The life and teachings of Serpico reconstructed by critical historical methods

Serpico Pizza and Pasta
10 Fila Way
Sparks, MD

Serpico has been called "the best cheese pizza north of Shawan Rd." Consider that if you keep going north, you get to York, Pennsylvania and thereafter to New York, where they have much better pizza than will ever be available in the vicinity of Shawan Rd. Is Serpico the "closest thing to an authentic New York-style slice" available in Maryland? Well I ate a slice of pizza with spaghetti on it and then more crust on top of the spaghetti. Do they have that in New York? Probably somewhere, yes, they probably do, because they have everything in New York, including better pizza than suburban Maryland.

Serpico is located next to a "Saddlery," where I think they make saddles for horses. We are in the rolling countryside particular to Maryland, a completely domesticated but unfussy pastoral. It's casual, just like Serpico's Italian dining. The people there were very nice and helped us choose an appropriate array of pizza slices. They sell by-the-slice, which is how they got me to try a "spaghetti pizza" -- it was the only thing fresh out of the oven when we walked in on a Sunday afternoon. The slices are very large in surface area; a modest but not indecent amount of grease pools in the depressions.

You'll want to stop here on your way back from swimming, tubing, or boating on the Gunpowder River and points north, because you'll be hungry but not ready to trade in the grid-less rambles of the afternoon for the strip malls of Hunt Valley. Take in the innocent dusk of Sparks, Maryland while it lasts. Across Fila Way from the plaza housing Serpico, a row of vinyl-sided, as-yet-unoccupied new homes stands on a ridge named "Fox Terrace" or "Fox View" or something with foxes. Pizza Club predicts that the children raised in these homes will often walk to Serpico and gaze upon its mural of the Cinque Terre, and think about going to Italy some day maybe for a school choir competition.

The crust was pretty good, crispy and thin but well-structured. The sauce was rounded and unobtrusive. There was cheese on it also. There is no New York slice to save us now. The historical "New York slice" never existed, it didn't die for us, it just never existed. It's a convenient lie told by generations of suburban pizza parlor proprietors to win the allegiance of the damned. In a countryside so abundant and gentle as Maryland's, one can happily believe that the world was created for us and types of pizza were ordained by a loving God. One can ascribe direction and agency to history. But our world is an accident and history is a tool of the powerful -- I suspect that people from New Jersey know it better than all the rest of us and they just aren't telling. Instead, they're driving up and down this blessed nation with their smartphones, producing a Yelp apocrypha of the one true pizza of which Serpico's is a fragmentary gospel.

4/8 slices

New York Pizza App

So this isn't too helpful to us here in Baltimore, but to those in New York there is the Real Pizza of New York App. Use technology to find pizza

Pizza Everyday - Big City Zza

In New York City this past weekend I had three pizza experiences, each one being significantly better than the last. First stop, Coney Island.

This "school cafeteria" style slice was $3. Pretty terrible, but being very hungry after doing stuff all day and not eating helped a bit. Still, it deserves 1.5/8 slices.

The slice from this place, where a can of Coors Light costs $4.50, is pictured here.

After going on the $5 "Spook-A-Rama" ride (soooo worth it), my friend Jac picked up this gem for $3. Same price as the previous slice, but like 10 times better. 4/8 slices. (Note the actual cheese on this one).

Finally, the next night we went to a real Pizza place, John's Pizzeria on Bleecker Street (where, as Vanilla Ice suggests on their website, they should "Keep Making the 'Dope' Pizza.") Yes, Vanilla, the pizza was "Dope". We got a large cheese and it totally hit the spot, aka the emptiness in my stomach, and was priced well. $14. It was a 7/8.

What Will They Think Of Next: Pizzacone

Pizzacone is a new Manhattan restaurant where you can buy the contents of a pizza stuffed into a cone:

The dough cones are shipped to Pinto daily from a Connecticut bakery, and each Pizzacone is made to order at the counter; you tell them what ingredients to add, and then it’s cooked in the oven for five minutes. The result, according to one early guinea pig, is as convenient as it is delicious. “Tastes like a pizza,” Victor Nelli, a TV producer, tells the Daily News. “You can totally walk with it, and you don’t have the oil dripping all over you.”

http://kpizzacone.com/

Pizza to the MAXXX - A Tale of Two Pizzas (part 1)

Let’s be honest, I live in the pizza capitol of the world. Really excellent pizza is never more than a few blocks away. And it’s one of the least expensive New York luxuries. So, it hasn’t much occurred to me to make pizza, and well, my own homemade pizza has never stood up to the pizza parlors.

But, the Baltimore Pizza Blog has been totally inspiring me lately with stories of so many delicious homemade pies. That recent New York Times article just pushed me over the edge. I HAD to make pizza. However, I clearly didn’t take the article to heart, because I convinced myself that I HAD to make pizza that night. I already had ricotta cheese in the fridge and some garlic and spinach, so I picked up some crushed tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. But here’s where I lost my way. I forgot about the tip about just popping into your neighborhood pizza shop and buying a ball of dough and instead picked up one of those weird prepackaged pizza crusts at the fancy-schmancy natural food store. All they had was a whole wheat crust (obviously) but, I figured if it couldn’t be too bad. I was on a mission after all.

In its favor, the crust was totally easy to make. However the flavor and texture was terrible. (I’ve empirically proven that crust is the most important pizza component. Remind me to tell you about my pizza data project the next time you see me.) The sauce I kept simple with just some garlic, salt and pepper. A layer of spinach and basil (from by window herb garden!) Then dollops of ricotta and mozzarella cheese. When it came out of the oven, I drizzled on a bit of olive oil, inspired by Mr. DiFara.

The zza was fine, but nothing to text home about. In fact, Mike and I didn’t finish the pie, or even the leftovers in the fridge. Alas, the crust was just too dense. Pizza lesson: it doesn’t matter how good your sauce and cheese are if the crust is bad. 2/8 slices.

-From Max, of the Baltimore Pizza Club New York Affiliate