12.22.2008

Pizza by the Slice

To a New Yorker, the phrase "by the slice" after "pizza" is entirely redundant. It's not only the standard unit of sale, it's a well-documented economic indicator of when the price of a token is about to go up. Wisconsin however has barely heard of the concept.

There are three ways to get a pie in Oshkosh. The first is buying frozen from the supermarket. The selection at even the small supermarkets is larger than the entire freezer section at a NYC market. Then there take-and-bake stores, both chains and local. I guess this offers the illusion that it's healthier, since you apply your own home-made heat. Finally, there are a ton of pizzerias for eat-in and delivery, our favorite of which is Glass Nickel. Red's makes a good thin crust. But really, with as much pizza as people eat up here, you would think there would be a few places that really serve up a perfect pie. I've found nothing yet that matches the best pies from Manhattan and Brooklyn. And the offerings here are mostly deep-dish style; nothing really looks like a New York pie.

But in the last month or two something new has come to Oshkosh -- pizza by the slice! Polito's was opened by an Italian guy from New York, and the slice looks and tastes like what you would expect: crispy crust, good sauce and the right shape and size! (There was already one chain in town that serves by the slice, but it's a fast-food style rectangle and it sucks.) It's still not perfect but it's the best we've found.

It helps to pretend they don't actually offer a mac-and-cheese slice.

How has this place managed to make a dent in the mindshare of hungry Wisconsinites? By challenging their competitive-eating manhood! They offer a 28lb "monster pizza" for $50, and if you and a buddy finish it an hour you win $500! The local newspaper (a crappy Gannet rag which admittedly has not much else to cover) ran a continuing feature on the various attempts to win the prize, all of which ended in failure. Until last week, when the prize was finally won by a pair of Army soldiers, who were competing against their fellow Marines and Navy men. USA!

The pie normally has pepperoni and sausage, but "vegetarians call for special instructions". Hmm...

12.03.2008

Autumn Retrospective



Naturally, now that snow has already fallen and the autumn colors are long gone, I'm finally getting around to posting some foliage pictures. For the second year in a row, I've taken some lovely pictures of the autumn leaves here, and, for the second year in a row, the fall semester has been so jam-packed (packed with jam? what kind of jam? Grape? Strawberry?) that I had no time to blog or post them when they were actually timely.

Nonetheless, here they are-- shots of yellow and gold and brown hues from October and November. The first few images below are from Election Day, which was a strangely warm Indian Summer sunny day, which I think changed the light on the trees a bit. The final image is also from that week-- it's not of Oshkosh, but of Grant Park in Chicago, where the trees had turned an awesome yellow just a few days before Obama's acceptance speech). It's funny looking at the leaves in retrospective, now that the landscape has changed over to assorted grays and whites.