I will be watching the game (I have to live through it with a rabid Kansas City fan) but my mind will be on my first encounter with pizza. (At the time I’d never had a taco, either. Or a Chinese soup dumpling. Or pad thai.
I was 16 or so, and on my one-and-only date with the grandson of Groucho Marx, a very nice young man with whom I had zero in common. He took me to MICELI’S (touted for years as “LA’s Oldest Italian Restaurant” until it recently closed.)
I was not impressed. I thought tomato sauce topped with mozzarella cheese was a terrible idea. What an idiot I was… since then I’ve definitely developed a taste. And Miceli's set the bar high.
My all-time favorite pizza was from THE VILLA ROSA, a little place walking distance from my house. Sublime New York style pizza (thin crust), crisp and slightly burned around the edges, tangy tomato sauce (not tomato slices), gooey mozzarella cheese, spiced with oregano and salt and pepper. OILY! YES!! Nothing fancy.
You grabbed a slice and you had to get under the tip which was weighted down with sauce and cheese and oil. When all that was left was the crust, that was crisp and riddled with moguls (crispy bubbles in the crust).
I was so sad when VILLA ROSA closed about 10 years ago. (It's been replaced by an Irish pub.)
Do you remember your first encounter with pizza, and what’s been your favorite place (still open or long gone) to have it?
Sad to say, I have absolutely no memory of the first time I had pizza . . . and all the really good pizza places are long gone ☹
ReplyDeleteFeels that way to me, too.
DeleteI think I first had pizza when I was about 15, also. Our family of five kids did not eat out unless we were traveling and we rarely traveled. I make plain cheese pizza at home, with homemade crust but store-bought sauce. (Back in the day when I had cows, I also made the mozzarella. Now I buy it.) Thankfully my family is not one of gourmets and in general as long as they are full, they are happy. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteI mean "thankfully" because I'm sure my version doesn't come within miles of great restaurant pizza! (Selden)
DeleteBut, Selden, I bet your pizza has miles more love! Elisabeth
DeleteThat's my definition of a geat pizza: plain cheese. It's the red sauce and crust that sets one version apart from another.
DeleteWhen I was growing up, the only pizza I knew was the Chef Boyardee version that my mom would make. Then came the stuff they served for Friday school lunch. I don't remember where I had my first pizzeria REAL pizza, but I do remember the angels sang!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite place to get pizza: when we had our fishing/writing camp (Hubby fished, I wrote), we would arrive on Friday night after work, exhausted, and I would call an order in to the local pizza joint. They got to know who I was simply by my order. Best. Pizza. Ever. Alas, they closed at the end of the season one year, never to reopen in the spring. Rumor has it, they'd been busted selling drugs from the restaurant.
Yes! The green Chef Boyardee box. That was the only pizza I had for a long time.
DeleteI do remember getting deep dish from Gino’s East in Chicago starting in high school. Mmmm!
I missed the Chef Boyardee pizza. Their canned pasta in sauce was execrable.
DeleteYes, it was, Hallie, but that was a regular on our dinner menu when I was a kid, too.
DeleteI don't recall my first pizza slice but one of the best I've had was at Spumoni Gardens.
ReplyDeleteIn Brooklyn?! I'll have to try it and alert my kids.
DeleteHallie, I'm surprised you hadn't had a taco growing up in SoCal. Pizza restaurant Mama Petrillo's opened in my town when I was a teenager and it was a big treat to go there with friends.
ReplyDeleteHere in Amesbury we have the mother ship of the MA Flatbreads chain, and I can walk there. They even brought an artisan down from Quebec almost thirty years ago to help them make the big wood-fired oven. The crusts are crusty and chewy and the toppings organic and so good. They use ingredients from local farms as much as possible, and the restaurant is in a historic former textile mill building. Jay (yes, our Jay) and his friend Ann came up one year and took me to lunch. The menu offers Jay's Heart - just crust, tomato sauce, and cheese - which fit his unadventurous palate!
We also make pizza at home. I do the crust and the baking, Hugh chops and does the toppings. It's tasty. Not as good as Flatbread's but a lot more affordable.
