There is a restaurant in the food court at LaGuardia Airport called Joey's NY Pizza. Or maybe they spell out "New York"; I'm going off receipts here. Regardless, Joey does something I've never seen before. A section of the menu is labeled "Pizza by the Slice" — standard enough. But the first slice listed is "Margarita" [sic], and it only gets fancier from there. Damn, I thought when I first saw the menu: only expensive pizza, nothing "plain." But I could clearly see that Joey & co. (there was no Joey) had just taken a big ol' plain cheese pizza right out of the oven. Could this pizza be purchased? Was it a figment of my imagination? Did all of my transactions here have to be mediated by the language of the menu, or could I defy authority and go beyond?
As it turns out, yes. The two people ahead of me on line ordered cheese pizza (I prefer to call it "plain," but cashiers always say "cheese" back to me, even though of course "cheese" does not uniquely identify any one variety of pizza, but I guess they're afraid of selling anything self-consciously common-or-garden (why do the English say that but not us?)) with no problems and, as far as I could tell, no anxiety. Assholes.
Joey's also did the thing where they charge around $3 for one big slice, which is somewhat smaller than two normal slices but in the same ballpark. Ordinarily I'd order two slices, but in this case it was just ridiculous. I assume a consultant somewhere along the line told them that most people don't order two slices but would pay to eat, say, 1.45 slices' worth (merged into a single slice) if given the chance, because they wanted to eat more than a single slice all along but never had the opportunity to do so because the quantum nature of pizza forced them to eat in discrete units. The most bizarre case of this kind of business behavior that I've experienced was in the North End this summer — a pizzeria sold pizza in units of two, always two, but called that a single slice. Trust me, though, there were two distinct slices, cut with that rolly/cutty wheel and everything. But they insisted on calling it one slice and not selling any subdivisions thereof. This is probably how some subset of people acted right after whichever early 20th-c. experiment demonstrated that the atom had an internal structure of its own. All "No way man I'm not selling you any electrons. I don't know what that is. All I have is atoms. That is the basic, indivisible unit of matter." "But I just want one eighth of a pizza pie." "Pizzas are almost not pie-like at all anyway." "String theory!" "String cheese."
I spoke about this subject at this length or greater at my recent job interview. That was probably not for the best.
2 comments:
The authenticity issue isn't really relevant because here in AMERICA Margherita = they put tomato slices and some green stuff on top of a pizza that is usually somewhat thinner than usual. I saw Joey's Margh. with my own two eyes it was most definitely distinct from run-of-the-mill "cheese." Maybe you're not arguing with me, but I felt the point had to be made. Actually I looked up Queen Margherita myself in the course of blogging that blogblogblog, but I rarely if ever believe stories that attribute the invention of anything to monarchs. I remember seeing Leelee Sobieski on Conan insisting that her royal ancestor in the Polish court invented the bagel or some such thing; I call bullshit on that.
I decide -- who lives or dies.
A Mex and the City, in fact, is right next to Joey's at LaGuardia. They share cashiers and everything. This also made it difficult to order because I wasn't sure if there was one line or two -- apparently everyone agreed with you and demanded the burritos, whereas Joey's was getting no love, probably on account of the ostensible lack of normal pizza.
Jess points out that Mex and the City and Joey's are both, sort of, named "after" TV shows. They are probably Friends.
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