Midtown Lunch

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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I distinctly remember my very first New York burrito. It was at a cheap dive called La Paloma in Hell’s Kitchen, and after a few years of living in L.A. (preceded by 9 years of eating at the very worthy Anna’s Taqueria in Boston) I pretty much thought it was terrible. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I never had a great burrito in New York. That is a “real” burrito, which to me means a giant tightly wrapped nugget in tin foil, eaten with your hands, and usually stuffed with delicious carnitas. (That’s how I do it.) Some people call it “mission style”. Or “dry” (because it doesn’t have sauce poured over the top.) I just call it a burrito.

But as time went on (I spent 5 years in New York) I could feel myself gradually becoming more accepting of New York’s burrito offerings. And by the end of my time there, I even called certain burritos “decent”- even though they probably weren’t half as good as that original burrito from La Paloma (which I claimed to hate.) Now that I’m back in L.A. I’m guessing the same thing is going to happen with pizza. Because as everybody knows, the pizza here is as bad as the Mexican food in NYC. I don’t doubt that there are decent slices to be had in Los Angeles, and of course there is now Mozza and Antica and even Bottega Louie. But those aren’t Midtown Lunches. Where do us cheap bastards go for a decent pizza lunch!?

Pitfire Pizza? Seriously?!

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