Wasn't that Mohammad, or is there some added Zen layer of irony I'm missing?
FWIW, the best pizza I've ever had (though I've never been to Italy, must say) comes from, of all places New Haven, CT, which is so unique that it has its own
Wikipedia page, with links to other pages devoted to several of the landmark restaurants. Technically, it's not "pizza", it's "apizza" and pronounced "ah-peetz"
Before I lived there (99-03), I always had this image of New Haven as a kinda uber-WASP, preppy place (where everyone's first name was someone's grandmother's last name), but that's only really true for about 300 yards surrounding the Yale campus. Otherwise, it's a very diverse place with some fascinating history (among many other things, the first telephone exchange was "coined" in New Haven; they also claim to have invented the hamburger). The problem with New Haven is that it became a kind of study guide for how to destroy cities in order to accommodate cars due to the proximity of the Yale School of Architecture. Before they were done, all of the colonial-era waterfront and most of downtown, along with several middle-class Victorian neighborhoods were demolished for highway projects and street-widening, leaving nothing but the very beautiful and exclusive enclaves that are 99.9% affluent (though not necessarily all-white racially) and vast areas of intense urban poverty (of many cultures and races, too). This leaves very little room for the middle class, which took advantage of all those highways and fled to the suburbs, leaving New Haven practically unlivable.
The only reminder of what life must have been like in the early-mid 20th century (before all that Urban Removal) is one small street that runs just off one of the more pristine and heavily restored early-Victorian residential squares in the city, which has no fewer than five "Apizza" joints, all with buzzing neon and linoleum-topped tables that are loud and brightly lit and serve the best pizza I've ever had. There's a friendly-but-intense competition amongst them as to who's the "best", but to me they're all indistinguishable from each other.
The actual pies are not necessarily round: more likely they have a roughly oval shape with odd bits sticking out here and there in a very random way. Consequently, there is no such thing as a "perfect" slice of New Haven pizza (in that iconic shape of a triangle with a rounded side); most every slice I've ever had was rather thin. long and had a blunt-cut rectangular tip. Typically, there is at least one part of the pizza that is blackened.
The crust is extremely thin and usually crisp. But because olive oil is generously poured on at least certain parts of certain flavors, the crispiness is nicely contrasted with an oily (not greasy) consistency, especially toward the center of the pie. Genuine Apizza is only cooked in specially-made, custom brick ovens set at a very high heat and only ingredients imported from Italy (except the water, natch) are used, and because of their reputation (especially among Yale grads worldwide) plus the fact that these Apizza shops are still small family-owned and operated, the level of quality remains surprisingly consistent and very high.
The "specialty" is a white pie with littleneck clams, to which I never took a liking. My personal order was always for white pie (no red sauce, please, due to my very damaged digestive system) with spinach and black olives: it's just fabulous :wink:
