New York Pizza

Birmingham, AL
$8-$12 Entrees

I have often wondered, "Is it morally wrong to eat an entire pizza by oneself?" Not having Emily Post or God Himself to hand, I have never found the answer. I recently borrowed a thesaurus of quotations and looked up a few on the subject of Eating. "A gourmet is just a glutton with brains." I wholeheartedly agree... "The glutton digs his grave with his teeth." Hmmm ... At least I'll die happy. And then I found this one written by the wit, Clifton "Kip" Fadiman in 1957: "Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality." Now we're talking!

At New York Pizza, there is a lot of immortality to go around. I judge a pizza on many qualities, but the most important of these is the amount and quality of the cheese on the pie. The pizzas here will not disappoint. Named after New York City attractions, these creations range from Traditional (such as the meaty Harlem) to Vegetarian (try the gentle Greenwich Village) to Adventurous (read: the Fire Island Fajita) to Gourmet (Ahhh, the Upper East Side). The only one of these categories I would categorically not recommend is the Adventurous. I believe that Mexican food has its place, and quesadillas notwithstanding, this place is not on a pizza.

New York Pizza's unremarkable interior contains booths with dividers painted a distressed blue,
attractive photographs of New York City landmarks, and framed maps of the Big Apple. However, the list of pizza toppings is anything but unremarkable. New York Pizza offers, to name only a few: sun dried tomatoes, pineapple, jalapenos, meatballs, steak, feta, and Alfredo sauce. The only topping conspicuously missing is goat cheese. But that's just me ...

I took a lovely trip to Manhattan in the summer of 2008 and sampled a variety of pizzas while there. However, no pizza I tried could compare to the Park Avenue at New York Pizza. A white pizza (with an olive oil rather than marinara base), this concoction was topped with spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, roasted sliced garlic cloves, smoked bacon, Parmesan, and gorgonzola. The gorgonzola lent this particular pizza its distinctive flavor. Morally wrong or not, I ate the entire pizza by myself.

Now, I usually have the nose of a truffle pig. (And I'm humble, too!) However, there was, among the number of herbs in the seasoning, a pleasingly sharp one I could not identify. I was so curious I went home and tasted a variety of herbs from my spice rack. Not one matched. I suppose that, unless a fellow diner can quell my curiosity, like Leona's secret ingredient in Mystic Pizza, it will remain a mystery.

So, strap on the feed bag, wear a bib, bring la familia, and dig in! For as The New Yorker's James Thurber wrote in 1956, "Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing."

3.5 Kudzu