The Best Pizza in America

I read in “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, how she was in Napoli and ate “the best pizza in the world”, and I was wondering whether I would ever (or, at least, in the near future) go there and do the same.
“….. it sold the best pizza in Naples. I found this a wildly exciting prospect, given that the best pizza in Italy is from Naples, and the best pizza in the world is from Italy, which means that this pizzeria must offer …. I’m almost too superstitious to say it … the best pizza in the world?”

Recently, I was in Los Angeles and, as my wife and I were waiting for the bus to go the Getty Museum, I had decided to explore around, which my wife didn’t like at all as she said the bus would come and we’d miss it. So I had to tell her that I wouldn’t go too far and would keep an eye on the bus stop. I couldn’t stay still, it seemed such a waste of time just sitting there in the bus stop when there could be so many interesting things to see just around the corner. And I was right, I came across the best pizza in … America. While it may not be the best pizza in the world, I was offered the chance to eat the best pizza in America. It will do; I wasn’t going to complain.



We visited the Getty Museum and, coming back, we went to the pizza restaurant – wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world (I exaggerate but this is the expression).

We ordered a margherita and a vegetarian pizza and, before they were brought to our table, I went to the washroom.
I came back in a state of shock. In order to get to the washroom, one had to go through the kitchen – the washroom door opened right into the kitchen! I didn’t see any rats or cockroaches, but there was disorder, which made it seem dirty even if, perhaps, it wasn’t.

However, I forced myself not to look around too much, I’d already paid for the pizzas and didn’t want to leave.
If I opened a restaurant, I’d put webcams everywhere. I want to see for myself how the pizza I ordered was prepared, not to mention that it would be good hygiene control. If you know you are being watched, you would not take any shortcuts.
So the pizzas came, but I could not enjoy them too much, even if they seemed good; I am not really a pizza connoisseur. Ms. Gilbert has talent and I would never be able to describe a pizza like she does:

“So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria Michele, and these pies we have just ordered-one for each of us-are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she’s having a metaphysical crisis about it, she is begging me, “Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm?”
…………….
The dough, it takes me half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I ever tried. It’s soft and chewy and yielding but incredibly thin. I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust – thin and crispy , or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise. On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one spring of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings a contact high of glamour to every one around her. It’s technically impossible to eat this thing, of course. You try to take a bite off your slice and the gummy crust folds, and the hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it.”