lovenote: pizza
a love story in 5 acts
I. literally the die is cast :)
In the dreary dregs of February, there was little to be done but imagine a world opened up. We were little hobbits, clustered in our cave, too thrilled by visions of mundanity to hibernate. (I don’t know a lot about The Hobbit). We blew these pedestrian dreams up to mythic proportions as we imagined what our days would be filled with once days could be filled with things again.
I’m happy to report that, in between surges of the world feeling like a scary place to be, we’ve accomplished a lot of our covid-winter goals: we saw Army of the Dead (must do), we went to trivia at the bar (we are not as good as we thought), we attended a lot of live performances (probably more on this forthcoming)— we said we would, and we did.
One of the big ones was Lucali’s, a small-operation of a pizza spot in Brooklyn. We watched a video about the restaurant, guided by a hardcore-pizza-fan none of us had heard of. I truly don’t even know how this video made it to us, but once it did, that was that. We were in a different state, and the restaurant was closed for COVID-reasons, but none of that mattered. Our fate was sealed. We had to have it.
II. it begins
The website doesn’t try to hard to seduce: the menu contains two items, calzone and pizza. For the pizza, there’s four toppings, all of which cost extra. The restaurant is BYOB. The reviews we read say that no restaurant could get away with such open indifference to the customer if the food wasn’t a complete game-changer. I have a hard time with ego, especially when it’s the first thing you meet in a thing, but I love pizza and my mind has already been made up.
The website also recommends you arrive to put your name in the books at 4pm. How busy can it be? we laughed, It’s a Wednesday. Oh, how we laughed and laughed.
We took our sweet time biking over, arriving at the restaurant at a cool 4:45. The hostess nearly snorted when we asked when we could expect to be seated. Once she realized we weren’t kidding, she raised a knit in her eyebrows: I don’t know, she was the one laughing now, 9? 10?
Okay. So we’ll eat at 9. Bear in mind that Julian and I tend to be 6pm diners. We also tend to be pretty irritable hungry people. But this is worth it. It has to be. So, okay. We decide to check off another new world bucket list item and go see M. Night Shamalan’s “Old” (great movie) to kill time (great way to do that, too). We get out and it’s still light out, so we go to a playground and sit for around an hour. And then, we try our luck.
III. it begins, actually
It’s 8:30 when we turn back up at the restaurant. At 8:35, lightning and thunder and torrential downpour. We, along with the others who were promised a 9pm dinner, huddle under the awning of the restaurant. One pair in particular, I love: they’re a couple, around late-50’s, and they did not come to play. They’ve already gotten started, giving a generous pour from their bottle of wine into two solo cups; she keeps insisting that by the time they get seated, she’ll be wasted. They’re celebrating 34 years since the day they met, and he keeps referring to her as his “hot date” (“cheap, too,” she keeps insisting). He also keeps saying, with his actual mouth, “fughettaboutit,” like he doesn’t know how funny that is. He’s Italian and she’s Irish, and they give us the sense that in their day, their relationship really broke the mold. We all establish how hungry we are, and continue to harp on it. That, and the pizza we’ve heard raving reviews of from all over the Northeast. We tell them we hope they get seated first, and they tell us the same.
