If Ray's Pizza Bites the Dust...
by Jeff Weinstein
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 TAGS:
Joey Vento, founder of Geno's Steaks in Philadelphia, died this year. Long an icon for the area’s hospitality industry, Vento was late in life the opposite of hospitable, a classic xenophobe whose only acceptable melting pot contained the gluey Cheez Whiz the place slathered over “authentic” steaks.
For those out of the pop-food loop, “steaks” are cheesesteaks, Italian American fat-bomb sandwiches loved and brawled over by many of its city’s eaters. Cheesesteaks were invented in Philly, and not by Ben Franklin. They have long been edible lodestones for a special kind of blue-collar pride.
So Joey’s gone, but Geno’s survives, which goes to show that a particular kind of eatery has a life of its own. The reasons why are hard to pinpoint, but there’s no doubt that we can love some restaurants the way we love people -- and mourn them when they fold.
Handkerchiefs are ready for Ray’s Pizza.
The New York Times recently reported that Ray’s, on Manhattan’s Prince Street in what was once accurately known as Little Italy, is down for the count and will soon be forced to leave its address. (A complicated lawsuit is why.) Should a sated reader care? Ray’s is newsworthy for two reasons.
Ask New Yorkers of a certain age who makes the best pizza, and odds are good they will say Ray’s, especially if they haven’t tried it.
The small storefront was opened quietly in 1959 by one Raffaele – or Raffie, or Ralph – Cuomo. He called it Ray’s, the founder said in an interview, because he thought Ralph’s was “too feminine.” It served, and still serves, the medium-crusted, red-and-white foldable pie that had been established as typical more than half a century before by Lombardi’s on nearby Spring Street as well as by various coal-oven pizzerias in Brooklyn and Trenton, N.J. – home of Papa’s Tomato Pies, open since 1912.
So why has Ray’s been considered tops? A novel “cheap eats” type of restaurant reviewing took off in the countercultural ’60s, promoted by ambitious weeklies like the Village Voice and New York magazine. During this heady time of antiwar marches and top 10 lists, someone somewhere wrote that Ray’s was “the best pizza in New York.”
No one blogging now about worthy cocktails or cupcakes would care a whit, but readers then still believed that critics knew what we were talking about and took our word as law. Ray’s was the best. The New Village York Voice said so. Ray’s got famous and stayed that way.
The second reason for interest in Ray’s follows from the first, but is more unusual. The media-validated name Ray’s took on a life of its own, and soon there were dozens and dozens of copycat Ray’s Pizzas and “original” Ray’s all over the city. No matter that most of them served warm, wet cardboard. Which Ray’s was Ray’s became an “in” topic for much too long.
Modest Ray’s is now hounded and surrounded by places that sell $500 sneakers and tiny bowls of lobster mac ’n’ cheese. How’s the pizza? A slice is a mere $2.65. The puffy outside crust is wheaty and honest, but the rest is slightly soggy under mozzarella and tomato sauce that are unfashionably oily and salty. Yes, I know it’s a thousand times better than the fool’s gold served by international chains, but …
As I chew and swallow, somehow I hear the faint crash of a ball hitting pins on an alley. New Park! I can literally see the neon sign of a steaming pie over the one-story brick building on Crossbay Boulevard in Howard Beach, Queens. In the early ’60s, my brother, Les, and I would get our 35-cent slices before or after we’d bowl a few frames at Cross Bay Lanes across the street. That was my virgin slice, my duckling-imprint pizza, an ordinary wedge from a gas-fired oven. Looking back with a food-lover’s eyes, I never thought it was all that good, but why are tears welling up?
Because we should know by now that attachment to food and to restaurants goes far beyond recipe or taste.
A few months ago I visited Paulie Gee’s, a “destination” pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As my pizza-expert friend Dan and I wolfed down the Baconmarmalade Picante – a $16 pie with fior di latte, spicy bacon marmalade and sliced red onion, just pulled smoking from the wood-burning cone in the back – the owner strolled over.
“I see you like what you’re eating,” Paul Giannone said, grinning like a man obsessed.
We talked about our pizza inspirations, and when I said mine was from Howard Beach, he yelled “New Park!” What a coincidence: That borough outpost was his standard, too. To our surprise, he dug out his iPhone and showed us a photo.
Paulie Gee’s own pies are way better than those of our promiscuous first love, but we would both think mortal thoughts if we heard or read that New Park Pizza, born in 1956, had passed.
