New York10012
Michigan people are everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Not only that, but those people have a lot of pride, and as one of them I can’t say I blame them. That’s why, when I was in New York and was told a restaurant called The Grey Dog was run by Wolverines, I had to offer them my patronage. The highlight of its menu is a section called Michigan Sandwiches and despite the fact that none of them seemed to have any correlation with Michigan itself, I knew one of them had to get in me.
EDIT: This location is closed, but if you still want fried pizza there are other Forcellas to be found.
While in New York, I ended up making my way to Forcella in the East Village to grab some pizza. After all, no trip to New York really counts unless pizza is involved. Forcella’s pizza, though, was much more Italian than New York-style and even that Italian had a twist to it. That twist was a little something called Montanara, which is more than just a combination of the state of Montana and marinara.
While Artichoke represents the new trendy side of New York pizza, it wasn’t really quite New York style pizza. You know, the kind you have to fold a bit to eat and everyone says tastes better because of the water. Yeah, Artichoke wasn’t that type of place, but Lombardi’s sure was. Apparently Lombardi’s is a pretty big deal and they claim to be the first American pizzeria. It is quite a boast, and apparently it does a good job of filling the seats, but we got there around 3:00 (on the way to Uniqlo of course) and only had to wait about 10 minuted for a table to open up.
After a few drinks, our tour guide (aka the girlfriend’s bro) took us to a little hole in the wall called Pommes Frites. Here, they specialized in cones of Belgian fries served with some crazy sauces like Pomegranate Teriyaki Mayo, Irish Curry and more. These seemed all good and well, but I saw something on the menu that tickled my fancy even more: Poutine.
For the uninitiated and un-Canadian, poutine (pronounced pooh-teen) is a gloriously unvegan treat consisting of fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. This combination creates something spectacular, yet rarely found south of the Great White North. It had been a long time since I was in Canada and I was with a couple poutine virgins, so we ordered a large one to split for six bucks.