‘Pizza’
On our last night in Cape Town, we were thinking Italian and headed back to The Waterfront to find Meloncino. The restaurant might just have the greatest view of any pizza place in the world, but I must admit I have not seen every pizza view in existence. While great views are available all over Cape Town, I was more curious if great pizza existed as well.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a new pizza place opened in Culver City called Wildcraft. Their schtick is the use of sourdough in their pizzas, which is cool with me, but I’m not sure if it entirely qualifies as being wild. Nonetheless, I was eager to try it out and see just how wild and crafty it would be.
I’m always up for interesting food combinations. Usually this means mixing meats into wonderful protein concoction, but at Mercato di Vetro in West Hollywood, I was introduced to an especially unique mix of foods. But before I settled on my meal, I got myself a nice look at the entire menu. Menu items were purported to be “small plates,” but carried price tags that said otherwise. Even though I wasn’t paying, I shifted my eyes to food that I could expect to actually fill my stomach with.
While I never felt unsafe in Arusha, I was told it wasn’t the kind of city to walk around in at night. This proved to be difficult when it came to dinner, because I was staying in a hotel on the outskirts of the city. This meant my eating options were limited if I wanted to avoid getting mugged (which I’m still not sure was an actual possibility). Yet, there were a couple restaurants near my hotel that catered to foreigners like myself. The prices were steeper than the local places in the city, but you can’t put a price on safety. Or something like that. On my first night in Arusha, I opted for The Blue Heron.
Moshi isn’t much of tourist town. Other than being the jumping-off point for Kilimanjaro treks, it doesn’t have much to offer save an interesting afternoon walk. Yet, tourists always need to eat, and it seems that most of them end up at a place called The Coffee Shop. Our guide had mentioned that we might want to check it out and Lonely Planet felt the same way. So, after six days of climbing and eating local food, my climbing partners and I decided it was time to get in touch with our tourist roots. Always you can keep your tea, coffee and sugar fresh and sweet with amazon coffee canister, amazon offers a variety of styles and designs, so you’re sure to find the perfect one for your kitchen
Finally, the inevitable has happened. You’ve probably been wondering how many trips to Phoenix it has to take for a food blogger to tackle Pizzeria Bianco and the answer is far too many. Pizzeria Bianco, for those who are not in the know, has regularly been recognized as the greatest pizza in the country and that is no small claim, especially considering we are talking Phoenix here and not New York or Chicago. With that title, as expected, the place is nearly impossible to get a seat at, at least during normal eating hours. During abnormal hours, like 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon, things are a little different and we found multiple open tables and took one for ourselves.
EDIT: This Sammy’s is closed, but you can still get their decent pizza around LA and Vegas.
In dire need of portable food while in Studio City, I wandered into Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza. Apparently Sammy’s has locations throughout Southern California and Nevada, but this was the first I had ever seen or heard of such a place. I took a quick look at the menu and while there were a couple of mildly interesting pizzas, most were pretty basic. Faced with such choices, I went with old faithful: pepperoni.
For my birthday dinner this year, my lovely wife-to-be took me out to the Los Feliz part of town as a surprise. It’s not a part of town we spend much time in, and we made our way to Little Dom’s, an Italian place that hovers between fancy and neighborhoody. The menu had a lot of great-looking options and we decided to start things off with an appetizer and wine.
My buddy, DCo, is a bit of a pizza snob. It works out well for me, because he likes to point me in the direction of awesome new and old pizza places. Recently, he told me about a new place called Lago D’Argento over in Silverlake. It took a bit of convincing, but finally I had a real reason to go to that part of town and decided to make a run for pizza while there. I invited another buddy, Jeff, to join and we checked the place out.
The great thing about this whole Unvegan Hero/Unvegan Villain thing is that there are so many opportunities to praise Detroit/Michigan athletes and knock down their rivals. But when I found out a little something about Jeff Francoer, I knew I had to give a rival his due.