Entries tagged with 'press'
Posted by Adam Kuban, May 28, 2008 at 8:45 AM
Photograph courtesy of The Beef Aficionado
When it rains, it pours, huh? The New York Sun writes about Artichoke this morning, as well. I knew this story was coming out, since I was quoted in it, I just didn't think we'd get hit with two Artichoke Basille items today. The thrust of the Sun piece is that Artichoke is one of the few pizzerias holding down the fort when it comes to good slices in Manhattan and that people are nuts for it.
Mr. Connolly, a New Jersey native, said the best pizza is typically from the Garden State and Staten Island. "Pizza stinks in Manhattan for the most part. Most places use bad ingredients," he said. "But New Yorkers will wait on line for an hour for a slice of pizza. They won't do that anywhere else in the world."
And this bit of news should excite the boozehounds among us:
Starting in July, Artichoke will offer a 32-ounce Styrofoam cup of draft Budweiser for $5. Now, there is only a half-size refrigerator with bottles of root beer and seltzer water. "If you serve Bud at 33 degrees, if you keep it cold, you can turn it over fast," Mr. Garcia said. "I anticipate the beer being a big hit."
As if they need anything else to make that line longer.
After the jump, the ramblings of a madman. (That would be me.)
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 28, 2008 at 3:15 PM
This morning NPR aired a story about online food maps—highlighting websites and blogs that are using digitocartographic technologies such as Google Maps to expose delicioso places to eat. Among the sites mentioned: YumTacos.com, Chinese Food Map, and, yours humbly, Slice. If you wanna hear my droning voice, you can listen here.
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 20, 2007 at 9:28 AM
Holy Slice!
FOS Tien Mao called earlier today while I was at IKEA picking up some office furniture for Serious Eats, and he said he was working from home, flipping through channels, and just happened to land on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
One of the questions, he said, was something to the effect of "The New York–based website SliceNY.com is a blog dedicated to what food: pies, hot dogs, pizza, pretzels?" (I'm probably getting the foods wrong there, but you get the gist.)
This is a stretch, because who DVRs Millionaire, which apparently airs in the afternoon now, but if anyone out there has it TiVo-ed, could you please send it my way somehow?
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 15, 2007 at 4:39 PM
The previous post reminds me that I was negligent in blogging this item about Cronkite and Fornino owner Michael Ayoub from the March 3 issue of the Brooklyn Paper:
Sitting at a table in his award-winning Williamsburg restaurant, Fornino, Ayoub was rightfully proud to be discussing his growing pizza empire. To call Fornino, or its newborn Manhattan sibling Cronkite, a “pizzeria” is a mighty understatement. What he offers—gourmet pies with homegrown and high-end ingredients, including homemade mozzarella and three types of specialty flour—is about as far from a plain old slice as you can get.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 30, 2007 at 8:11 AM
I think I forgot to mention last week that Foodcandy.com did an interview with me. Foodcandy bills itself as "Friendster for Foodies." But, in truth, it's more fun and useful than Friendster. Here's the interview.
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 10, 2006 at 11:44 AM
Um, until yesterday, I had no idea what The 9 was. But our sister site's "Hamburger" Matty tells me, "It's super popular."
So, yeah. It appears to be, since we're getting a whole new crop of emails from "9" people after having appeared there for our Deep-Fried Pizza video. And that's on top of the emails from New York Times readers, who saw Slice mentioned in the Gray Lady on Wednesday. I'm reading all your emails, preparing responses, etc. It'll just take me a bit to get through them all!
Slice on 'the 9' [11/9/2006; 9.yahoo.com]
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 7, 2006 at 7:48 PM
Kim Severson of the New York Times does the best job yet of getting to the bottom of the puzzling Domino's Brooklyn Style Pizza kerfuffle. We're surprised she lived to write the story, after having brought the chain pie into Coney Island's Totonno's for comparison:
“Get that thing out of here,” was the first thing Totonno’s owner, Louise Ciminieri, said when she saw the Domino’s box.
Once we explained that we were on a mission to determine exactly what constituted a Brooklyn Style pie, she softened. Sort of. “When they say Brooklyn Style Pizza they’re referring to us,” she said. “We were the first ones.” [That's a snippet of a Totonno pie at right here. —Ed. ]
And here's a gem from Ms. Severson: "We purchased our Domino’s pie just a few blocks away from Totonno’s on Neptune Avenue. That it was handed to us over bulletproof glass turned out to be the most authentically Brooklyn part about it."
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 16, 2006 at 9:00 AM
Cravings, the monthly web-based food magazine published by Celia Cheng, just published an interesting feature about foodbloggers for its August issue. And it's not just interesting because Slice and our sister site, A Hamburger Today, are featured ;)
Ms. Cheng talked to eight other foodbloggers, and it appears she did the same thorough interviews with them as she did with me. I've been looking forward to this feature for the past month, as Ms. Cheng went beyond the typical questions ("How long have you been publishing?" "What's your favorite pizzeria?") in her attempt to suss out the motivations and methods behind the blogs. Other blogs featured are (left to right, top to bottom, as represented by the site icons in the screenshot above): The Strong Buzz, The Food Section, The Hungry Cabbie, The Paupered Chef, Cupcake Bakeshop, [Slice/A Hamburger Today], She Loves NY/Eater, Nordljus, and Cha Xiu Bao.
