dresese

Una Pizza Napoletana

Last weekend Adam and I went to the East Village to try Una Pizza Napoletana, a pizzeria that burst on the New York scene a year or two ago on a wave of incredible hype. At the time, the story was that it was made by a pizza purist, who was dedicated to the pizzas of Naples, and determined to bring a good pizza to New York. When you say something like that in New York, be prepared for a controversy. When the review came in, they tended to fall along two lines: 1) This is the best pizza ever, wonderful in its simple use of high quality ingredients and techniques , and 2) The pizzas are nothing special, overpriced, and the place charges for tap water.

Una Pizza was ranked among the best in books, magazine articles, and various blogs. So I suspected I would like this pizza. The pizzas are $20, and I feel that if I have one of the great pizzas in America for $20, then it is well worth it.

The place only serves 4 pies, all of them fairly simple. We split two pizzas, both of them topped with buffalo mozzarella cheese, one with cherry tomatoes and garlic, and one with a sauce and basil. They were both incredible, although I preferred the plain Margherita pie. First of all, the crust was awesome, perfectly charred and with the right amount of chew. In addition, the buffalo mozzarella was so creamy that ever bite of it was precious to me. And the sauce, mozzarella and olive oil combined in a really harmonious way that went beyond what I've experienced in other pizzas.

I wouldn't say that it is makes me think less of the other Neopolitan pies in the city. For instance, La Pizza Fresca is probably 70% as good. But to me, this is Neopolitan perfection. Eat there, go now.

Oh yes, and they don't charge for water anymore.

Andy Hertzfeld tells stories

I had the great fortune to see Andy Hertzfeld talk at Google a few months ago. He has created the wonderful folklore.org site, which contains a large number of Macintosh stories. He also wrote the book Revolution in the Valley, which is a book containing a lot of the same content as the site. Hertzfeld talked about the book, and his experiences at Apple. His video is now on Google Video, and I highly recommend it. For some reason the video looks very washed out, but even so, watch the whole thing, it is well worth it.

Lin Taiwanese

Also known as David's Taiwanese, Lin Taiwanese is in Elmhurst and serves up a variety of interesting Taiwanese dishes. If you like blood and intestines, this is the place for you. I think of any Chinese place I've been to, it has the most blood-based dishes. It also has stinky tofu!

Ben and I ate here for lunch today. It was quite tasty, although we didn't eat any blood or stinky tofu.

We first got a spicy, salty smelt as an appetizer. It was good, but the fact that this one dishes required about 100 fish to die is not exactly pleasing.

I'm a sucker for stir-fried udon, which I first had in Hong Kong. This was a very good version, with crunchy vegetables and thick chewy noodles.

For our vegetable, we had "si gua", which is a type of Chinese squash. This was really delicious, but this dish almost always is.

Finally, Taiwanese sausage. Strangely, it comes with raw garlic. I'm usually not one to eat raw garlic, a trait I share with most of the human race. I did try a bit of the garlic with the sausage, which is how I imagine one is supposed to eat it. It was a nice combination, but I still felt the garlic was a bit too spicy.

Overall, a solid Taiwanese eatery. Nothing blew me away, but that's fine, because nothing was at all disappointing.