I forgot about the Flatbreads experience when writing my reply but yes Edith, Ann and I went to that one in Amesbury and it was quite good. If I ever find myself back in Amesbury, I would definitely go back for another meal.
DeleteI do not remember my first encounter with pizza, but I am fairly certain it was Pizza Hut.
ReplyDeleteMore memorable experiences with pizza (and also much more recent) have been Grimaldi’s Under the Brooklyn Bridge, a restaurant outside the ruins of Pompeii and some other places in Italy, and now exploring several places in Ocala, FL. We miss going to our favorite BB’s Pizzaria in Rochester, MN.
1977. New boyfriend soon to be husband – we got engaged 2 days later. This was about day 14 of knowing him. Drove across Newfoundland for hours and hours in the pouring rain, and nowhere to stop. Cold. Starving hungry. Needed to pee. Supposed to be meeting with friends of my parents – we didn’t know them, but we thought we were to stay there overnight. They said hello/goodbye/they had company… (thanks a lot!). Drove to only place to eat in town – Pizza Hut. Ordered, snuffed it, burped – it was terrible! Never ate Pizza Hut again. Might be memorable…
DeleteAh, Pizza Hut's not THAT bad. But you're reminding me of a terrible pizza we had after an overnight flight to London...
DeleteI love a good Detroit style pizza. Chicago pizza is good but not my go-to favorite.
DeleteWe once asked for a pizza recommendation at a hotel desk in Branson, Missouri and the young guy working there said Pizza Hut. We just walked away shaking our heads.
DeleteMostly we just had enough of Pizza Hut from all the years of our 3 kids getting the free Book-It program personal pan pizzas. I couldn’t for a stuffed crust one right about now.
I love pizza and I am not particularly fussy about it, although I'll choose my own toppings. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was from NY, and my dad was from a small CT town about a half hour from the shore. He went to college in Alabama and had already traveled more than most people back in those days. If there was a new cuisine to try, he was right there. Throughout my childhood, we went out for Chinese food often which was the first ethnic cuisine to show up in our area.
I had my first pizza when a pizza shop opened in our small town and we were all in! When we moved to the Hartford suburbs in my early teens, a pizza date was not unusual and I remember my one and only date with the tall, handsome Mike D'Amato from Hartford. We went to Dino's at Bishop's Corner. I ate my slice of pizza and he ate the whole rest of the large pie. What a guy!
New Haven pizzas win best of awards all of the time. Some of those restaurants have opened branches around the state. We don't get pizza that often any more. When we visit Rachel and her family on the Delaware shore, we get it from Mike's and it is delicious!
There's a great history of pizza places in Connecticut; especially New Haven. Spectacularly good.
DeleteOh yes! How could I have forgotten standing in a long line outside for pizza in New Haven!
DeletePat D: I don’t remember my first pizza. Maybe at Shakey’s? One of the best I’ve eaten was in Costa Rica.
ReplyDeleteI haven't thought about Shakey's in decades! Is it a California chain?
DeleteI am a California native, Shakey’s pizza was a west coast chain with the best pizza I have ever had. They were bought by another company twenty years ago and slowly disappeared.
DeleteWe also had Shakey’s in Indiana in the 80s. That’s where my husband learned to love pizza. Until then he had only had his mom’s, with a hard crust and hamburger and onion toppings (the only ones his dad liked).
DeleteWe went there on our first date . . . only to have his parents and little brother show up half an hour later.
Costa Rica?!? Go figure...
DeleteI'm more of a Chicago deep dish guy than a New York style pizza guy, but I will chomp down on either. Any and all toppings are fine. My brother, however, has has a life-long dislike of cheese (like P. G. Wodehouse, he discovered there were such things as cheese mites and has refused to eat cheese ever since), so he has his pizza with just sauce, which gives him strange looks from everyone else at the pizzaria.
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that today is also Super Chicken Wing Day, as well as National Bagels and Lox Day. Both well worth celebrating, as is Read in a Bathtub Day. Perhaps my favorite holiday being celebrated today is National Develop Alternative Vices Day because the opportunities there seem endless.
Thanks for the alerts on the special "days" !!