Special Feature: Let's Talk About Food [Cravings]
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 15, 2006 at 11:02 AM
This site was mentioned in the New York Post today in a story about Google Maps mashups. Referring, of course, to our Slice Pizza Map.
Nyslice.com lets hungry New Yorkers see the city with topographical pizza goggles on. In other words, the way it was intended.
Unfortunately, the paper botched our URL. In other words, their hungry readers will remain pizzagraphically challenged and hungry.
Off the Charts [New York Post]
Posted by Adam Kuban, February 3, 2006 at 3:07 PM
Slice gets a nice mention in a story by Pete Wells on the website of Food & Wine. The column, titled "In the Belly of the Blog," details Mr. Wells's attempt to "get beyond the boring 'cheese-sandwich' genre of blog to celebrate the idiosyncratic ones that make him say Wow." I'm flattered that Slice and sister site A Hamburger Today were both mentioned as blogs that wow Pete:
Finally, like any good piece of writing, a blog needs a sense of purpose. The author can't just curl up on the sofa like an overfed retriever and recollect his last bowl of kibble; he should strain forward like a terrier who's late for an appointment with a ham bone. Above all, the author should know how to complete the sentence "This blog is about___." That's why I admire Adam Kuban, whose blog Slice is about pizza and nothing but pizza. Kuban is always on guard against mission creep. "Sure, I'd love to rhapsodize about how great the new Battlestar Galactica is," he writes. "But I can't. I've gotta stay on message here. So until I see Admiral Adama chowing down on a slice between Cylon attacks...I can't go there." If you're concerned that Kuban is not eating a well-balanced diet, relax. He also edits the blog A Hamburger Today, which is even more exuberant, perhaps on account of the extra protein.
Also mentioned favorably are a few of my favorite foodblogs, Deep End Dining, Noodlepie, and The Food Section.
In the Belly of the Blog [Food & Wine]
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 19, 2006 at 3:38 PM
This website gets a passing mention in a story in the Los Angeles Alternative (wow: all the LA love lately). The story's called The Internet Killed Xerox Zine-sters, and you can pretty much guess what it's about. Unless you don't know what a zine is.
What they say about Slice:
“For writers, publishers, photographers and more, a blog is the easiest way to get what you create in front of people,” notes [LAist editor Carolyn] Kellogg. “When I was an editor at The Fizz, it took us two months to do all the editorial, layout and production of our newsprint zine. A multi-contributor blog can do that process in a single day, and individual contributors can publish their own pieces once they’re ready. An individual with a blog is a whiplash-fast publishing machine.”
Blog readers certainly fancy themselves well informed, and well armed against the powers of filtered news—ready at any moment to rise against those powers with one click of key.
You can also use blogs to rise up and get a slice of pizza (SliceNY.com catalogues the best Pizza in New York, complete with an interactive pizza map).
It is in these situations, (the democratic one, not the pizza) that alternative media sources have been effective in forming popular opinion or, conversely, breaking it from rigid paradigms of thought.
Not that you care, but Slice was originally conceived of as a zine at some point in 1998 or 1999. (I should see if I still have the original quarter-page mock-up laying around corporate HQ.) I scrapped the idea, however, figuring it'd be too much time and effort to copy, collate, staple, and distribute a print version. Plus, who the hell was going to read a zine about pizza in Portland, Oregon?! (That's where I was living at the time.)
The Internet Killed the Xerox Zine-sters [L.A. Alternative]
Thanks to reader Joe in L.A. for hipping me to this story.
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 17, 2006 at 6:12 PM
After being mentioned
in just about every other paper in and around the city, Slice finally got some play in the Old Gray Lady itself (or should that be
herself?). Joe Sharkey writes in his "Memo Pad" column:
HOLD THE ANCHOVIES Business travelers are familiar with Zagat restaurant guides, but pizza parlors usually do not show up in them. Now there is good news for discerning peripatetic pizza lovers: a blog dedicated to pizza, www.sliceny.com. The site, published by Adam Kuban, is New York-oriented, but it also contains reviews from readers in many other cities and foreign locales, including Siberia. There is also pizza lore, including Yogi Berra's famous comment, "You better cut the pizza in four slices because I'm not hungry enough to eat six." Chicagoans, take note: the focus is on thin-crust pizza by the slice. The site professes to loathe deep-dish. For traveling hamburger aficionados, another food review blog, started last May by Mr. Kuban, is www.ahamburgertoday.com.
Thanks for the shout out, Joe.
And a note to anyone reading from Chicago, we don't loathe your pizza and have reconsidered our trash-talk on your Windy City way with the pies.
Memo Pad: Hold the Anchovies [New York Times]
All Slice press mentions [Slice archives]
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 10, 2006 at 10:43 AM
In a story headlined "The unkindest slice of all," the New York Daily News reports on the reasons behind Lento's closing: declining business and what seems to be a family dispute.
[Linda] Cahill's grandfather, Eugene Lento, turned the space into a pizzeria 73 years ago after the speakeasy he ran began losing dough at the end of Prohibition.
Upon his retirement, Lento handed the business to sons-in-law Anthony Tortora and Herbert Connors, and in 1988 Cahill and three others took over.
Lento's daughter, Mary Lento, inherited the building at 7003 Third Ave. when Lento died in 2002.
"My grandfather reassured us there would be no reason to worry," Cahill said. "We didn't think there would be a problem because why would anyone want to close their father's legacy?"
The reporter contacted me for comment, which I gave. But I sound funny, even though the quotes are accurate.
The unkindest slice of all [New York Daily News]
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 8, 2006 at 11:00 PM
Slice was mentioned in the Sunday newspaper insert USA Weekend (January 06–08), along with some other familiar names in foodblogging (The Food Section, The Accidental Hedonist, Chocolate and Zucchini, Too Many Chefs, Obsession with Food, and Orangette).
It doesn't seem to be available online, so I scanned it for your reading pleasure (above).
Greetings to new readers via the USA Weekend section, and many thanks to longtime readers.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 4, 2006 at 3:11 PM
Slice and its sister site, A Hamburger Today, are featured in today's Los Angeles Times. From a story called Have we gone blog wild?:
WHEN food blogging was new (about 15 minutes ago), it was fun to pore over the gastronomic musings at the Accidental Hedonist or I Was Just Really Very Hungry. In those days, reading about what someone ate for dinner or which food magazine they liked best was kind of amusing. But quicker than you could say blogosphere, the world of blogs-by-dedicated-foodies got crowded, repetitive, overly precious and just plain dull.
These days, hyper-focus is in; generalism is passé. A food blogger who wants to stand out from the rest of the pack has to be specialized. Really specialized. And more and more, specialization is taking the form of pinpoint devotion to an exhaustive coverage of a minusculely narrow food-related topic.
Slice and AHT are among a handful of niche foodblogs mentioned. Also featured are the likes of Burrito Eater, Bacontarian, the disgustingly excellent Deep End Dining, and a few others.
Here's what Avital Binshtock writes about Slice:
Adam Kuban, keeper of sliceny.com, is passionate about pizza. Why else would he have eaten it every single day for six months straight? And that was before it even occurred to him to start a blog. His site includes an interactive map of New York City, overlaid with pizza slices. Click on one and a bubble identifies a pizzeria, with its address and photo. Clicking the pizzeria's name within the bubble takes you to Kuban's review of the place.
Zoom out to see where, besides New York, Kuban has sampled pizza. In Las Vegas, for example, he ordered a couple of slices at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino only to find that "the pizza lived up to every cliché in the book: crust like cardboard, sauce like ketchup, cheese like rubber. Sbarro is better."
Some bloggers admit that they sometimes get tired of their own minutiae. Kuban confesses it's tough to not force the writing — or burn out on the food, for that matter. "There's only so many ways you can describe crust, sauce and cheese," he says.
For the entire story, click through to the L.A. Times: Have we gone blog wild? — or just read through the jump, where I've copied and pasted the whole thing.
Here's the la.foodblogging take on the story: LA Times Covers Foodblogging, Shuns LA Foodbloggers
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 29, 2005 at 2:59 PM
What do Slice and infamous shock jock Howard Stern (left) have in common? We're both coming soon to Sirius Satellite Radio.
Unlike Mr. Stern's impending move to the spacewaves, however, our time on air will be fleeting. Slice (and by Slice, I mean me) will be on the recently launched Martha Stewart Living Radio channel talking about foodblogs for a five-minute stretch. I have no idea what they're going to ask, but I'll be typing up a talking points memo tonight.
If you subscribe to Sirius, you can listen either on Channel 112 or online. For those of you who don't, you can sign up for a free 3-day trial and listen online.
I'll be on tomorrow (Wednesday, November 30) live at 8:45 a.m. EST and again (live, not rebroadcast) at 5:26 p.m. EST.
By the way, Slice's own city editor, Seltzerboy can be heard on MSL Radio daily with his Word of the Day segment.
Sirius Satellite Radio
Martha Stewart Living Radio
Free 3-Day Sirius Guest Pass
Posted by Adam Kuban, November 18, 2005 at 12:00 PM
A SLICE WITH LIFE
A slice with LIFE? Make Make that five slices with LIFE. The magazine, reincarnated in 2004 as a weekend newspaper insert, asked me to serve on a panel of five judges in its "Battle of the Boroughs" pizza contest. Five slices, five boroughs, five pizzerias, five judges: Let the conspiracy theorists go wild.
To find the best of each borough, the magazine tallied votes on its website a few weeks ago. Reppin' their respective regions were: DeMarco's (Manhattan), Joe & Pat's (Staten Island), L&B Spumoni Gardens (Brooklyn), Louie & Ernie's (The Bronx), and Singas Famous (Queens).
The judges—NYU graduate food studies director Jennifer Berg, LIFE food editor Joanne Chen, Z100's Skeery Jones, New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis, and I—were instructed to rate the slices, from 1 to 5 (5 being highest), in five categories: Presentation (worth 20%), Crust (20%), Sauce (20%), Cheese (10%), and Overall Quality (30%).
The LIFE staff brought slice after slice to the table, and, for once, I was glad I'd missed breakfast. Even on an empty stomach, judging was no easy feat. My plan was to take a few key bites from each slice (I learned this technique the hard way, judging a pizza contest on Long Island last year), but the diminutive Singas Famous slice—a quarter-slice of a 10-inch pie (left)—looked so good that I ate it all. Same with the superthin slice of Joe & Pat's that came out next, with its dollops of satisfyingly browned cheese and fresh-tasting sauce.
What I was worried about was the L&B square (right). Despite its surprisingly airy crust, I knew from experience that it could be filling. Either my stomach was numb (not that that's possible) or my pizza craving was uncontrollable, but even that formidable Sicilian didn't seem to put a dent in my hunger. And while I'm normally a fan of L&B, I have to say, the sauce this time struck me as a little too sweet.
Note: The LIFE folks, who were well-organized and a pleasure to deal with, were using a blind-judging system. If it seems as if they weren't, that's because I recognized four out of the five pizzerias from various visits past. The one slice I didn't recognize was the fourth one out of the gate (below right). Pleasant surprise, too. By process of elimination, it must have been Louie & Ernie's. Staten Island and The Bronx couldn't be any different from each other, but the slices represented here could have been brothers, at least superficially. Louie & Ernie's had the same superthin crust thing going on as Joe & Pat's (below left), if not more so. They both had the same browned, slightly burned cheese thing, too. They also had a similar color palette—the whole brownish-red thing—but what does that matter? What I really liked about Louie & Ernie's was that browned, crisped cheese. There was something satisfying about its toothsomeness and breaking through it into a very creamy, fresh-tasting layer of mozzarella below. This place has me curious, and I vow to make an in situ visit post-Xgiving.
Four slices down, and I still had room for more. I knew DeMarco's would be next and last. What I didn't know is that the DiFara spin-off would be offering its square slice (which I haven't yet tried) instead of the regular slice I was familiar with. Squares aren't usually my bag, but this was an impressive Sicilian. High-quality, creamy cheese under dollops of fresh sauce and pools of olive oil. A bit messy, but tasty. After turning in ballots, the other judges seemed to be murmuring approval, too.
Thanks to the efficient folks at LIFE, who kept a running tally of votes throughout the eating, the winner was announced lickety-split. And then it was time for me to split.
But I won't make like a banana in this post without giving you the winner: DeMarco's.
Sometimes when it comes to the tally in these things, you're pretty sure who's ahead, but I had no idea here. My marks for the different slices were pretty varied from category to category and from pizzeria to pizzeria. The other judges seemed to hold their cards pretty close themselves. I think a good pizzeria won the day, though, so, uh, I guess that's that.
DeMarco's [Slice]
Joe & Pat's [Slice]
L&B Spumoni Gardens [Slice]
Louie & Ernie's [via NYT]
Singas Famous
Judging Long Island Pizza [Slice]
Roll Tape [Slice]
More of Slice's 'Battle of the Boroughs' Photos [via Flickr]
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 13, 2005 at 9:30 AM
Slice turns 2 today, and what nicer way to start our second year than with a birthday present of sorts from the Village Voice. We were named Best Hunger-Inducing Website in the weekly's annual Best of New York section.
Aw, shucks. While I humbly confess there are people in New York who know more about pizza than I do, I'm just happy the Voice saw fit to give us some props. Thanks, Voice!
Posted by Adam Kuban, September 25, 2005 at 10:57 PM
Not to be outdone by the Post, the New York Daily News has two items on pizza today.
The first is about Brooklyn-style-pizzeria owner Todd Duvio's effort to rebuild his New Orleans restaurant and his blog detailing it. Slice had this story last week, but it's good to see Mr. Duvio getting some wider press. We're hopeful that Brooklyn memorabilia will start moving his way.
The second item mentions Slice:
Mutz to you
If you've still got pizza on your mind, it's time for a visit to the city's own pizza blog, Slice (sliceny.com). Its slogan: "Crusty, Saucy, Cheesy."
Although the site is clearly a for-profit enterprise, modeled on corporate-owned blogs like Gothamist (gothamist.com), Slice tries hard to maintain a down-home feel - its city editor is called "Seltzerboy."
"We're Big Apple-based, with a special affinity for New York-style pies, but we're wild about pizza in general," the site's editors write. "We're even warming up to the idea of deep dish."
Well, if we're "clearly a for-profit enterprise," the ad sales team down on seven here at Slice corporate apparently didn't get the memo. I'll have to talk to HR about poaching some of the Gothamist Corporation's sales reps.
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 29, 2005 at 6:11 PM
If you live in New York City, subscribe to Time-Warner Cable, and have a high tolerance for hot air, you can tune to NY1 between 6 and 7 p.m. tonight or tomorrow to catch this site's editor & publisher on the air. NY1, for those non–New Yorkers reading this, is like a CNN for the Big Apple. The all–New York-all-the-time channel will air a segment on Google Maps mash-ups in which I appear blabbing about how neat the tool is.
Slice, of course, uses the function in our recently released Slice Pizza Map, which plots all the pizzerias that we or our correspondents have reviewed since this site's inception.
If you didn't see or don't end up catching the piece, you can read and watch the online version here. All in all, it was pretty painless doing the quick, five-minute interview. NY1 technology reporter Adam Balkin did a great job on the editing, making me sound coherent while adding just the right screen shots that illustrate the points I was trying to make. Thanks, Adam!
Google Maps Mash-Ups All The Rage On The World Wide Web [NY1]
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 16, 2005 at 3:33 PM
Almost a year ago, this site's editor and publisher, Adam K. (that's me), was called upon to serve as a judge in the annual Best of Long Island Pizza Contest. Contest organizers told me that the judges would be sampling 25 slices of pizza—five pizzerias competing in five categories. They told me that the Food Network would be there, taping for the show All American Festivals. They also told me not to eat breakfast.
This site's roving reporter, E-Rock, joined me on the journey to Farmingdale (that's who I'm consulting with in the screen capture at right), and our antics and recap of the day can be found in this entry from October 06, 2004. What concerns us today is the fact that I've finally gotten my greasy hands on a digitized, web-based streamcast of the All American episode depicting the L.I. pizza bash. (Watch it here.)
I appear in it for a total of about 2 seconds. E-Rock, maybe 1 second. I'll tell you who does get some serious airtime, and that's Miss Long Island (above). Host Jim O'Connor paid a heck of a lot of attention to her for a man wearing a wedding ring. But I'm not so naive as to think he'd actually want to talk to this dirtbag when the more telegenic Miss L.I. was just to my left. I mean, hey, sex sells, and what do I know about pizza anyway? Alright, have a look at the video. E-Rock and I appear a little over 9 minutes into the show, if you're interested.
The episode touches on a bit of pizza history and technique before highlighting a pizza-eating contest and a children's meatball toss (I don't know either), both of which served as welcome respites from eating. The funny thing about the show, or the contestants, rather, was something even my mom picked up on when she watched the episode some months ago—and she's by no means a pizza purist. "They're all so concerned with winning the speciality pizza division," Ma Slice said, "but you'd think the real honor would be in the regular pizza or even the Sicilian contest."
My thoughts exactly. I'd hazard a guess that most of a pizzeria's sales are on plain or modestly topped pies and slices, not those monstrosities with salads—or a Tyson chicken factory—dumped on them. So Ma was right (once again) when she said, "If you focus on the basics, the rest will fall in line."
Anyway, that's that. I encourage you to check out the Food Network video. Not only that one, but I produced a short film highlighting the day, too. It's set to Kiss's "Any Way You Slice It," and it rocks. Hard. Chekk it.
All American Festivals: "Pizza"
Long Island Pizza: Judge's Dread
Any Way You Slice It (11.9MB Quicktime .mov)
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 15, 2005 at 11:38 AM
Well, I didn't see this until today, but I guess our handy little invention that goes by the name of piPod was featured in the New York Post on Sunday.
Oy: We really need to do some updating to our piPod database.
From the story:
"I used to keep all my to-try information on Post-it notes," says Adam Kuban, 30, inventor of the piPod, a free program at piPodNY.com that gives mini-reviews of several dozen pizza places in the five boroughs.
Since it was put online last summer, it's been downloaded by 1,300 pizza-lovers.
"I started putting pizza-location info onto my iPod because I always carry that with me - it's something I'm not trying to lose. From there, I just thought I'd offer those notes to readers of my website [sliceny.com].
Read the entire thing after the jump.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, March 3, 2005 at 12:01 AM
A CUT ABOVE: Newsday ran a story yesterday tied to the release of Ed Levine's new book, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven (right). Headlined The Best Pizza, it featured pizza connoisseurs (above, clockwise from left) Audrey Aponte, Sam Kinsey, Geof Grayson, and Slice editor in chief Adam K. Pictured here at Peperoncino, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, these slice aficionados discuss the merits of a Friday evening dinner.
So, one of Slice's favorite food writers, Ed Levine, wrote a book. His book's about pizza. No surprise there: Mr. Levine is a huge pizza fan. Long Island's paper of record, Newsday, did a story on his book, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven and on some of the notable pizza nerds out there searching for sublime slices.
Slice's editor in chief, yours truly, was among the sliceheads interviewed for Josh "Mr. Cutlets" Ozersky's entertaining story. Also interviewed were Audrey Aponte, who with Tien Mao, has a website dedicated to pizza; the insanely knowledgable Sam Kinsey, who's at the heart of eGullet's insanely detailed NYC Pizza Survey; and Geof Grayson, a former Long Island pizzaiolo and current pizza consultant.
To read what the pie freaks had to say, click though the jump below.
To buy Mr. Levine's insightful book, click on its image above to go to Amazon.com.
