PIZZA POWER

I was in a big supermarket in Cornwall just before Christmas and I saw a very large man peering into a freezer cabinet.  And in incredible excitement he called to his wife, standing maybe ten feet away “Look! Look! Look what they’ve got!.”  The wife came over and looked, and so did I.  What they had were frozen pizzas.  The man chose one, and his wife chose another.  This made them very, very happy.

Now, I’m not a man to criticize other people’s food enthusiasms but this man was as excited as I’d have been if there were zebra steaks in the freezer.

I suppose the fact is I really don’t GET pizza.  This is no doubt a personal failing, and you may say (as people do) that’s because I’ve never had REALLY GOOD pizza, and this may well be true.  In general pizza is what I have when I can’t think what else to eat.  And by now I know two things, 1) it’s always a disappointment, and 2) it’s usually better the next day if I have a leftover slice for breakfast.

So I was surprised to find myself strangely excited by this picture that appeared on Instagram a few days ago.

It’s from Wylie Dufresne who used to run the restaurant WD-50, in Manhattan, a damn fine establishment: molecular gastronomy but not offensively so.  These days WD-50 is closed and Dufresne runs Du's Donuts & Coffee in Williamsburg, and frankly I don’t really GET doughnuts either, but that’s just another of my failings.

The Instagram image suggests Dufresne is teaching himself to make pizzas, and this one looked great, although closer inspection reveals that it’s something called a potato pie which seems in every way more desirable than a ‘real’ pizza – and those fried green onions really do look good.

In fact I was so moved by the picture that I decided to have a pizza.  Not a really good one, obviously.  I bought a very cheap and not very cheerful base, fried up some Cumberland sausage and green onions, put them on the pizza, added some black olives, and you know in the end it really wasn’t all that good.  The base was the real problem.  I scraped off all the topping and threw most of the base away.  I didn’t even bother saving any for breakfast the next day.

I was going to say ‘a lesson learned’ but I don’t think I learned anything I didn’t already know.  But then the next day, Instagram being what it is, Mitsuru Tabata once of Acid Mothers Temple who describes himself as ‘Guitarist, bassist and vinyl junky. Aka burger man. Also curry addict.’ posted an image of a pizza he’d made:

 It looked good.  And then another one:

Once again I was tempted (I’m hoping that 'powder cheese' is just a dodgy translation of grated cheese) but I know myself – I’m resisting.  For now.

THE GUILT-FREE SANDWICH

You know, I really don’t “do” guilty pleasure: pleasure is pleasure – I have shed my quasi-Catholic upbringing to at least that extent.

And yet I always feel I shouldn’t enjoy  Pret A Manger quite as much as I do.  It is by many accounts a generic and soulless chain.  Yet at the one I always go to when I’m in London you get served quickly, you can always get a table, and they have a toilet you can use.  When you’re looking for a sandwich in London this is as good as it gets.  I usually go for the crayfish and arugula sandwich.

Obviously I’m not alone in enjoying Pret – the shops are always busy – but most of the customers don’t look like gourmets, much less fans of molecular gastronomy, but if the New York Times Style section is to be believed - Wylie Dufresne – he of the now defunct New York restaurant WD50 - is also a fan.

I’ve always had a lot of time for Mr. Dufresne.  He seems like a genuine original which I suppose is why he hasn’t gone the predictable and profitable path of the typical “celebrity chef,” a fact rather proven by his appearance in a column called Rituals, in which he says he goes to Pret pretty much every day and buys a balsamic chicken and  avocado sandwich.

“‘It’s smartly engineered,’ he says, explaining that the grilled chicken, not the mesclun, is dressed in the balsamic vinaigrette and sits between the dry lettuce and the avocado, so the bread doesn’t ‘sog out.’”

Things get even more interesting in the Dufresne sandwich universe when you realize

that his father is in the sandwich business.  He used to used to operate a sandwich shop with the vaguely ironic name (I think) Joe’s Old Abandoned Grocery Store, in Providence Rhode Island. 

And he’s about to open a sandwich place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan named BIGGYZ.  Here are father and son bonding over a “Tuna SOF tuna,” (at least I think that's what is is) "extra-virgin olive oil, black-olive spread, marinated artichokes, tomato, capers, red onion and hard-boiled egg slices, on sesame bread from Chinatown’s Prosperity Dumpling."

“He’s got a great sandwich palate,” says Wylie of Dewey.

And a finally a bit of historic sandwich lore, this picture appeared on a Facebook group called london in the 60s & 70s:

I not only remember sandwiches like that – I actually used to eat them for my lunch when I was a working stiff in the West End.  They were never very good, and some of them were just horrible, but we thought that was the way commercial sandwiches had to be.  We could imagine better but it seemed that nobody was ever going to put the necessary care and effort into making an improvement.  Lovers of Pret have very little to feel guilty about.