I'm not a New Yorker, but a New York food person I follow has a small rant about how people obsess about the best NYC slice, but that the real point of NYC pizza is that it's available everywhere in the city, like that you are never far from a good NYC slice --- so that the idea of seeking out particular slices kind of misses the point.
NYC'ers: how bad is that take?
(None of this is to say that it's illegitimate for New Yorkers to have opinions about whether the NYC slices they happen to be near, or were near before, are better than the others --- in the same sense as there are Italian Beef rivalries in Chicago.)
Honestly, a solid take! It’s more of an optimization problem — find the best balance of quality, proximity, and price, and you’ve got your favorite slice shop. If you’re at a friend’s or a loved one’s, that solution changes, and you begin to associate the flavor of that slice with them and their home. Sometimes it’s worth it to make a trip out to one of the pizza Meccas—Lucali, Joe’s on Carmine, L&B Spumoni Gardens, etc.—but more often than not, you’re set with your local slice.
Unless you live in Downtown Brooklyn, where there is no good pizza. Then you’re just fucked.
> Unless you live in Downtown Brooklyn, where there is no good pizza. Then you’re just fucked
There used to be a place in the Atlantic center food court that deep-fried their pizza base. It was unconventional, but pretty great. Unfortunately it closed somewhere last year I think.
meh both are true. The thing is, pizza and bagels and halal course through NYC veins like croissants and baguette in Paris. So there's gonna be discount-pizza and convenience-pizza, but also expensive and artisanal pizza. Often in the same block!
Uniquely to NYC:
- millions of NYers rarely or never cook
- melting pot of cultures, driving authenticity and the second generation driving fusion
- NYC has a wide range of incomes, driving everything from amazing illegal corner tamales to $1000/pp "experiences" and everything in between
- NYC is a destination and people work to live - elsewhere you save-up to move to NYC. You don't "save-up" in NYC to go something else, you just move and stop blowing your money on rent, food, etc.
- the food-heavy neighborhoods have an unbelievable number of restaurants. You can cite statistics and even walk the streets, but it's not until you see Google Maps that it really hits you. Let's say you live in LES/EV, you can easily have 500 restaurants in walking distance, with turnover so fast that you can't even eat in all of them, let alone other neighborhoods.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad take, but I would disagree. It’s kind of like any sports debate where you argue about who is the best or greatest of all time. You’re splitting hairs, but it’s still a fun debate.
Also even at the level of your local places, after eating the amount of pizza you do in New York you can tell small differences in quality such that you will seek out specific places in a certain radius.
I think you're spot-on. Naturally, people from NY are going to have their favorite spots (just like everyone else, everywhere, for anything). Those preferences, though, come from many experiences over time. For an out-of-towner who isn't a NYC pizza connoisseur, practically any spot is going to give you a solid experience representative of the NYC pizza scene. The overall consistency of quality in the city is something that you just don't find in most places.
I'd go as for to say that looking for "the best" NYC pizza is not what you want to do (at least, not for your first NY pizza slice!). Experience just how good an average slice is; if you're not blown-away, at least it's not "the best" and the disappointment won't be as great.
One last point is that "the best" might refer to something very specific. Atop many "best pizza (in the US)" lists is Frank Pepe's in New Haven, CT. While their pizza is very good, nearly every writeup is specifically talking about their white clam pie.
I find that more true for bagels than pizza. Some bagel places are better than others but I don't find much value in crossing the city vs. just going to the best place in your neighborhood.
But pizza's a totally different story for me. First off there's no single "real" point - people like what they like and there's no reason people have to have the same kinds of interest.
I have always and will continue to always travel large distances through NYC to enjoy the pizza places I like. There are clear differences - both in style and quality.
When I'm in a pinch and want pizza, sure. I won't go far. But I personally find the difference between your average place down the block and a sought out destination huge. And if I have the time and energy I'd much rather experience my preferred places.