Continue reading »
Posted by Adam Kuban, February 23, 2005 at 1:07 PM
It's an embarrassment of riches today in terms of DeMarco's reviews. It was brought to our attention this morning by friend and Slice reader J.J.J. that the New Yorker features DeMarco's in its Tables for Two column this week. It seems you either love DeMarco's or hate it, and the New Yorker seems to love it.
And speaking of love, Slice loves that fact that we get a passing mention in the review:
Over the past few months, nervous anticipation has characterized discussions among pizza fiends about the quasi-expansion of Brooklyn’s legendary Di Fara’s into Manhattan. To begin with, there was the promise of pedigree—two of Domenico De Marco’s children are in on the new venture, although they were forbidden to import the forty-year-old business’s name. Last month, the pizza blog sliceny.com posted photographs from the two pizzerias taken the same afternoon, in order to compare the bottom-crust charring (Di Fara’s proved slightly blacker, but the bloggers admitted the test had no bearing on the crust’s crispness).
The good news is that the De Marco’s slice is nearly as good as Di Fara’s. It has the signature savory tomato sauce, like the one Domenico makes using herbs he grows in his shop windows, and each pie gets three kinds of cheese and a final drenching with olive oil before it hits the oven. But they’ve got some fundamental elements wrong. Domenico makes each pie fresh for customers, who watch as rapt as if it were sushi at Masa, pummelling a lump of dough into shape and futzing over the arrangement of mozzarella on top. At De Marco’s, the kitchen works ahead, stockpiling perfect circles of dough and reheating slices on demand. It takes its toll: the congealed cheese never tastes just right again, and the layering of flavors and textures in each bite becomes muted.
Even so, for the unobsessed, the thin-crust slices from the round pies will seem great. They are certainly a triumph compared with the rest of the pizzas. The square, thick-crust slices, a long-baked sacrament at Di Fara’s, are terrible at De Marco’s—they taste like focaccia smeared with Ragú. And, even more mysteriously, the whole pies, served in the depressing, airport-bar-like restaurant next door, aren’t half as good as the take-out slices. It’s no surprise that the Manhattan place lacks the dusty charm of Di Fara’s, where about the only addition in forty years is the vintage shortwave radio on the windowsill. De Marco’s may have the best slice in Manhattan, but it’s no substitute for the trip to Avenue J.
FURTHER READING
All Slice posts on DeMarco's [The Slice Archives]
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 19, 2005 at 12:17 PM
Last night, Slice was talking about Sacramento with our HR director, H. Smith. Ms. Smith mentioned that her brother lives in Sacto, is a loyal Slice reader, and has been recommending the site to friends out that way. Could he be partly responsible, then, for the brief mention we received today in a sidebar to a story on food blogs in the Sacramento Bee*? Who knows?
THE SACBEE ON SLICE Content: Though heavily tilted to the pizzerias of New York City, Slice offers leads on first-rate pizza in other cities, links to numerous pizza Web sites - who knew there were so many? - and "
The Pizza Peel," a forum where all things pizza are debated vigorously.
In a word: Fun
Best for: Anyone who likes pizza, which means everyone
HONORABLY MENTIONED Click here for other coverage Slice has gotten in the press and online.
What we do know is that it's a nice story, by Mike Dunne, about the groundswell of food blogs out there and how they're changing the way grub is shared and thought about. Particularly interesting to us was a passage about how food blogs are affecting the traditional restaurant review. As Pete Snyder, founder and CEO of
New Media Strategies, a web-trend consultancy, said, blogs are
"throwing the balance of power in the restaurant industry off kilter." Up to now, restaurateurs in any one city had to be concerned with only a few restaurant critics, whom they sometimes could recognize and provide with sharpened service. Now, however, anyone with a Web site can be a stealthy restaurant critic.
"Chefs and restaurateurs can't possibly have all their bases covered all the time, so foodies have a better chance (than a recognized critic) of seeing flaws," Snyder says.
Also interesting to us was that a few food bloggers have gotten book deals as a result of their sites:
At this point, most food bloggers look to be happy with expressing themselves and with getting periodic recognition from their peers, but several also are aware that commercial possibilities could arise with their site's very next visit.
[Rebecca] Blood [of Rebecca's Pocket] recalls being approached "out of the blue" by a publisher who ultimately signed her to the contract that led to "The Weblog Handbook." In the summer of 2002, Julie Powell, a New York "government drone by day, renegade "foodie" by night," began a blog on her attempt to cook the 536 recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" over the ensuing year; the Julie/Julia project also landed her a book deal. Reports of other bloggers morphing into published authors are increasing, scuttling at least for the moment speculation that the rise of blogs could jeopardize traditional print media.
Heh. If anybody wants to offer Slice a book deal, we wouldn't turn our nose up at that pie.
But seriously, the story is a good read, and it's chock-full of links to some great blogs, such as A Full Belly, The Food Section, The Accidental Hedonist, and Becks & Posh.
Oh, and speaking of our HR director—you didn't know we had one, did you?—she was helping Slice editor & publisher Adam K. recruit a bureau chief for our upcoming Tokyo office. More on that later.
Big ups to the Sacbee copy editor who wrote the headline for this story. It appeared in that publication as "Finger Clickin' Good." Heh.
* Along with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the SLC Deseret News, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, one of our favorite newspaper names.
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 11, 2005 at 12:40 PM
A few weeks ago, a reporter from the Brooklyn Papers contacted Slice's editor and publisher, Adam K., and expressed interest in profiling yours truly for a piece in the various neighborhood-zoned editions of his publication. Why not, I thought.
And so Brooklyn Paper reporter Jotham Sederstrom, photographer Greg Mango, and I met at Franny's on a cold late-2004 evening to discuss Slice's origins, goals, etc. Two weeks later, my ugly mug could be found on newsstands in laundromats, delis, and Chinese restaurants throughout parts of the BK—along with a nicely written story. Thanks, Jotham!
Click past the jump to read the story. As for the pizza, this was the fifth time I'd been to Franny's, and the place really can't get much better. It was great to begin with the first night I tried it, and has gotten better with each visit. I finally tried the much-recommended fennel-salami pie. It's now my favorite of their pizza offerings. Anyone in the delivery zone of the Park Slope Paper would be well-advised to visit Franny's (295 Flatbush Ave., b/n St. Marks Ave. and Prospect Place).
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 6, 2005 at 11:58 AM
You may recall that Slice was nominated for an Accidental Hedonist Food Blog Award late last year. We're pleased to report that we won the award, which was for Best Themed Food Blog. We had some tough competition in the likes of Kosher Bachelor, Eighteenth-Century Cuisine, Mum-Mum, and Pho King.
Thanks to the Slice readers who voted for us, and big ups to the Accidental Hedonist for organizing this whole thing. It was a great idea, and we look forward to next year's event.
Now, speaking of blog awards, you may have heard about the Bloggies. We're not saying anything, but there is a food-blog category.
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 14, 2004 at 2:39 PM
Slice's editor in chief (that's me) just got an instant message from his friend
Laren, something to the effect of "Did you know you're in the January issue of
Bon Appétit?"
"Huh? No! No way!" I said.
Raiding petty cash, I went to the nearest newsstand to pick up a copy or two. Sure enough: There in the "Starters" section, on page 20 of the January 2005 issue, is an item about food blogs:
Blogging—the internet phenom in which people write diary-like website entries about their personal obsessions—has hit the food world, and now anyone who eats has something to say. Here are a few of our favorite sites that rise above the blog babble.
Slice is in good company on this list, with the likes of
The Grocery List Collection,
Sauté Wednesday,
The Food Section, and
Vinography.
Thanks to Bon Appétit for the recognition, and to the motley crew here at Slice for all the hard work you put in.
And congrats to our food-blogging compatriots who made the list. We urge our readers to check them out—bon appétit!
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 6, 2004 at 5:48 PM
A late-in-the-day Thanks! goes out to Charlie Suisman and his great website Manhattan User's Guide. Mr. Suisman's MO is to pick a New York–centric topic and then serve up the best info he can find on it, coming up with links, businesses, services, and happenings that are often useful, obscure, and fun all at once. We encourage you to check it out.
MUG's topic today was food blogs, and Slice, your favorite pizza blog, made the list. Given the careful consideration with which Mr. Suisman compiles his lists, we are honored to be mentioned on the site and are in very good company. Among the picks are some old Slice favorites and some fun sites that are new to us: A Full Belly, Mouthfuls, Chowhound, CityRag, Words to Eat By, Vittles Vamp, Andrea Strong, Epicurious, Gaijin Girl, Frost Street, eGullet, Chocolate and Zucchini, Shameless Restaurants, Salli Vates, Gothamist Food, Gastropoda, and The Food Section.
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 1, 2004 at 1:10 PM
The New York Sun, which "shines for all," sheds some rays on the recent pizzification of Park Slope, a subject we examined not too long ago on Slice. Unfortunately, the Web version of the Sun shines only for those who have online subscriptions to read it. For the rest of you, Slice, like Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, has scanned the article for your elucidation.
The fire analogy is particularly appropriate for this pizza story. That's because Sun writer Paul Lukas examines three wood-fired-oven pizzerias in the neighborhood: La Villa, Franny's, and Peperoncino. We first became aware of Mr. Lukas's work through his 'zine, Beer Frame, and have enjoyed reading his UniWatch column, first on Slate, then on ESPN. We think he did a fine job scoping out the Slope's pie scene.
Here's the part where I'd normally digest what was written in the review, but since I can't copy and paste from the print version and don't feel like taking the time to transcribe it (it's lunchtime and I'm starvin' like Marvin'), you're just going to have to A.) Click on the image above to enlarge it, and B.) Read it in scanned form.
Oh, yours truly is quoted in the story, so check it out.
I just hope I don't get chained to a rock for providing you, dear reader, with this scanned bit of pizza news you no doubt hunger for.
Enjoy.
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 23, 2004 at 8:34 AM
Not much time this morning to write much of an entry here, but here's the New York Post on the Joe's closing:
When your rent hits the sky, like a kick to the eye — that's finito.
Joe's Pizza, a world-renowned Bleecker Street fixture on the corner of Carmine Street, is closing after 29 years because of an enormous rent hike, the owner told The Post.
