Hi everyone! Welcome back from the depths of the silly season, where I’m sure all your eating would have made me proud. Whatever gluttony was involved, I’m just gonna turn a blind eye (what am I talking about? I’m cheering for you food heroes!) and hope y’all had a priceless time with loved ones.
I had a brilliant white Christmas with friends, and I thought that once I landed back in London I’d never have to think about the snowpocalypse again but can you believe it, as we type, NYC is now snowed in and flights are again not getting in or out! This is just insanity and to think at one point they wanted to delay my return flight to London until 26 Dec.
Shhhh-yeah right. If I’d been delayed til the 26th, I’d Still Be There Now!
As much as I love NYC (and totally excited to go back for fun in February), being stranded there for an extra week would have killed me. I’m not really sure what I would have done with myself. Ok, who am I kidding? I totally know what I would have done. I would have stuffed my face with all the awesomeness the city has to offer, such as Lombardi’s Pizza, reputedly the father of the New York style pizza.
On my last day of work in NYC, my co-worker Sam, who by the way also took me for my first authentic Philly cheese steak hoagie (she’s a keeper our Sam), decided that I had to try a pizza from Lombardi’s, America’s first pizzeria. Again, didn’t take too much to twist my arm.
So at lunch on Friday, we cabbed it down to Nolita (North of Little Italy duh) and joined the queue of hungry locals and tourists alike, eagerly waiting to be called and seated and stuffing one of those ginormous beasts into our faces. Despite the long queue, the turnover is constant and within 15 minutes we’re in bizness. There are no “flavours” per se at Lombardi’s. You order whatever toppings you want and it’s all costed up that way. We shared a large (because NO ONE orders a small) pizza with pepperoni, sweet Italian sausage and roasted red peppers.
Firstly, the m*ther f*cker is HUGE.
Secondly, there is no secondly.
The pizza is fracking enormous and doubly delicious, the pepperoni is like crack and I said to Sam that we totally did not even need sausage or peppers. Next time, I’m getting nothing but pepperoni.
And the crust! Cooked in a traditional coal fired oven (which I don’t think many modern pizzerias do any more), the result is the perfect crust – smoked and crispy and bready, but not too bready, and this old dawg also learnt a new thing: the “upskirt shot”, a photo of a pizza slice’s crust, shot from beneath.
Check it out:
The perfect crust on the perfect giant mofo of a pizza. What else could you possibly want? This place is definitely on my February “NYC-eats” list and like I said, nothing but pepperoni. It doesn’t need anything else.
Oh, and we had a house salad too.
Lombardi’s Pizza
32 Spring Street
Nolita, NY, 10012
212 941 7994
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