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| - Grimaldi's, you really showed me. How I used to scoff at you every time I drove by!
"New York-style?! BLERGH! Folding pizza in half while the oil drips on the plate? Nooooo thanks!" And then I'd cackle unattractively and come home to junk flyers on my doorsteps from three other pizzerias within a half mile, each of which had disappointed me at some point. (Ending with turning out to be litterbug spammers.) Would I have to leave Las Vegas to get some good pizza?!
(I do enjoy the end pieces at Northside Nathan's, but pizza is my lazy food, and Flamingo is north of my "lazy zone.")
Then one day I decided to live up to my "Let's notch it!" motto. Also, I was dying for some pizza. And, as noted, I'm lazy. "Mike! Let's go to Grimaldi's!"
"Ugh. Isn't that famously New York-style?"
"Yeah, but I reeeeeaaaalllly want pizza. And if we don't like it, we can savage it on Yelp."
(Talk about your 21st-century pep talks. But, I think it was the timeless appeal of having someone else cook that won him over.)
I can't remember now if we went back twice that week or only once. I only know that I walked into Grimaldi's as a skeptic and within the hour was a bubbling fan.
We've never eaten in the restaurant proper, but it has a casual, accessible elegance with congenial staff from the door to the bar. The outside patio dining looks pleasant enough (for those three or four weeks out of the year when it's not a misery to be outside), with one side of the bar serving those inside and the other serving those out. To-go pizza orders are placed on the inside-side of the bar.
As is my usual, I got a regular pizza with mushrooms. Skeptical Mike grabbed something from a nearby fast food place instead because we'd already figured out through a number of bad experiences that we both disliked New York-style pizza, and he wasn't going to go through the sad journey again, especially not to a box that boasted that this was the pizza that made the Brooklyn Bridge famous.
But as we drove away, we both couldn't help but notice how good the box smelled. (And my nose has been undependable since I had pneumonia last winter.) By the time we were home, the pizza still unseen, Mike was questioning whether he'd made the right choice.
Well, this pizza was beautiful. Thin crust, absolutely, but not the kind where you pick up the slice and it points at your lap. The crust had flavour; it wasn't just a sauce-n-toppings vehicle. The sauce wasn't too sweet; I'm not a fan of a sweet sauce, but nor was it bland or just "tomato-y." I can't elevate it to "spicy" (my preference), but there's a full, pleasant taste.
Mozzarella fans would be proud of how the cheese melted just enough while staying a little solid, reminiscent of fresh mozzarella slices. The mushrooms tastes of the market, not the can, and they were evenly distributed across the pizza.
And with every bite, that waft of YUM.
The next night, Mike wanted Grimaldi's. He'd been envious for the past 24 hours. (But was thwarted by the evil mushrooms.) I'm not sure how many times we've been since. We've had a few "off" encounters: they forgot my mushrooms once, the crusts were a bit burnt another time, and of course sometimes you order pizza then, two bites later, realize you want a break from it.
Overall, though, so far Grimaldi's has been a reliable place for a tasty pizza. Sure, I wish they made the thick crust-style I prefer, but what they do, they do so well. As I see them listed as one of the top pizza places in the country on list after list, I realize that maybe those New Yorkers aren't so crazy when it comes to pizza after all. Someday I'll have to try other items on Grimaldi's menu, which includes pesto and white pizzas as well as calzones, but it's hard to mess with what has finally proven to be a very sure thing.
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