i are what i eat: a food blog

29th December 2009

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Stone Street Stuffed Tavern Burger Stuffed With Imaginery Cheese

Like a deceptive winter coat from Old Navy, this burger looked stylishly good on display, but when worn lacked the proper interior and left me unsatisfyingly cold.  No, I didn’t actually wear the Stone Street Tavern’s Stuffed bleu cheese burger.  And, I certainly did not enjoy it as much as my eyes told me I would.  Served on a toasted english muffin and generous amounts of thick crispy bacon, I thought I was walking into a sure thing.  But, when you go as far as specifying your burger as “stuffed”, you’d better deliver on that promise!

First bite: no cheese.  Second bite: no cheese.  Third bite: an EYE DROPPER amount of warmth finally hits my palate.  What remained was an empty, cavernous hole where the old bleu should have resided in all its gooey glory!  The beef wasn’t a complete miss, being decently tasty albeit not cooked to my medium request.  But the fact is this doesn’t live up to the name.

The one positive note were the steak fries, which gave a nice crisp crunch on bite, and nice smooth finish.  I did like the mixed green accoutrement as well.  Sure, the Financial District isn’t the culinary mecca for all thing outstanding.  But they should at least know that outside of the lunch-rush Wall Street business patron, too busy to his/her own shoe let alone take the time to enjoy what they’re cramming into their face, there are normal customers who expect better.

Tagged: lunchstone street tavernstuffedbleu cheeseburgersteak friesfidi

29th October 2009

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Food 101: The Grandma Slice of Pizza Italia

I am unveiling for the first time, a real life, topical post of this blog: Food 101.  This section is VITAL to my food exploration, as it’s my vessel to furthering greater culinary knowledge and expertise.

It also makes this blog look more than just a photo dump.

Today’s lunch came in the form of (arguably) everyone’s favorite food: pizza.  Matt and I headed down to Stone Street to visit Pizza Italia, a seemingly average looking pizzeria that apparently, after a little Google research, has quite the reputation for one slice in particular: the grandma slice.  I’ve heard the legendary slice only by name by several co-workers, and thought of it as nothing more than just a nick-name.  I was wrong.

The grandma is a variation of the New York style pizza, which seems to borrow from its fellow brother and sister pies.  The dough is formed in a Sicilian-shaped square, assembled with mozzarella cheese on a thin-crust bottom, topped with fresh crushed tomato, garlic and olive oil, like a Chicago deep-dish, and baked until crispy.  According to Michele Scicolone, co-author of Pizza: Any Way You Slice It, the grandma pizza resembles the “pizza alla casalinga”, which is the type of pie you would be served as a house guest in an Italian home.

So, how does the grandma from Pizza Italia stack up to it’s story?  Very nicely!  Not knowing the history of the pizza, I found this to be the freshest single I’ve had in a long time.  The sweetness and texture of the tomato sauce let you know that it’s certainly no jar gravy topping.  With the cheese sitting directly on top of the dough, the two seemed to meld together to form one delicious balance chewy, crisp crust.  Its untraditional triangle shaped lended itself for the perfect fold, as if to sandwich all the goodness inbetween without seepage or spillage.  There were thin strips of basil sporadically laced across the slice, which gave the pizza very nice accent notes between bites.

For $3 a slice, the grandma was well worth it.  Pizza Italia served it up nice and hot, and the quality exceeded the quantity in this case.  I’ll join the rest of my co-workers in passing along the word of the great triangle grandma, and revel in the same confused look on people’s faces that once was on my own.

[info via Slice]

Tagged: pizzafood 101lunchpizza italiagrandma slicefidi