For some sorry regulars, Ray’s demise will have the same effect. I understand. Memories of youth and promise reside in beloved restaurants, and anyone with any sense of loss knows why.
Former restaurant critic Jeff Weinstein writes about culture and gay issues at artsjournal.com/outthere.
For those out of the pop-food loop, “steaks” are cheesesteaks, Italian American fat-bomb sandwiches loved and brawled over by many of its city’s eaters. Cheesesteaks were invented in Philly, and not by Ben Franklin. They have long been edible lodestones for a special kind of blue-collar pride. So Joey’s gone, but Geno’s survives, which goes to show that a particular kind of eatery has a life of its own. The reasons why are hard to pinpoint, but there’s no doubt that we can love some restaurants the way we love people -- and mourn them when they fold.
Handkerchiefs are ready for Ray’s Pizza.
The New York Times recently reported that Ray’s, on Manhattan’s Prince Street in what was once accurately known as Little Italy, is down for the count and will soon be forced to leave its address. (A complicated lawsuit is why.) Should a sated reader care? Ray’s is newsworthy for two reasons.
Ask New Yorkers of a certain age who makes the best pizza, and odds are good they will say Ray’s, especially if they haven’t tried it.
The small storefront was opened quietly in 1959 by one Raffaele – or Raffie, or Ralph – Cuomo. He called it Ray’s, the founder said in an interview, because he thought Ralph’s was “too feminine.” It served, and still serves, the medium-crusted, red-and-white foldable pie that had been established as typical more than half a century before by Lombardi’s on nearby Spring Street as well as by various coal-oven pizzerias in Brooklyn and Trenton, N.J. – home of Papa’s Tomato Pies, open since 1912.
So why has Ray’s been considered tops? A novel “cheap eats” type of restaurant reviewing took off in the countercultural ’60s, promoted by ambitious weeklies like the Village Voice and New York magazine. During this heady time of antiwar marches and top 10 lists, someone somewhere wrote that Ray’s was “the best pizza in New York.”
No one blogging now about worthy cocktails or cupcakes would care a whit, but readers then still believed that critics knew what we were talking about and took our word as law. Ray’s was the best. The New Village York Voice said so. Ray’s got famous and stayed that way.
The second reason for interest in Ray’s follows from the first, but is more unusual. The media-validated name Ray’s took on a life of its own, and soon there were dozens and dozens of copycat Ray’s Pizzas and “original” Ray’s all over the city. No matter that most of them served warm, wet cardboard. Which Ray’s was Ray’s became an “in” topic for much too long.
Modest Ray’s is now hounded and surrounded by places that sell $500 sneakers and tiny bowls of lobster mac ’n’ cheese. How’s the pizza? A slice is a mere $2.65. The puffy outside crust is wheaty and honest, but the rest is slightly soggy under mozzarella and tomato sauce that are unfashionably oily and salty. Yes, I know it’s a thousand times better than the fool’s gold served by international chains, but …
As I chew and swallow, somehow I hear the faint crash of a ball hitting pins on an alley. New Park! I can literally see the neon sign of a steaming pie over the one-story brick building on Crossbay Boulevard in Howard Beach, Queens. In the early ’60s, my brother, Les, and I would get our 35-cent slices before or after we’d bowl a few frames at Cross Bay Lanes across the street. That was my virgin slice, my duckling-imprint pizza, an ordinary wedge from a gas-fired oven. Looking back with a food-lover’s eyes, I never thought it was all that good, but why are tears welling up?Because we should know by now that attachment to food and to restaurants goes far beyond recipe or taste.
A few months ago I visited Paulie Gee’s, a “destination” pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As my pizza-expert friend Dan and I wolfed down the Baconmarmalade Picante – a $16 pie with fior di latte, spicy bacon marmalade and sliced red onion, just pulled smoking from the wood-burning cone in the back – the owner strolled over.
“I see you like what you’re eating,” Paul Giannone said, grinning like a man obsessed.
We talked about our pizza inspirations, and when I said mine was from Howard Beach, he yelled “New Park!” What a coincidence: That borough outpost was his standard, too. To our surprise, he dug out his iPhone and showed us a photo.
Paulie Gee’s own pies are way better than those of our promiscuous first love, but we would both think mortal thoughts if we heard or read that New Park Pizza, born in 1956, had passed.
For some sorry regulars, Ray’s demise will have the same effect. I understand. Memories of youth and promise reside in beloved restaurants, and anyone with any sense of loss knows why.
Former restaurant critic Jeff Weinstein writes about culture and gay issues at artsjournal.com/outthere.
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