Saturday Pizza Date

October 22, 2011

Nice Pizza, Delivered to Rebecca’s

This was a very very special Saturday Pizza Date. Harriet and a good friend reunited after six months apart. They carved pumpkins, danced, jumped around, folded napkins, fixed doll hair and ate pizza (both wishing the blobs of pesto gone). Typical toddler shenanigans. 

How sweet it was to see these two girls together again!

October 16, 2011 (a Sunday)

Gruppo Cheese Slices

We had a rougher weekend than usual. Clarkie felt poorly from an ear infection and Harriet acted her finest 2-year-old self. Saturday didn’t at all work out for our date, but on Sunday, dad and mom squeezed in a slice from Gruppo (thin crust) on Avenue B. Harriet wasn’t interested and her Nan (my mom, in from Texas) wasn’t interested, either. 

We took the slices to nearby Joseph Sauer playground and ate there (and played and drew and collected leaves). Lovely, lovely Autumn.

October 8, 2011

Silsbee, Texas

While Ted enjoyed South Brooklyn Pizza in the East Village, Harriet, Clark and I made homemade pizzas at my sister Clarissa’s home in SouthEast Texas. My sister did all the work, while I drank all the tequila, so I can’t take credit for anything but being drunk.

It’s been almost a year since these Rodens had an official pizza date. Wow. Since then, we went and had ourselves another baby. His name is Clark and he’s something fantastic. Thanks to the little charmer, though, I didn’t want to eat pizza for about nine months, and then couldn’t eat pizza (no dairy) for almost six. Harriet and Ted continued dates without me, sporadically and undocumented here.

Today was a rainy day and we stuck close to home—tasty and lovely Luzzo’s. We ordered a Bufala and a Diavola (both solid choices). We had some special guests with us: my sister Clarissa and her daughters (in from Texas); and our cousin Adrienne (who just returned from a North American tour with Frankie Rose). 

I’ll say this: it’s so difficult to take photographs (here and anywhere) when there’s two young, young’uns to watch after. I didn’t even get a decent photo of Harriet’s sweet cousin Lena. Fortunately, we head back to Texas with them next week and we’ll have a pizza date there to make up for it. 

October 16, 2010

Roman Delight, Parkdale Mall Food Court, Beaumont Texas

Plain cheese slice (1.5 of them)

Hi, it’s Ara again, back for this one post. Harriet and I were in my motherland of Southeast Texas for a family reunion, and daddy was back in NYC for this pizza date. Now, I’m still not in love with pizza, but I can tolerate it reasonably well, especially if I’m eating something else. My sister, niece, nephew, Harriet, and I met my cousins (in town from pretty Muldoon, Texas) at Parkdale Mall. After shopping and, naturally, bungee-trampoline jumping (niece and nephew), we took in the food court. This ended up being a surprisingly fantastic pizza date. Highlights:

-Harriet learned to dip her pizza in ranch (Texans do this and it is delicious).

-I ate Indian food; my cousin, Chinese; my other cousin, French (as in a French dip). Mucho international.

-We also got a flavor of the bible-belt nature of Southeast Texas (no judgement here — only observation). The couple next to us was holding hands, praying, as we sat down. The folks on our other side were Penecostal (the Southeast Texas equivalent of Hasidic, if only because of their distinctive appearance). 

-The sign in front of Harriet and I advertised “cheese” like this: “chesse.” And, I don’t think English was the second language. Adjacent to said sign stood a dude wearing a pro-Tea Party shirt. Here, I judge. Even though he probably didn’t write the sign, he may as well have.

Harriet loved the ranch-dipped pizza. Dad participated from afar by procuring himself a tasty dollar slice on St. Mark’s.

October 9, 2010

Home Slice (Austin, TX)

This was a special road trip edition of Saturday Pizza Date. We were accompanied on this date with some old friends. The pizza was really very good, and they even provided some decor to remind us of home. The service was great, they even brought out some pizza dough for the kids to play with… though Harriet didn’t really get it. She did appreciate her own straw for her water and “cheese.”

October 2, 2010

Veloce Pizzeria

This was another Harriet and Daddy affair. After a couple of weeks of phoning it in, we wanted to make sure we went to a) a new place and b) a place we’d heard good things about. This place was nice, we got to watch Kill Bill (can’t remember which one) and eat pizza. I wasn’t convinced about the pizza, but Harriet loved it. She wouldn’t stop eating. We ended up leaving and she took a piece to go on the stroller.

September 25, 2010

Plum Pizzaria - 2nd Ave and 10th St.

Harriet and I (Dad) went to plum last week. As soon as we walked in, we were greeted with a brand new chair for the baby and a seat by the window. One of the best parts of going out with a baby Harriet’s size is to see the different reactions from the staff. Will they bring out a plate for her? A knife? Her own menu? This time they brought out Harriet a small glass of water all for herself. She enjoyed it very much. We had a great time chatting and eating and making friends with whoever walked by. The pizza was pepperoni and my review in one word: cheesy. Tons o’ cheese. The menu does make several mentions of their homemade cheese, so that probably explains it. It was good, just… lots of cheese.

September 18, 2010

Lil Frankies

Sorry for the delay in posting this one, as the date suggests, we went here over a week ago. Due to my (Dad’s) slowness, I’m posting it now. Lil Frankies is fine. It’s generally a good atmosphere and it’s fun, but the pizza isn’t really that great. This time we actually got some fried calamari. It may seem like sacrilege to get an appetizer on Pizza date, but the baby enjoys anything fried. So we’ll call it a success. Bonus: afterwards, we went and got some fried Oreos!

September 11, 2010

Patsy’s Pizzaria Numero 28

Last Saturday Harriet and I (Dad) headed out for our pizza date alone. Expectations were high because the previous week’s pizza was no good. So we went to Patsy’s, despite my feeling that the service is always bad, I know they have solid pizza and high chairs for the baby. Well, that was a total disaster. After being seated, the table next to us was seated, ordered and their food arrived before even had water. It was like the twilight zone, we were invisible. Eventually, 25 minutes after being seated, the waiter came we ordered a pizza.

This is where the story ends. No pizza ever came. You can see in the first picture, Harriet looks a bit tired but has a mostly dry shirt. Naturally, right? Well, she’d dumped an entire glass of water on herself and it had dried at this point and still no food. Meanwhile everyone else around us had already eaten and paid. So we just got up and left without eating. Two very cranky, and hungry Rodens just picked up and went to Numero 28. 

Numero 28 is pretty solid. It wasn’t my first choice, and to be honest, if I wasn’t so starving, we’d probably have went somewhere else. But it was so good to have someone actually bring us a pizza, which it turns out, is a big part of the whole “Pizza date” experience. Because we’d been gone for so long, even Mom came out to join us so we have better pictures.

Patsy’s pizza is pretty good, but you need to get it delivered. If you want to go out for pizza, for the love of god, don’t ever even consider Patsy’s on University in NYC.