Happy National Pizza Day!

HALLIE EPHRON: You may think today’s claim to fame is it’s SUPERBOWL SUNDAY. But it’s also NATIONAL PIZZA DAY! Talk about confluence. Chicken wings and onion dip colliding with pepperoni (America’s favorite topping) pizza.

I will be watching the game (I have to live through it with a rabid Kansas City fan) but my mind will be on my first encounter with pizza. (At the time I’d never had a taco, either. Or a Chinese soup dumpling. Or pad thai.

I was 16 or so, and on my one-and-only date with the grandson of Groucho Marx, a very nice young man with whom I had zero in common. He took me to MICELI’S (touted for years as “LA’s Oldest Italian Restaurant” until it recently closed.)

I was not impressed. I thought tomato sauce topped with mozzarella cheese was a terrible idea. What an idiot I was… since then I’ve definitely developed a taste. And Miceli's set the bar high.

My all-time favorite pizza was from THE VILLA ROSA, a little place walking distance from my house. Sublime New York style pizza (thin crust), crisp and slightly burned around the edges, tangy tomato sauce (not tomato slices), gooey mozzarella cheese, spiced with oregano and salt and pepper. OILY! YES!! Nothing fancy.

You grabbed a slice and you had to get under the tip which was weighted down with sauce and cheese and oil. When all that was left was the crust, that was crisp and riddled with moguls (crispy bubbles in the crust).

I was so sad when VILLA ROSA closed about 10 years ago. (It's been replaced by an Irish pub.)

Do you remember your first encounter with pizza, and what’s been your favorite place (still open or long gone) to have it?

Happy National Pizza Day!

JENN McKINLAY: Yes, February 9^th is National Pizza Day!!! Now you know what you’re doing for dinner. You’re welcome!

Dinner tonight: Lou Malnati's Classic Chicago

A brief history: The invention of pizza is credited to a baker, Raffaele Esposito, in Naples, Italy in the 1880's and was brought over to the United States with the influx of Italian immigrants. Flatbreads have a longer history in Italy, but it is said that Esposito created a pizza for King Umberto I and Queen Margherita using fresh mozzerella, tomatoes, and basil, which is the same pizza margherita which enjoy today. 

  

I love pizza. I mean, I loooooooove pizza. Going to school in New Haven, it was pretty much my daily bread, as it were. Now I know lots of people are partial to their regional pizzas. Yeah, whatever. Only one pizza can be the greatest and it is hands down the white clam pie from Sally’s or Pepe’s in Wooster Square in New Haven, CT. Sorry, this is simply not up for debate. 

The first thing I do every trip home is to hit up Wooster Square for a pie. The first time I dragged my desert rat husband back east with me, he was indoctrinated into what real pizza (has to be brick oven) is supposed to taste like and there was no turning back. Little known fact: When I worked at Toad's Place on York St in New Haven, Friday night was Yale happy hour and we served Sally's pizza. No surprise, I always asked to work Friday nights!

Clearly my fave is the brick oven, thin crust, white clam pie (did I mention it usually has bacon?), and everything else is second rate, but I’m willing to listen to differing opinions. So let me have it, Reds, what’s on your pie?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I could eat pizza every day. Every day. It is the perfect food, all cheesy and tomatoey and crusty, when the cheese greats a tiny bit brown on top? We used to make it from boxes, Chef Boy-Ar- Dee, I think? When you made the yeasty dough, and put on a can of tomato-like stuff and cheese-like stuff? We LOVED it.  But now--real pizza. Street pizza, thin crust, and pungent with oregano. And the crust on the bottom all crusty (you know what I mean) with the dusting of flour still on it. with pepperoni, and extra cheese and mushrooms.

And that is ALL. Yes, I've had grilled chicken, meh, and carmelized onion and potato, fine, and prosciutto with basil, all good. Pizza from other lands--taco pizza?--no. Ham and pineapple? Don't even go there. I say: why waste pizza on any other kind of thing but real regular pizza?

And anchovies. Gah. Even if you take them off (trying not to actually touch one), the pizza keeps that gray fishy residue. As Snoopy says, bleah bleah bleah.

HALLIE EPHRON: Cheese. Maybe mushrooms. But basically wonderfully oily salt cheese. And thin crust, please. I do love a good pizza.

I remember my first taste of pizza at a Micelli's restaurant on La Cienega in Los Angeles... a date with the son of friends of my parents. I don't remember being impressed (by the pizza or the boy). In those days pizza wasn't everywhere. Even tacos hadn't found their way to California yet.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Thin crust, yes! I hate gooey, doughy, pizza. We do homemade pizza often. Whole wheat crust if I'm not too lazy or busy to make it. Rick only likes cheese and marinara sauce, but I usually do a base with a combination of good cheeses and some dried herbs. Unless I feel very inventive, my slices get at least sliced cherry tomatoes and fresh mushrooms, and basil if I've got it. 

Image: Pizza Express

But my favorite pizza is from Pizza Express in the UK (this is not fast food like Pizza Hut, etc., but a good restaurant chain.) They do one called the Padana, with a super thin crispy crust, fresh mozzarella, tomato, caramelized onion, spinach, red onion, and garlic oil. It is to die for. And you can add anchovies! (Sorry, Hank.)

LUCY BURDETTE: Hold the anchovies! You can have my share. New Haven has the best pizza in the US, I'm sure of it. We get either pepperoni (crispy, salty, oily) or white clam pizza. If I'm cooking at home, we like a barbecued chicken pizza with red onions and cilantro!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you're visiting Portland, ME, our top three vote-getters every year in the area papers' and magazines' "Best Of" contests are Ricettas, Portland Pie Company, and Ottos. That last features some weird and wonderful combinations, most famously their bacon and mashed potato pizza. I promise you, it's delicious.

Photo credit: Maine Today: Mashed potato and bacon at OTTO

JENN: GET OUT! Totally trying that when I'm next in Maine!

JULIA: I'm going to reminisce about my mother's "pizza" since we haven't touched on making it at home. She had the recipe from my Grandmother Fleming, who made it for my dad when he was a teen, and it was as authentically Italian as you might guess from a lady of French-Canadian descent cooking in central New York in the 1950s.

First, you spread out pre-made biscuit dough on a baking sheet. (I seem to recall my mom alternatively using Jiffy brand mix pizza dough.) Cover the dough with a layer of canned plum tomatoes, which you slice up in the can (you can use a clean pair of scissors for this.) Use all the liquid! Shake Italian seasonings blend and garlic powder over the tomatoes, and then - for the pièce de résistance - lay slices of cheese in a grid pattern. I can't recall what my mother used, but I strongly suspect it was American Cheese Food product.  Bake for the amount of time indicated on the biscuit mix box. 

We loved this "pizza." Loved it! It was in regular weekly rotation, because my dad was and is SUPER Catholic and we never ate meat on Fridays. What can I say? It was the late seventies. 

RHYS BOWEN: I remember pizza when I was a child and we vacationed in Italy. It was dough, drizzled with olive oil with a couple of olives and anchovies on top. None of the fancy toppings we get today. I am not a fan of any of the meats on pizza. I love veggie pizzas, chicken and artichoke, and thin, thin crust. More flatbread than pizza actually. And you can add anchovies for me too!

Okay, Readers, what’s your go-to pizza? Or are you like one of my hooligans, who doesn’t like pizza? (Gasp!) I know it’s just shocking! Pretty sure we dropped him on his head or something.