's how you know it's a good pizza, authentically Italian pizza: when you have people yelling at their grandma while they serve you food. When you're here, you're family and whatnot.
And the best pizza restaurant: Frank's Pizza. Not the one in Manville, the one in Hillsborough. The original, I think. Frank's Pizza is fantastic. The people that work there: borderline offensive Italian stereotypes. They say “We make you a pizza pie in 15 or 20 minute” And the pizza was good, so good.
The extra cheese had so much cheese on it, you would take a bite and you would just pull off a layer of cheese and you would still have more cheese than most pizzas have on it. There was so much cheese, so much bread, so much sauce. So decadent.
With every pizza they gave you a coupon, and if you got so many coupons you got a free pizza. But the thing was, we always ordered pizza when my parents worked late, so I'd call it in from home and my parents would pick it up on the way home That meant they never got the chance to use the coupons. So we had a drawer in our kitchen that just filled up with Frank's Pizzas coupons. They had no expiration date. When my parents moved out of their house and moved to Arizona, we found the drawer full of pizza coupons. So I did what any normal 26-year-old man would do: I demanded that my coupons be honored, and every week I got a free pizza or two Frank's Pizza. I'd walk in, they'd recognize me, they'd say they'd make me a cheese pizza pie, 15 to 20 minute.
I would wait, patiently, sometimes wondering if I should ever try the ziti or lasagna. But no, why would I mess with perfection?
There will be a time when I go back to New Jersey. And when I go back, there will be one place that I visit. One place only. It'll be Frank's Pizza on Route 206 in Hillsborough, New Jersey. If it's still there. If it's not still there, I'll be heartbroken. I'll be crushed. It'll be the worst thing that happened to me, worse than getting Parkinson's, worse than having the small cat taken from me. It'll be truly a moment that causes me deep existential pain, and I'll probably become some sort of supervillain. Please don't take my good pizza from me, it's all I have.