DeleteIn the mid-1970s, when my parents moved us back to Canada from living in Europe (Germany and England), Dad and I were on our own for the first couple of months. One day, we went for lunch to a pizza place. We ordered, waited and then tucked in when it arrived -- using knife and fork to eat it with. The very kind waitress came back and explained to us that, actually, pizza could and should be eaten by hand. I remember being surprised but adapted quickly. I have no memory of the pizza itself (and I sometimes still use a knife and fork if the pizza is extra loaded and I don't want to lose any of the toppings to my plate).
ReplyDeleteThere's an art to eating a slice of pizza... much like the art to eating a double scoop ice cream cone. (Bite the bottom off and suck the ice cream out from the hole?
DeleteWhen we visited relatives in the Midwest, we had deep pan pizza and it was the best pizza that I ever had and I think the closest thing to that in terms of flavors is the Zachary’s Chicago Pizza, which has several pizza restaurants in the Bay Area. The thick tomato sauce on top of the mozzarella cheese and the crust is delicious! The pizza could be eaten with a fork and knife or by hand.
ReplyDeleteMy family used to to to a pizza parlor every Friday night to listen to a relative’s music band play music. Before the music, they always showed silent movies while we ate pizza. That was where I had Canadian bacon pizza with pineapple and I liked it. I tried many different kinds of pizza and my favorite was cheese pizza.
When visiting Venice, Italy, we had pizza and it was yummy.
Regarding Super Bowl, I just saw a coda ( adult child of deaf parents) talking about how the networks only showed three seconds of deaf performers at half time. Over the years we tried to catch glimpses of Deaf performers at half time and we never saw them. He mentioned Garth Brooks having Marlee Marlin stand on stage next to him at the Super Bowl in 1993. Because we never got to watch the Deaf performers, we stopped watching the Super Bowl.
CODA: Children of deaf adults. (I'm staying right now with a dear friend who had parents who were deaf. She often talks about how it shaped her.
DeleteIn about 1992 I had a sewing student whose parents were both deaf. Laurie was about 11 or 12, and she did everything for them, as far as communicating with the hearing community. They were an interesting and lovely family, with a younger son.
DeleteHallie, did you meet your friend’s deaf parents? When I met you at Bouchercon, I wondered if you met deaf people before or worked with deaf people because I noticed that you spoke clearly. Very unusual for me to lipread someone whom I meet for the first time.
DeleteKaren in Ohio, yes, I remember you mentioned your sewing student whose parents are deaf. I wonder if that was before smartphones with the text capability? Before accessibility was more available? I am asking because I remembered a book made into a tv movie based on a novel by Joanne Greenberg and the story was set in the 1940s. The title was LOVE IS NEVER SILENT.
I do not remember my first real pizza. In school there were something called pizza buns, as about as similar to an actual pizza as a jelly donut. That is, not at all. It involved a hamburger bun with a tiny square of velveeta-like orange cheese, topped with a dab of cafeteria spaghetti sauce, so no spice or herbs at all.
ReplyDeleteEventually I must have had a real pizza, but I have no idea of the particulars. I would love a slice right now!
Weird! On a hamburger bun?!?
DeleteI remember something similar from the school cafeteria. Perhaps it was a way to save money and feed many students?
DeleteIn my memory, the best pizza was from a little hole in the wall down the street from us in Halifax in about 1972. One of the three of us was vegetarian, which was unusual in those times. Friday night she usually cooked supper, which often was vegetable stew and remarkably good – she made the most delicious dumplings. Some nights it was pizza. At first we got 2 – one meat and 1 vegetarian, and then we discovered that the vegetarian one just may have been the better. Green peppers, mushrooms, onions (those were the only choices in those days) and double cheese. Stupendous and filling! Nothing beats that taste-memory.
ReplyDeleteTaste memory! Indeed
DeleteThe first pizza I had was Tony's Pizza in Toronto when I was 10.
ReplyDeleteOur grade 4 teacher Mrs. Smythe ordered pizza for lunch for everyone.
Tony's was the only authentic Italian restaurant in our neighbourhood.
Very good.
