Pizza and the Tenement Museum

You can't come to NYC without trying Pizza, another thing that New Yorkers seem to be full of themselves about.    One of the oldest of the original Coal fired pizza ovens still operating in NYC is called Luzzo's, in the east village.  The trusty subway get's you everywhere.  They open at 12 so we arrive early anticipating a big line however non materialized.  Even though we were about 15 minutes before the Asian looking Pizzaiolo that greeted us at the door to tell us that they didn't open for another 20 minutes was gracious enough to let us come in and sit down while they were getting ready to open.   We started off with a couple of arancini .  I love arancini after first discovering them at Solunto's bakery in San Diego.  Whenever I would go to Soluntos to pick up cookies or canolli's I would get one or two of their arancini as a snack. Love them. It's a way of using leftover rice.  Stuff it with meat, cheese, peas and or tomato sauce and deep fry it.  Delicious.  For me Solunto's is the gold standard.  Sorry, back to Luzzo's.  We get these arancini  and they were delicious.  Not quite as good as Solunto's but still fantastic.  Crispier outside than Solunto's.  A great start.

Next they bring us the pizza.  Sausage pizza.  As you can see from the photo, perfectly cooked.  All around the edges and on the bottom, lot's of blackened bits, just the way it's suppose to be.  I have to say that it was as good or better than Bronx Pizza in San Diego, which I think has the best pizza in town.  Crispy crust with a great balance of sauce to cheese and sausage.  Great pizza.  Surprisingly it didn't have any remnant of Coal taste.  I'm old enough to remember coal heating and what I smells like and I was expecting some of that.

While were eating out pizza, a group of people like a parade start to file in.  It thought, oh no, the tour bus from Des Moine must have arrived.  Fortunately it was only about 10 people.  Turns out this was the NYC pizza tour.  The guy who is leading tours of all of the great pizza places around NYC.  They setup in a room in the back and I could hear him talking to the group telling him all about the pizza oven.  OK now I'm interested.  I sneak back there with my camera and as if he minds if I lurk for a little while while he discusses the oven and how they make pizza.  Fortunately the guy was very nice and allows me to glom on to his tour.  He say's that the oven is at 705 degrees..  We watch the pizzaiolo make a pizza for the group.  They time it when it goes into the oven and it only takes 2 min. 35 seconds for the pizza to be perfectly cooked.  Amazing!  Oh well we must move on.

Next we head off to the Tenement Museum.

Unfortunately this was not the greatest experience that we had on our visit. It was not bad but could have been better.  When we arrive they are completely sold out of all the tours except one that doesn't start for 1 1/2 hr.  We decide to wait around.  They have purchased a tenement house in the east village that was built in the 1860, and was home to countless immigrants up until 1930.  I think the problem is that they have this narrow building and are trying to give people an idea of what it was like during the time people lived here.  Given the amount of people that were trying to visit this place they decide to divide it up into  a series of different experiences.  

• Shop Life
• Sweatshop workers
• Hard times
• Irish Outsiders

The only one available to us was "Shop Life".  Our tour finally gets started after waiting around for and hour and a half.  Our tour guide had a lot of good information and background for us but there were a couple of things that I hated.  One, she takes us down into the first floor of the building which was originally a saloon.  Decorated nicely with all kinds of period stuff and she discusses what life was like in the saloon.  Interesting.  then she breaks out a deck of cards, each with a bio of someone who actually lived here and visited the saloon.  Now she hands us each a card and tells us to role play.  Assume the identity of the person on the card and start up a discussion with the person next to you assuming the identity of the person on the card.  I hate this.  It's like (you will only be able to relate to this if you have been to catholic mass) since the late 70's there a part of the mass where you are suppose to turn to the person next to you, shake their hand and say "peace be with you".  I hate this.  I don't know this person, he doesn't care about me, I don't  care about him, and I definitely don't want to touch him,  but you feel obligated to go along with the charade.  I hate that.

The next think I though was silly about this tour was at the very end they have this interactive technology part.  I'm sure this was a committee decision.  How can we bring technology into this. For me it just didn't work. Sometimes you just don't need technology, just tell me about it.

OK, I'll stop now