11.13.06
Albanian Pizza
Get me in the back seat of a NYC yellow cab, put me IN A HUGE HURRY, and the hilarity ensues. While I meandered out to Bleeker Street and 6th Avenue to catch a cab to LaGuardia Airport a couple weeks back, I glanced one last time at my ticket to be sure of the terminal. My heart stopped. I knew exactly how long it would take to get the airport at that time from that spot. But I’d misremembered the departure time on the ticket by an hour. Suddenly, I was frantic.
I started hailing like my life depended on it. I looked into the eyes of the first cabbie who stopped for me, and saw he did NOT have the killer instinct I would need to get me to my gate on time. I waved him on, and he cursed at me in his native tongue. But even that was so meek I knew I’d made the right decision.
Then I hailed Viktor. Before I even got in, I said, “I’ve gotta get to LGA ten minutes ago. Can you do it? Tell me the truth, because otherwise I’ll hail someone else.” Now he looked me in the eyes, didn’t hesitate, and said, “Yes, yes, get in, get in” in an accent I didn’t recognize.
The first question was how to cross the East River. I told him to head a couple of blocks out of the way and take the Williamsburg Bridge onto the BQE. He told me it’d be faster to take the Queens-Midtown Tunnel from 36th Street. The battle was on. I told him who he was dealing with – a fellow yellow cabbie with five years driving under my belt. He told me who I was dealing with – a determined Kosavar Albanian yellow cabbie who’d been driving for many more years than I had. I nearly folded when he spoke of his six-days-a-week schedule, but I stuck to my guns.
The fight was fixed though. Right there in the passenger bill of rights posted under thick plastic in the back seat is a provision that the customer may decide the route so long as it is not unreasonable. We made it onto and across the Williamsburg Bridge in no time, and I was breathing easier.
Then the traffic snarled. The merge onto the BQE, which I knew would be slow, was at a virtual standstill. We were averaging about 2 miles an hour. And we had about a mile to go. My heart sank.
But Viktor was a pro. He didn’t say “I toldya so.” He didn’t rub it in my face. He just sat back and let it all be. We both knew I was wrong. There was no need to spell it out.
So as I stared from the clock to the jammed road before us, we began to chat. Viktor told me about growing up in a village near Pristina. I knew he’d left well before the war beacause his hack number was very low, meaning his got his license many, many years ago. I had two more digits in mine that he had. I guessed what year he left. He was impressed by that (I was close), and he was impressed with my cursory knowledge of Balkan history and politics (thank you Professor Judt of the NYU history department).
As we crawled up the steep Brooklyn side of the Koz over Newtown Creek, I told him what I do. And he immediately responded by telling me where to get a great slice of pizza. He told me there are Albanians, from Albania proper not Kosovo, who make fantastic pizza at Bleeker Street Pizza. “No way,” I said. “I live around the corner from there. I’ve never even tried it. It just looks like any old pizza place.” “It isn’t,” Viktor said with a wild look in eye.
My area is jammed with pizzerias: Joe’s and Abitino’s for slices, John’s and No. 28 for pies. I’d always seen Bleeker Street Pizza but was turned off by their “Authentic Tuscan Pizza” sign, because I’ve lived in Tuscany and found the pizza to be disgusting – like a communion cracker with watery cheese slidding off the sides.
Viktor, once the traffic I’d gotten us into let up, drove like Michael Andretti. Weaving all over the road right up to the LaGuardia exit, he topped off his virtuoso performance with a daring and uncalled-for rumble over the rough and debris-filled shoulder leading to the exit because the traffic had snarled yet again just 200 feet prior. My heart was pounding with excitment from the five minute roller coaster ride Viktor had just taken me on. I thought we might both die at a couple of different moment, but Viktor had skills and we arrived only a tiny bit queasy.
I showed him as much gratitude as I could, hopped out, and found that my flight was delayed by 2 hours. So it turned out that I didn’t need to pick just the right cabbie. Still, I’m glad I found the one I did. Now, I was excited to return so I could try out Bleeker Street Pizza.
I took the taxi back from the airport straight to the corner of 7th Ave and Bleeker and went in for a couple slices. When I arrived, an obnoxious drunk was eating his slice at the counter. “How long you been making pizza?” he demanded of the counter man. “Nineteen years,” he responded. “Well you been doin’ it wrong for nineteen years,” the drunk said. Clearly, I’d come in late in the conversation, but I thought he might be reacting to the fact he was eating Albanian pizza rather than the classic New York style.
I gave the counterman a knowing look, as if to say, “This guy is an idiot, but I’m not.” I ordered my two slices as well as a lemon ice that I was excited to see was imported from the famed Lemon Ice King of Corona in Queens. As my slices heated up in the oven, I impressed the counterman with my cursory knowledge of Balkan history (works every time). I told him I’d met a Kosovar Albanian yellow cab driver who recommended I come, and he responded with geniune concern that the man I’d met was clinically insane. I told him I had a hunch about that from the way he drove.
The drunk had wandered off. I sat down to eat my slices in peace. And I enjoyed them thoroughly.
They were a little greasy maybe, but grease isn’t a bad thing in my book. The cheese was sparse, which is nice when the tomato sauce is as sweet as theirs is. The crust was weak, but it didn’t ruin the slice at all. It was just there. Actually, it was crispy the way I like it to be sometimes. I liked this pizza better than my previous favorite slice joint in the neighborhood – Joe’s – but Joe’s had gone pretty far downhill lately.
This pizza was certainly unlike anything I had in Tuscany. And it wasn’t the classic Napoli pizza either. In fact, it’s not exactly like any slice I’ve ever had in New York either. They’d be foolish to advertise it this way, but it really must be authentic Albanian pizza.
Bleeker Street Pizza, 7th Avenue and Bleeker Street, West Village, Manhattan
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