What a sweet memory - smart teacher, too
DeleteWhen, I was a child in the '60s, we lived around the corner from Pieri's Delicatessen and Grocery, a small and successful business run by an Italian family. We would walk up there and get a pizza for Sunday supper.The pepperoni was a bit spicy for me, but other than that it was great, They also sold Toblerone.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they had a pizza oven. Those things are formidable.
DeleteI guess my first pizza was probably at Les’s Pizza in State College PA where I grew up. It was the after football game hangout and the pizza was okay as far as I remember. Of course, hanging out there was the most important part!
ReplyDeleteSigh: Seeing and being seen...
DeleteFrom Celia: it's been a very snowy night and I'm snowed in until my plow guy comes by. But reading this takes me to walking in Rome with my family and stopping for a slice of street pizza. I was 15. The sun is hot and we are on a bridge to Castel San Angelo. I fell in love with Rome and hope I visit there again. Living in London I can't remember ever eating pizza but arriving in New York, here was a new pizza world.
ReplyDeleteAnd (still) my favorite thing about NY Pizza is that you can get it by the slice.
DeleteMy mom had a great recipe for homemade pizza. The dough which was from a Jiffy box mix, but we made the sauce from scratch. Then we put whatever topping we wanted on. It was the best and I haven't found a place that does better. But since I don't make pizza much anymore - I do have a few favorite places around town which are local.
ReplyDeleteThis will be controversial - but I like anchovies on my pizza. Not a fan of pineapple, BBQ chicken etc.
I am an anchovy fan, too!
DeleteThere's anchovies and anchovies. I like Italian white anchovies on anything.
DeleteI don't know if I accurately remember my first encounter with pizza. I may have had it before I started going to school but if not, then I'd venture to say that my first enounter would've been the pizza they served at lunch in school. But I have no way to verify that.
ReplyDeleteAs for pizza now:
I've had it from a few different places, both chain and independent owners.
Wareham House of Pizza - Under the original owner, I have to say I didn't really care for their pizza. They had magnificent subs, but I stopped getting their pizza a long time ago. Then when the new owner bought the place, a co-worker bought us pizza from their one day and so I tried it and it was actually good.
Little Caesar's - They used to be great. We'd travel four towns over to get pizza from them. But they changed something and suddenly their pizza just flat out sucked.
Dominos - You'd be better off eating the box the pizza comes in.
Marc Anthony's (in Onset, MA) - Really good pizza that I used to have a lot when I was still involved in basketball, but it has probably been 10 years since I've had anything from there. They also had some other great food items on the menu that I liked.
American Pizza (in Wareham) - Really good pizza if you eat it in store. I work just down the street from the place but for some reason, their pizza cools very fast and by the time you get it back to the office, it has the consistency and taste of Tupperware.
Papa Gino's - Hands down, the best chain pizza place there is! Love their pizza (Cheese Only, thank you very much). I get it as often as I can afford to. Plus, as a rewards member I get coupons, bonuses and member reward discounts so I never pay full price either. But it is just damn tasty to me.
Ahem, Jay - what about JAY'S HEART at Amesbury's Flatbreads?! Not worth mentioning?
DeleteSorry Edith, totally forgot. But yes, it was quite a delicious pizza experience and I will definitely be happy for a repeat meal if I ever make it back to Amesbury someday.
DeleteOh and I just remembered another good pizza that I had when I went with Edith and Ann to another pizza place. The cheese (with added hamburger) pizza at the Simply Divine Pizza Co. in Falmouth was quite delicious too.
DeleteI did not know that Papa Gino's was good.
DeleteA local joint, Cameo's made the best pizza when I was a teen. We only had it when my sister got her driver's license, since it was in the 'city' and we lived in a nearby small town. These days my fave is from Dominos--chicken, spinach, onion and tomato with a garlic sauce and only from the next town over--the other franchises not so good!
ReplyDeleteYum Sounds like a great combination.
DeleteFirst encounter with pizza? My mother eating a cold slice for breakfast! I was about 12 still following Dad’s food rule: “nothing glopped up”. Mother cooked that way for him and so ate that way herself at shared meals. But when the eighteenish kids next door learned she loved pizza. They would bring her slice when they got home, regardless of the hour. And she would indulge in the cold slice for breakfast. Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteThat was so sweet of them!
