Brick Oven Pizza

Brick oven pizza sucks. I really don’t have much more to post beyond that except maybe a meme of Bill Gates sitting with his hands propped on his chin at a folding table with a sign pasted on the front asking you to change his mind. But, yeah. It sucks in ways that make me wonder how I can share species-hood with anyone who thinks otherwise. If there is a 23andme trait designation for someone that reads “likely to prefer brick oven pizza,” along with “likely to think cilantro takes like soap,” then this person is descended from a Neanderthal and I from a Denisovan.

The nice thing about announcing a Drake vs Kendrick-style throwdown on this topic, though—for me, at least—is that I doubt anyone will try to get me canceled or killed for expressing my feelings about pizza. Papa John, don’t @ me.

I also doubt anyone will accuse me of smearing dolls with ketchup and claiming they are brick oven pizzas. Because that would be insane. Almost as insane as claiming that dead babies pulled from under the rubble of bombed buildings are actually that, which is not only insane but monstrous. But God forbid you publicly call someone the c-word for insisting that’s true because that might lead to you being fired from your job. Though, to be honest, I do regret having used the c-word in that instance. I’m much nicer these days to hateful maniacs whose brains have been tunneled by worms and whom some might argue deserve to have their flesh dissolved in a hot tub of hydrochloric acid burbling away in the pits of hell. Not me. But some.

Truly. I'm Gobsmacked

Anyway. Brick oven pizza. I stare at you enthusiasts stunned. It’s as if you lit a metal trash can on fire, put the fire out with a foam fire extinguisher (pull, aim, squeeze, sweep), dug to the bottom of the steaming can, fished out the slice of pizza at the bottom, scraped the ashy sauce off and then then replaced the Latex-like blob of mozzarella cheese on top, the one that you’d otherwise use to stop your tub drain with. A subway pizza rat would disdain it.

And yet there is a literal line out the door at the new outpost of the Brooklyn brick oven pizza shop in my neighborhood called L’Industrie, and the gourmet grocery store a couple blocks away is awash with vacuum-packed versions dangling in the freezer case that are endorsed by Shark Tank financiers. Don’t get me started on what John’s, purveyor of supposedly the best pizza in New York City, has the temerity to grudgingly box up and DoorDash out. I pity the tour groups forced to nearly dislocate their jaws chawing on their wedges of linoleum pomodoro, gamely pretending this is the authentic big-city cuisine they paid top dollar to eat.

A Better Choice

I far prefer old-school Rivoli Pizza on Hudson Street. Rivoli, which recently got an odd, brick-heavy makeover (the walls, not the oven, thank dog), is a slice-and-a-soda place that still has a dusty fax machine perched behind the counter, though it’s not clear if this is a working piece of equipment or a souvenir from the days of Do the Right Thing.

The counter guys who man the non-brick oven can be kind of sleazy or simply surly, depending on the day, but the pizza is uniformly good. The crust is neither soggy nor doughy, its edges dusted with cornmeal. The cheese is molten, the sauce is proportionate, the rounds of pepperoni spicy and not too thin, curled bowl-like and pooling just a bit of grease in the center, and the slices are generally generous, though when the guy shoving it onto a bent and fluted paper plate is in simply surly mode, not so much.

My husband and son, who argue the benefits of wood versus coal as if the topnotes of edible embers somehow matter, disagree with me vehemently on this. They stan charred flour with painted-on sauce and they both have Italian genes, so who am I to argue? "Why didn't you say something?" they ask. And also: "Are you nuts?" Meanwhile, strangers I’ve friended on Facebook tell me with the convivial zeal of the evangelist I don’t know from brick oven pizza.

One of the only nice things about The Trauma has been finding kind people like this online. People who somewhat make up for all the monsters who scream about dolls smeared with ketchup. They have gently tapped me towards the ceiling when I've drifted downwards, have offered words of consolation and sympathy and, in the case of Joe and Sam, promised to steer me towards good brick oven pizza, the kind the connoisseurs know about, not the blackened, blistered stuff I’ve been dolefully, obliviously eating for years. I’m intrigued. But even more, I’m touched. Thank you, invisible friends, whisked to me through satellite uplinks and downlinks, for bestowing your kindness and your pizza expertise on me. Should we ever one day meet IRL, the slice and a soda from Rivoli are on me.

Photo credit: © Dina Litovsky 2020