It’s at that point, when we’re all feeling particularly jolly about humanity, that the two greasiest, smarmiest looking rat-children materialize in front of us. They must be about sixteen, and, since I didn’t see them coming, I choose to believe they slithered out of the sewers. They instantly seize two chairs at a table for four under the awning. Should we say something? Julian asks, sensing my outrage. No, I assure him, let’s let the hostess do it. The hostess, by the way, deserves a fucking nobel peace prize. My guess is that from 5-11 every night, her job is fielding people driven to new levels of impatience by their hunger for the pizza she is blamed for withholding. In spite of it all, she’s chipper, but brusque, tough as a Kelly Clarkson song, and I worship her. (Earlier, someone approached her and informed her that they’d ordered a large calzone. “Why are you telling me this?” she replied. Stunned, he wandered back to his table. She was gone as quickly as she came: a hero’s exit). She appears in the doorway and spots the two slime goblins. Justice time, Julian, I, and the other couple think in unison. They don’t even flinch as she approaches them. They just don’t know what a fucking cowboy she is. I brace for impact on their behalf, but no blows are dealt: instead, she shows them to a different table, also set for four, placed more decidedly under the plastic outdoor roof so they won’t get wet. She calls them by their first names. She bustles back inside, and they watch her go with old-timey mobster confidence. They put their feet up on the two unoccupied chairs. They pull out cigarettes. One of them lifts up his shirt to show the other one a giant gash on his back. My hunger and hatred for them are coalescing into one energetic mass of negativity that’s too much for me to bear. I’m staring daggers when the hostess comes back out to bring him a Pepsi (a pepsi I’m serious). As she passes through the doorway again, she calls out our names. All my resentment for the rat boys is gone: it’s go time. The older couple starts cheering like we were the horses they’d bet on. She parts the velvet rope (a velvet rope I’m serious) and then we’re inside.
IV. once inside
It’s very dark and mostly empty. All the tables hug the walls except for one, and that one’s ours. Louis Prima roars from hidden speakers. Candles puddle into silver dishes, providing a dim glow. Mason jars of sauce labeled with tape and sharpie fill the available counter space. On the walls hangs everything from old-fashioned tin signs for sodas to a pair of boxing gloves. The clutter was probably considered unseemly at some point in time, but today, it works. It’s like a wizard’s workshop if the wizard’s only spells were involving pizza. Towards the back of the room, a long table where three men roll out pizza dough with wine bottles.
You didn’t bring wine? asks a thick New York accent belonging to a young guy next to us in a tight black tee. What, you didn’t know it was B Y O B? at this point… it’s the musical newsies. He produces a large bottle of wine from under his chair(?) please, he says, this pizza needs to be had with wine. Where! Are! We!!!!! We thank him profusely and the server whisks it away to be opened, returning instantly with tiny cylindrical glasses. We cheers him and each other, and the woman he’s with. When she gets up to go to the bathroom, he tells us that he’s a regular here, and wouldn’t dare to come with only one bottle. He also tells us that his date is a “close friend” for whom he’s just “bought an apartment in SoHo”. I love this man and everything he stands for!!
It’s at this point, when the night has already been so full, that the food comes out: first, a massive calzone, and then, a colossal pizza.
V. it comes
I won’t go into too much detail (I don’t really know how, to be honest). But I will say that everybody should try to eat here as soon and often as humanly possible. I’m not even trying to write a Yelp review for this website but damn!!!
(I don’t want to actually talk about this, but food hasn’t been always a fun thing for me. I haven’t always been able to enjoy pizza, which sucks because pizza is so good. I feel like Jennifer Lawrence kind of ruined having that opinion, or at least being vocal about it, but I’m gonna own it right now anyway: pizza is so. good. Honestly, high or low quality pizza is generally so good. I am very glad that I was able to have this very high quality pizza, and that I was able to love it so much).
Anyway, I was in the middle of bodying this pizza when someone tapped my shoulder: the Irish/Italian couple from outside had just gotten seated at the table right next to us! Where the wine-donor had been! They were beaming to be inside, and significantly drunker than they’d been the last time we chatted. Are you two married? they kept asking. No, we kept insisting. They refer to me as “the Mrs” anyways. So, the man says, how good is it? I mean really? We nod vigorously at them. They both wink at us in recognition. I love them, and every other living thing on earth. That’s the power of this pizza.
The rain’s just let up by the time we head out. Heavy with pizza and warm with wine, we say bye to basically everyone in the restaurant, and they say bye to us. We bike home with a box of leftovers balancing on the handlebars, loudly recounting everything that happened tonight so we wouldn’t forget, and went to sleep that night dreaming of pizza for breakfast.
Obviously, my request is that you eat pizza to this: