Philadelphia Best

Is New York’s Best Pizza in New Jersey?
JERSEY CITY — We were on our third pie of the night at Razza, across the street from
City Hall here, when Ed Levine stopped chewing long enough to ask me a question:
“Are you going to say that the best pizza in New York is in New Jersey?”
Ed Levine knows what it means to make a strong claim for a pizzeria.
The founder of the website Serious Eats and the author of the book “Pizza: A Slice of Heaven,” he caused a stir in 2004 by writing in
that the pies at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix “just might be the best pizza in America.” So when it started to dawn on me, about a year after my first dinner at Razza, that no pizzeria in the five boroughs gave me as much pleasure, I thought of Ed.
“I’ve been waiting for that cheese for three years,” Mr. Richer said, explaining
that he had been tracking the water buffalo herd until it was big enough to ensure a steady mozzarella supply.
The tomato with the highest score is usually the one he will buy, although he said
that one year he blended three different brands, “kind of like a Bordeaux wine.”
For the Garden State pizza, he runs ripe red local tomatoes through a food mill.
Like every pie I’ve eaten at Razza, these two had been put together with exquisite sensitivity to the needs of the dough.
Even if Ed and I had learned, after our seven-minute PATH ride from the World Trade Center to Grove Street,
that the kitchen had run out of cheese, tomatoes and the rest, I would have asked for a pizza dressed with nothing but olive oil.

Comments