Midtown Lunch

At the end of last month NYC institution place that sells hot dogs in New York, Papaya King, opened  on Hollywood Blvd. Funny billboards appeared all over town, and people started emailing me to ask if I was excited. (“Short fat Jew from NYC must love hot dogs!”)  The Guru weighed in last week with a reverent but kind of lukewarm endorsement that still managed to make us all want to rush over to Hollywood & Wilcox- as only he can do.  So when I found myself in Hollywood yesterday I couldn’t help but swing by (short fat Jewish man does love hot dogs.)

But before I made it to the familiar yellow counter I was stopped in my tracks by another opening that really solidified Hollywood & Wilcox as the place to go whenever I need a little taste of New York City…

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Back in March I was shocked to discover how not terrible Pitfire Pizza was.  With branches on the west side and Downtown, it comforted me to know that after 5 years of NYC plentitude, decent pizza would not be something that was super hard to track down here in L.A.  But Pitfire is more like a poor man’s Mozza, not a go-to lunchtime slice joint… so my quest for a great lunchtime slice was nowhere close to being over. (And by “quest” I mean “excuse to travel around L.A. trying out slices of pizza”.) Lunch’er Wutzizname said in the comments that Vito’s vs. Joe’s was the classic  comparison, and Slice included them both in their favorite pizzas in L.A. list, so when Profiled Lunch’er “Patricia” recommended the white pie at Vito’s last week as her goto lunchtime slice- I was kind of sold.

And despite what Wutzizname said, I’m not so sure the winner is “abundantly clear”.

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