DeleteWhat nice kids! I love cold pizza for breakfast. I thought it was perfectly normal until I got married and found out it seemed to "horrify" many of my husband's family. LOL.
DeleteYou had lovely neighbors. I always save a slice of pizza for breakfast.
DeleteFirst time? It had to be at school, just don't remember if it was high or junior high school. I don't remember first time I had pizza outside school but we would order missing cheese on half because my sister wasn't supposed to have dairy. Pizza is one of those "really shouldn't eat" foods now.
ReplyDeleteMy first Pizza was in Italy as a girl. So different from the American concept. It was dough with a drizzle of olive oil, olives , anchovies. No cheese at all. Italy has now embraced the US version
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, the flatbreads were similar to pizza though more like our foccaccia. Some of these had No cheese at all. That was when I visited Rome, Italy.
DeleteI remember having eggplant pizza in Italy - no cheese, no tomato, just eggplant.
DeleteHamilton, Ohio, where I grew up had a LOT of immigrants who came after WWII to work in the Hamilton Foundry (where my German grandpa worked), Mosler Safe Co. (where I worked after high school), and the Champion and Beckett Paper Companies (where my dad worked for a spell), or on the railroads (where my dad and uncle both worked). There were European Jews of several countries, Irish, German, and a LOT of Italians. Ironic, really, because now many in that county--where JD Vance grew up a few miles away, are extremely xenophobic. The sheriff is especially gung-ho on rooting out the Hispanic immigrant population, never mind that they are extremely hard workers, and reliable. But I digress, sorry.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1950's I have no memory of the first time, but I do remember eating pizza from Isgro's down the street. That would have been in about 1956-59, because we moved from that neighborhood in 1960. Hamilton had at least four families with pizzerias in town then, and at least two also had bakeries. I can still remember the tantalizing fragrance of baking bread from Millillo's as we walked past, and some days the aroma would steal in through our windows, blocks away. In the 1960's Pizza Hut came in, and it was popular because of its pitchers of liquid refreshments, but their pies were a pallid version of the real Italian ones. Going to Italy was like revisiting my childhood, the pizza flavors were so familiar.
We are invited to a Super Bowl party today, by my best friend and her husband, who are both as disinterested in the game as I am. Looking forward to it!
interesting history about the immigrant populations over time Karen in your area. Thanks for sharing it. We should all remember how important immigrants are and especially now how important our Mexican immigrants are in farming/agriculture, hotel industry, construction, landscaping/home care, etc. If people think Calif is so beautiful with such areas as Santa Barbara, San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, LA with Spanish architecture, the Calif missions, beautiful plantings (transplanted from Mexico) they can thank the early settlers here which were the early Mexicans. (Spanish/Indians). Their positive influence is felt everywhere today.
DeleteSeconding those thoughts on immigrants. And most, if not ALL of us come from immigrant backgrounds with the exception of native Americans.
DeleteNo kidding. It didn't just happen.
DeleteMy grandparents came from all over Europe: England, Scotland, Hungary, France, Germany, Austria. Why would I resent anyone from anywhere else? We weren't here first. Even my many great grandparents who came here from England in the 1640's were immigrants. I don't understand this phony purity test.
My many times great grandparents came from England , Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Scandinavian countries, Alsace (Germany), France, Luxembourg , Switzerland, Mediterranean countries and the Ukraine.
DeleteA local pizzeria is partnering with the Cambodian Cowboy (a local pop-up) for a Detroit-style pizza with Cambodian Cowboy brisket. I will be picking one up this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteWhoa! I love brisket... Lisa if you check back in let us know how it was.
DeleteThe brisket was very good. The pizza was OK, learned Detroit isn’t my favorite crust type.
DeleteI don't think we ever had pizza when I was growing up in Puerto Rico. When I was 15 we moved to West Vancouver, and I must have had it there with friends while I was in high school, but the first pizzas I remember were in college. The best pizza I've ever had was in Italy--a really simple place with lots of workers making and serving pizza to long lines of people. The pizzas were huge rectangular sheets of dough covered with all kinds of toppings going into and coming out of ovens almost nonstop. Each serving was a large square. I think I had three different ones. My husband and I stuffed ourselves!
ReplyDeleteI have often wondered about pizzas in Italy. I have heard that the best pizzas come from the city of Naples. We were in Northern Italy years ago and the pizza dough we had was literally paper thin. And crunchy almost like a waffer. Not very good.
DeleteThose massive pizzas cut into square slices is what you can still get in Boston's North End - get in line and grab one before they run out for the day and the kitchen closes. I cannot remember the name of the place.
DeleteHallie, did the grandson of Groucho Marx look like his grandpa?
ReplyDeleteHa ha! Not particularly. And he wasn't a "comic"
DeleteThat is funny. I googled his family and it looks like Groucho Marx had four grandchildren.
DeleteGrowing up in a part Italian family in northern New Jersey I have no idea where or when my first pizza occurred. Probably as soon as I was able to eat solid food. There were pizza parlors everywhere when I grew up. The most memorable was in Passaic. It was owned by the singer, Joey Dee's family. The proud mama had his photos everywhere and, when he wasn't touring with the Starlighters, there was a better than even chance he'd be waiting tables. My mother asked about that once. I was google-eyed, but I remember her answer. "What, he shouldn't work here? He's not too good. I don't want that singing to go to his head." Yep, a true Italian mama - keep humble and keep your priorities straight.
ReplyDeleteI make my own pizzas these days. I discovered a breadmaker crust recipe that's fabulous, but not the same as NY/NJ pizza. I think it's true what they say about the water.
Love your reminiscence, Kait.
DeleteHallie I want to mention how great your personal writings/musings have been and how much I've enjoyed them and all the personal writings of each of our very talented 7 Jungle Reds lately.
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU!!!... whoever you are. xxx
DeleteI cannot begin to express my love for pizza. Truly. In pretty rural indiana, we started with Chef BoyArDee, which we would doll up with hamburger and green peppers and it was SO GREAT. Then fast forward a million years, and now...well, I remember, after years of loving pizza without much thought or discretion, having my first Unos. Could that have been on the 80s? And I could not believe it, it was fantastic. With cheese in the CRUST which was amazing.
ReplyDeleteNow I am not much for deep dish anymore, and I think there are three kinds of pizza. One, yuppie pizza, you now? That's good, but isn't quite... pizza to me. Then there's regular carryout pizza, with a little bit thicker crust, and not gooey enough cheese unless you get extra cheese, which we do, but fine, serviceable.
And then--there is authentic cheesy gooey oregano'd oily street pizza, which is so good I could have it every day.
Pizza is one of my favourite dishes! I could easily have it 4 times a week! I remember the Chef Boyardee pizza from the box in junior high. I was not a fan. I used to love Santarpio’s in East Boston. And the original Pizza Regina in the North End in Boston. We make it at home often, sometimes with shrimp, sometimes sausage, sometimes with chickpeas and whatever vegetables are in the fridge. We just had shrimp pizza Friday for dinner.
ReplyDeleteMy mom always made homemade pizza when I little and it was fabulous (thin crust) and when I was a teen, Friday night became pizza night at the local joint, whose name I don’t remember. Now I need a pizza!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading through all the comments about your first pizza or your favorite local pizzeria or the Chef Boyardee boxed or your out-of-country experience. I'm thinking how pizza is one of the very different aspects of me being a child growing up and my children. I don't remember my first slice of pizza, but it must have been at the local Pasquale's, which is still going strong today (best strombolis ever). But, back to the difference in my growing up and that of my children. There was never a "hey, let's order a pizza tonight" meal when I was growing up. I can't think of anyone I knew who did that. Now, when my kids were growing up, ordering a pizza was a welcome idea to me, as I didn't have to cook that night. Then it seemed it was usually Little Caesar's pizza. When in college, Philip liked The Godfather's Pizza, which I can't remember if I liked it, loved it, or just ate it because he wanted to. When Philip was stationed at the Pentagon and the kids and I went to visit, we'd usually hit Uno's Pizza in Union Station, and we really loved it.
ReplyDeleteKathy, same here. In our family, pizza was more likely to be an evening snack than a meal. Most of the time my parents would get it after we were already in bed, but sometimes they'd get us up and let us have some with them.