"It makes me sad," said Joe Pozzuoli. The landlord is "asking too much. I offered him $11,000. He said no, he said he's renting it for $15,000 plus tax."
That's quite a jump from the $900 Pozzuoli said he's been paying for decades for the 240-square-foot space.
The popular Greenwich Village pizzeria, which has been immortalized on big and small screens, most recently in the opening scene of "Spider-Man II," will stay in business sporadically throughout the rest of the month. It most likely will close after Halloween.
Fans of the famous $2.25 thin-crust slices will still get their fill three doors down at the other Joe's locale on Carmine Street, but pizza purists say they'll miss the original spot's atmosphere.
"It's not the same. I mean, the pizza is the same, but the place is different. [The original's] got that rundown charm." said Adam Kubar [sic], who runs a pizza-oriented weblog, sliceny.com.
"It's like an institution!" exclaimed a saddened neighbor, Liberty Boucher, 26.
"Everybody knows about Joe's . . . It's like the best pizza."
Posted by Adam Kuban, October 3, 2004 at 3:06 PM
Slice got a nice mention in the New York Post today in a story about various food clubs in New York City.
Food writer Andrea Strong gives readers the buzz on dining groups Foodie, the Brooklyn Food Club, and the eGullet-based New York Pizza Survey, among others. What she says about the pizza-eating clubs:
Pizza, too, has a fan club — the New York Pizza Survey, which grew out of on-line discussions on the foodie Web site eGullet.com. The club meets about once a month to eat (and dissect) pies at spots like Totonno's, Di Fara's and Lombardi's, examining the crust with particular rigor.
"We believe that the crust is 80 percent of the game," says Sam Kinsey, an eGullet site developer. "We don't rhapsodize about the toppings or the sauce because it's not our bag."
Battling the New York Pizza Survey is Adam Kuban's Slice.com [sic] Pizza Club. Kuban, a copy editor at Martha Stewart Living, has enjoyed pizza since childhood.
"From the time I was about 9 years old, my dad and I used to spend days in the kitchen experimenting with recipes," he says.
Now 30, Kuban is creator of the pizza Web site www.sliceny.com, and since March 2003 [sic] he has lead [sic] a monthly group to sample and critique different styles of pizza.
They've covered New York favorites (Di Fara's, Totonno's, Patsy's, Lombardi's, John's) and are slated to hit Arthur Avenue in The Bronx for the next trip.
Kurban's [sic] Slice Club discusses all aspects of the pizza in detail.
He warns, "We really just talk about pizza, so you really have to be a big pizza nerd."
He adds, "It's not the kind of thing you do to meet other singles." At least he's honest.
We appreciate the Post's coverage but would like to point out that we're not really "battling" the New York Pizza Survey. Mr. Kinsey and his folks have their bag, and we've got ours, and we thoroughly enjoy and respect their very detailed dissection and analysis of the different crusts at the pizzerias they visit.
We'd also like to point out that the Post could really benefit from hiring a good copy editor.
Beyond the jump is the article in its entirety.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, September 23, 2004 at 1:49 PM
ABC7's tech guru, Sreenath Sreenivasan, perhaps more widely known as Sree, mentioned Slice in his Useful Sites column today. We don't know if he also mentioned us on air, because his segment airs Thursdays at 6:45 a.m., and this morning Slice editors were either sleeping, on a train, or monkeying with a motorbike.
So here's a big WELCOME! to any new readers coming from the ABC7 site. And a bit THANK YOU! to Sree for giving us a shout out.
And can anyone tell us if they did indeed learn about Slice from TV. If so, I'm so sorry I missed Mr. Sreenivasan's segment!
UPDATE: Mr. Sreenivasan did mention us on air. And he wanted to give us a heads-up, he said, but we didn't have any contact info on the site—a minor (but very important) detail that got overlooked in our move from webhost to webhost and MT2 to MT3.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 18, 2004 at 12:23 AM
The August 18 Village Voice mentions Slice as part of a laundry list of GOP convention–related oddities:
NY slice of life
The editors of Slice (sliceny.com), an NYC weblog of all things pizza, have created a catalog of pizza protocol for visiting conventioneers. At GOPizza.net, Bushites will learn, in scrupulous detail, the fine art of ordering and holding a slice, along with the history of coal ovens in New York. Slice has even created an iPod-based handbook to the choicest pies in the city. —AKIVA GOTTLIEB
The editors of Slice thank Akiva Gottlieb and the Voice for the mention. And we're grateful that you got our name right, too. For those who don't know, it's
Slice. Not
SliceNY or
SliceNY.com. Just plain
Slice.
Posted by Adam Kuban, August 2, 2004 at 9:06 AM
Well, folks: Slice is in the New York Post today. Not surprising that they picked up the GOPizza buzz.
Any new readers coming to Slice via the Post: Welcome. We hope you like what you find here.
[Thanks to Jen for spotting this.]
Posted by Adam Kuban, June 30, 2004 at 12:01 AM
PHOTO OP Slice editor and publisher Adam K. (above) during a photo shoot Saturday for a small piece on piPod that the New York Daily News ran in today's edition.
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