True for the most part. It is arguable that brick oven or coal oven slices taste different and better. Also, 'premium' slices like Lucali’s might offer superior ingredients (particularly the cheese)
> ...the real point of NYC pizza is that it's available everywhere in the city
I have fam on the Upper East Side and it's not an area with a lot of pizzerias (and definitely not many slice joints). There is a ton of great pizza in the city (and the surrounding Jersey burbs), but you do have to travel a bit for it sometimes even if you live in the city.
Obsessing about the best of any food item is annoying. Food is far too subjective. It's also generally dumb to think one city has a monopoly on a particular food item. I get that there's some obvious regional varieties like gulf shrimp and NYC water.
This is why the current restaurant reviews all suck. What I want is:
IMO what do most people do when talking about restaurants, especially in a group? Someone brings up restaurant X and THEN they say "I usually get dish X, but sometimes Y and Z." and then someone ELSE says "nah, don't get X there, go to restaurant A to get that. But I do like the Z they make there", and then someone ELSE has a different opinion like "oh you like X at A, have you tried X at C?".
The thing that's funny is that everyone has these opinions, and often they are pretty strong. Everyone is a critic.
And yet here we are after SquareWhatever and Google reviews and 20 years of faceyspaces and food instragram porn and we still can't get a decent response to some google thing like "best thai duck curry" (my benchmark dish for a thai restaurant, sorry cute ducks, but you are delicious in red curry sauce).
So why isn't there a site that reward people ranking their "top 5 places to get X dish" or top 5 places for cuisine style X", and then you can ask your social network "where should I get duck curry"?
And it tells you something like:
1) Thai Bistro Bubba (liked by 10 friends: molly peter jason)
2) Sing My Thai (like by 8 friends: blahg blah blah)
Maybe not even need people to have a ranking. Just track who leaves a good review about dish X on restaurant R. Cross ref the style.
Gamification of common dishes/styles shouldn't be that hard. People LIKE reviewing food, and telling people about it.
The economic tiers are a bit hard to do though.
And my frustration with a lot of reviews is that people seem to care about ambience and service a lot more than I do. Ambience is like 5% of an eating experience to me. Service? Well as long as the service is average with respect to demand and staffing, who cares, so maybe 10%. Other 85%? How it tastes (... with respect to how much it cost).
Square was close, but their gamification turned into badges.
And all restaurants are basically 3.5 to 4.5 on google. And places that I KNOW are far different in quality vary by maybe .1 to .2, if it's accurate.
The real tragedy is that the rapacious companies like UberEats and the like that are a pox on the takeout industry have all this info, and they probably won't release it. They have the orders, so they have the popularity, and tons of stuff like who will pay the most to have it delivered the most far.
Anyway, and I would LOVE a filter like "remove chain restaurants" or "show only better than chains". I would love to know if my friends or a trusted group of people had a floor for burritos to not bother if it's worse than Chipotle, which is not an astronomically high bar, but it is a good universal measurement.
Like this guy's data should not be in some one-off site. I've also see an chicago burrito site.
And as others have shown, I don't want a ranking of THE BEST in a city. I want a ranking of "pretty darn good" and a group to choose from.
Restaurants have it so hard. They kind of plop down and hope people come to them, but the people don't know what a restaurant does well. They do "Italian". great. Restaurants might do X better than Y, but the knowledge of that is so limited and fragmented. Open some sub-markets for specific dishes, and it might raise the overall quality of that, kind of like what has happened to the NYC slice of pizza, which is so universal over such a large number of people in an area, that it rose to an art that is well distributed and practiced.
I want that for a LOT of other dishes. Of course it should exist for the burrito, the hamburger. And especially for red duck curry.
There is this in Chicago. It's called LTHForum. It's a PHPBB, not a startup with an app. It's a big enough deal that restaurants that get the LTH seal of approval frame it.
NYC'ers: how bad is that take?
(None of this is to say that it's illegitimate for New Yorkers to have opinions about whether the NYC slices they happen to be near, or were near before, are better than the others --- in the same sense as there are Italian Beef rivalries in Chicago.)