Senin, 05 September 2011

A Piece Of Pizza Heaven

By Dunkan Bakshmidt


With no question, Ed Levine knows his pizza. He39;s an author, food critic and full time pizza fanatic. Levine just can39;t get enough pizza.

Levine takes his pizza seriously. He consumed over one thousand slices in 12 months, in 20 states and one or two states. The results of this journey, Pizza A Slice of Heaven, is a volume devoted to America's favorite food.

He reviews all manner of pizza and pizzerias. He tries the fantastic as well as the average. He begins his search at the source of all pizza, Naples, Italy. He samples pizza from the East to the West Coast and many places in between. His focus is on pizza so unusual that his heart pounds just contemplating it. Levine has developed his own rubric for rating pizza. He notes the criterion is the fuel source, the oven, the crust, the mozzarella, the sauce and the balance.

This book is more than a review of great pizza. Within these pages are intrepid stories crammed with pizza obsession, fervour, heartbreak, and enlightenment. You can even reveal a cure for the frightening Pizza Burn. Pizza Burn occurs when sealing hot cheese meets the insecure roof of your mouth. He also may include a pizza recipe for the home cook. Ed Levine has done his homework.

Levine is sensible enough to enlist aid from such luminaries as Cooks Mario Batali and Peter Reinhart (American Pie: My Search for the Ideal Pizza), Nora Ehron, Jeffery Stiengarten and many others. These writers add much assorted flavour to the numerous tastes in the book. In a lot of ways this book is a cooperative effort full of Pizza stories and reviews however, Levine pulls it altogether in the last analysis.

Levine is very straight forward about his pizza picks. He might be a New Yorker, and his selections have a Manhattan spin. He feels (as many Folks Living In New York feel), New York is the center of the pizza universe. He isn39;t a pizza elitist, however.

He nods his head to the famous New Haven, Connecticut Pizza; Pepe's, and Sally's Apizza. He does recognize Wooster Street in New Refuge, as being a stronghold of some of the finest pizza in America. He searches NY, Boston, Chicago, The Mid West, The South, The Southwest, and The West Coast. He even touches on South American Pizza. He's taking a bash at Bar Pizza, Frozen Pizza, Chain Pizza and Net Pizza (pizzatherapy.com, a Web site based in Hawaii, is referenced). Red Ink Pizza

Levine rates Hawaii pizza, by enlisting the help of Joan Namkoony and John Heckathorn from Honolulu Magazine. As an element of their research, they ordered 14 pizzas from Kahala to Mapunupuna and brought them back to their office for a pizza party. After a blind-test-side-by-side comparison, one pizza came out on top: Antonio's New York Pizzeria. Owners (and cousins) Anthony Romano and Joe Tramantano are transplanted from Connecticut maintaining the thin crust pizza practice here in Hawaii.

I would recommend Pizza: A Piece of Heaven! Without hesitation or reservation. This is a wonderful book for anybody that ever enjoyed a pizza. Levine doesn39;t sugar coat any of his reviews or suggestions. The book is totally dogmatic and therein lies it's charm.




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