Pittsburgh Bound! Part V
I moved to Atlanta in December of last year from Pittsburgh and had yet to be back. Virtually every Labor Day weekend of my entire life was spent in Pittsburgh with my parents, as my birthday falls within the window. I promised my folks that I would make a long weekend out of it, and head on home. The following reviews are a step-by-step account of the long weekend. Enjoy!
(For Part IV, go to: yelp.com/review_share/9n...)
JD called and asked what I was doing for lunch. J and I have been friends for nearly 25 years and I was back for a short trip, so he wanted to meet up. I told him that I had nothing going on and suggested Grande's. I hadn't been to Grande's in a while, but I figured that if I was home, I was going to get pizza.
When I was a kid, my parents would neglect my brothers and me and hire a makeshift babysitter to watch us while they trounced around town like the harlequins that they are. Just before the babysitter would come over, my dad would swing by Grande's and pick up a few large pizzas as an up-front payment for us having to deal with some pockmarked teenage douche whose sole responsibility was to make sure me and the boys didn't set the house on fire.
We hated having a babysitter, but it was all worth it for the pizza. Any kid loves pizza, but Grande was different. They actually put meatballs on the pizza. Meatballs!!! As a kid, all I ever knew about pizza was pepperoni and some vegetables I didn't like. Meatballs were a foreign concept to us and we loved it.
It wasn't only the fact that these guys were bucking the system with this outside-the-box meatball concept (fast forward 30 years and I can probably find a place that would top a pizza with pancakes and sushi), but it wasn't some gimmicky thing. The pizza was incredibly good. Soft, chew dough, a sauce that wasn't overly salty or sweet, and quality cheese. My Italian grandmother once showed me the difference between plastic cheese and real cheese, and it was a lesson that I've always retained.
30 years later, and the pizza is still as good as ever. How many restaurants have you gone to where you can honestly allow three decades to pass and not say "It's not as good as it used to be"? The Grande's of the world are hard to come by.
If there are three things us Pittsburghers revel in, it's our championships, rampant alcoholism, and pizza. I've lived in a variety of areas around the country, and nothing has ever come close to reminding me of the pizza from home. I've found a few places in Atlanta that come damn close, but Pittsburgh pizza will always be number one, and Grande is in the top of that list.
(For part VI, go to: yelp.com/review_share/af...)