Sensual Foods

I have an obsession with pizza creation. Much like my obsession with espresso, it is like a never-ending game of chase where the "perfect" taste is always just out of my grasp. One pizzaiola once described pizza as a "sensual" food, and while that seemed strange at the outset, after considering it I would have to agree. Pizza is the rare food where the best slices we have had in our lives almost always get conflated with a concurrence of important events. It reminds me once more of this great movie scene.

Furthermore, I have been reading a wonderful book about pizza, and feel compelled to transcribe this passage from the book "American Pie." The author writes:

In 1976, I worked in Raleigh, NC as a houseparent in a home for what we euphemistically called undisciplined teenagers; in other words, juvenile delinquents. There was a pizzeria on Hillsborough Street called Brothers Pizza, and although I barely remember the details of the place, I do remember the experience of it. I took the kids there whenever we needed to decompress from the latest dramatic event in our house, and there were always, always dramas. That pizza, and only that pizza among all the pizza shops in town, was a panacea, our emotional salve. It had a crispy, crackly crust, like hot buttered toast, comforting and satisfying. It was perfect. The cheese was stringy and slightly salty. Was it the best pizza I'd ever had? No, but it was "perfect" pizza, a peerless match of textures and flavors that fed more than our stomachs and palates. But if I had it now, all these years later, I imagine it would be...good, perhaps the same as it always was, but it wouldn't be the pizza of 1976, when teenage boys and girls from shattered families, with broken hearts and raging hormones, felt safe enough to confess their fears to me and to one another as they ate their pizza. That pizza, out of that context, would never be perfect again. - Peter Reinhart, "American Pie"

So I realized that if I am to think about and consider the best pizza I have ever eaten, I have to do it within the context of when, where, why, and how. The best food teleports you back to your fondest memories, friends, and family. Here are my top 5:

5. My kitchen - the first time I tried my new modified "slow-rise" dough technique cooked on a cast iron skillet was a messy affair. However, when I pulled the first pizza out of the oven and took a bite, one thought pierced my brain. "That's it." It isn't that the pizza was perfect, it was the fact that it was the first step for me personally in learning to make a perfect pizza. This was the correct first step, and I knew it immediately.

4. Caz Pizzeria - This hometown joint was right on my way to my after-school job. I often stopped in for two slices and a root beer soda for only $2, because in those days I often skipped lunch and was famished by the dinner hour (not to mention was kind of poor).

3. Ray's Original Pizza - My best friends and I traveled to NYC for our good friend's bachelor party weekend. After an evening of merriment, this pizza in our hotel room at 3AM in the morning was the perfect antidote to the buzz in my brain and the emptiness in my stomach. I could have eaten a whole pie.

2. Two Amy's - As close to a perfect pizza as I've had yet, this place in D.C. is the only spot in town that makes my preferred style of Neapolitan pizza. When I think about pizza, this is what I want it to taste like.

1. (there is no #1. that's the whole point; it is the pursuit of a mythical #1 that keeps me awake at night thinking about pizza dough)