DeleteI don't think we ate pizza much when I was growing up, although I do remember there was a local pizza joint in the strip shopping center. Mr. Jim's, maybe? What I do remember vividly is my first slice of pizza in Rome, from a shop with a counter open to the street. I had a retangular slice with artichokes, and maybe olive oil and garlic? I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever tasted!
ReplyDeleteI can’t remember my first time eating pizza. I’ll have to ask my older sister if we did the Chef Boy-ar-Dee kind. My dad flew for the airlines so was gone a lot. He was a meat-and-potatoes kind of eater so once we were older, my mom, sister and I would eat the “adventurous” food like Chinese or pizza! (Once my sister got her license we’d go to a Mexican restaurant.) My father was under the impression that pizza was just cheese pizza, which he didn’t like. Some time after we kids were out of the house, my mom found a Take-and-Bake pizza place and explained the concept of pepperoni and sausage to my dad! — Pat S
ReplyDeleteI can't remember exactly when I had my first slice of pizza but it would have been in the 1960's and most likely would have come from a section of my hometown called "The Flats" which had a rich history of European immigration in the early 20th century. Perhaps it was The Venice Cafe which has been in business for 90 plus years. I also have memories of my father returning home after church with hot loaves of freshly- baked Italian Bread that was made in "The Flats". Hmmmm.....When I close my eyes and think back to that time I am able to smell the delicious aroma of that bread hot out of the oven! I was also surprised to read on this blog that others enjoyed having a slice of cold pizza for breakfast...I always thought I was an odd duck because I
ReplyDeleteloved having cold pizza pie in the morning left over from the night before. My mother used to cringe when I would be heading out the door on the fly for high school morning classes armed with a slice or two of cold pizza...I still love having cold pizza for a quick breakfast. In the 1970's I remember that my mother would make "mini pizzas" using English muffins as the "dough" and then put leftover sauce on them with shredded mozzarella and whatever else she found in the fridge like sliced black olives. Does anyone remember how popular that was years ago? After I was married into an Italian family I was fortunate that my sister-in-law and her husband owned a pizza/sub shop for many years called Lentine's and everything they served was always fresh and homemade...absolutely delicious. They created a "white pizza" for me (sans sauce) when I was having temporary digestion issues. It remained on their menu as a popular item for years. Lentine's is no longer in business and I have since moved so finding a pizza as delicious as what they made has always been a challenge. My former dermatologist who earned his medical degree at Yale and has since returned to Connecticut where he was born is a loyal patron of Frank Pepe's Pizzeria which as a medical student was his go to place for great pizza. Pepe's is a favorite of many celebrities and has an incredible history dating back 100 years. It is still owned by the same family now owned by the grandchildren who have opened other locations. Lucky for us "Massholes" 3 Pepe's are located in Massachusetts ~ Watertown, Burlington and Chestnut Hill although arguably the original Pepe's is still the best and there's always a line outside waiting to get inside.
Evelyn: I agree with you about Frank Pepe's and we have often visited the original location in CT. I also love the Birch soda! Alicia Kullas
DeleteAlicia ~ I love the history behind Foxon Park soda. Almost identical to the Pepe's history of 100 years and still owned by the same family. Incredible also the followers of the Birch flavored soda! :-)
DeletePostscript ~ For all you Beatle fans...Can you believe that Ringo Starr has never eaten a pizza?!!
DeleteWe had pizza every now and then when I was a child from a local place called B&F Pizza. At that point, many of the pizza joints in our area were run by Greeks and not Italians. When we started driving to NYC for theater weekends, a friend suggested that we stop for pizza at 238 Commerce Dr in Fairfield, CT (near exit 22) for Frank Pepe's. Well, if you love pizza cooked in a real wood-fired pizza oven with thin crust, then this is the place for you. My husband loves the big bubbles that are sometimes near the edge of the crust. Frank has the best fresh tomato pizza in the summer when tomatoes are in season. I also love the one with the shrimp and garlic as well we the sausage one. I was so happy to learn that Frank had opened a location 199 Boylston St, Newton at the Chestnut Hill Mall. This is my #1 pizza today! -- Alicia Kullas
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely a thumbs up, Alicia!
Delete