In the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility

Pizza Studio
3201 St. Paul Street
Charles Village

Pizza Studio's product is definitely pizza because Pizza Club “immediately recognized it" as such. We accept the evidence of our senses. But what subliminal machinations underpin this moment of recognition?  Even taste, smell, and cheese are constituted by a field of structural forces. The present is opaque to itself – “each 'now' is the now of a particular recognizability.” The people of Baltimore recently entered the now of infinitely-customizable premium-quality pizza served in under two minutes.

What's more, this pizza asserts its status as a work of art created by you, the consumer. Where the gates of Dante's Hell bear the inscription, “Abandon All Hope,” the gates of fast-casual dining entreat you to “Create Your Masterpiece."

Pizza Studio is a franchise “fast-casual” restaurant from California recently slotted in to the gleaming brick-and-glass arcades of the 3200 block of St. Paul, a block notable for looking and feeling nothing like Baltimore. Undergraduates can be observed through the plate-glass windows of Chipotle, Cold Stone Creamery, and Starbucks, enjoying the remarkable continuity of consumer experience made possible by the extensive geographical coverage of these brands. By substituting “a plurality of copies” for the unique existence of a particular place, they constitute a distributed zone of the familiar that empowers college students, families, tourists, etc. to move uninhibited through an 'urban' environment that would otherwise offer them few recognizable enjoyments.

There are already two pizza places in the Hopkins zone that should meet the needs of undergraduates, but they definitely haven't captured the current market. They don't belong to the particular recognizability of the now: freshness, 'local'-ness, hip design and branding, and the embrace of myriad dietary restrictions. They lack a story, ethos, values, or globally-oriented social commitments. Pizza Studio won't compete with any of the neighborhood pizza places – it's in the ring with Chipotle in a battle for which eight-dollar lunch-food spectacle can assuage the creeping bad consciousness of late capitalism.

Pizza Studio frees you from all limits and constraints as you queue up to order your custom pie. If you find yourself experiencing limitations, it's due to your own weak imagination and ultimately, your failure as an artist -- in which case you can select a pre-fab “Masterpiece” from a menu.

The fresh, all-natural components of a Pizza Studio pie flow rapidly through different stages of matter. As in the studio of a highly-successful contemporary artist, the transformation of raw material into art is carried out by assistants whose labor is not “creative,” and thus, effectively invisible. Since you, the consumer, are also the artist, you pay for the cost of materials, facilities, and cheery technicians to realize your vision under your supervisory gaze.

Also like a highly-successful contemporary artist, you the patron of Pizza Studio are plugging in to the front end of a cultural production apparatus with its back end in military R&D, management psychology, despoliation of the earth, and an endless chain of exploitative labor practices. Delicious all-natural ingredients and seamless customer service did not invent themselves. The employee motto of Pizza Studio is “SNAP” – “Sense of urgency, No excuses, Attention to detail, Pride of ownership.” This motto is inscribed in the frantic, slightly-unhinged slicing pattern of a Pizza Studio pie.

Samit Varma, one of the founders of Pizza Studio, spent eight years as a Navy officer on nuclear submarines before he got his MBA. His partner is a career corporate ladder-climber of successful food franchises like TGI Friday's. The duo billed themselves as “former Baltimore residents” for the opening of the Charles Village Pizza Studio, which means that one grew up in Rockville and the other lived in Owings Mills. Behold the mercenary reproducibility of the 'local' – witness the militarization of the artisanal – in a weapons-grade toaster oven that blasts your personal-sized pizza with 50-mph gusts of scorching wind generated by the beating of Satan's wings in the innermost circle of Hell.

 All of this is yours for seven dollars and change – another attraction in the college market which prizes the illusion of quantity. The actual quantity of food material on your pizza will not increase appreciably even if you select every topping. Pizza Studio is not stupid – economies of scale and scientific optimization underpin each casually-strewn handful of nitrate-free pepperoni. Consumer psychology revolves around a primal delusion of rational decision-making, the appearance of “deals” that give maximum value for money. Whenever you experience this instinct, rest assured, someone with a six-figure salary is laughing and snorting coke off a Pizza Studio to-go box emblazoned with the catchphrase “Your Hot Masterpiece”. 

 Since it is an important function of capitalism to deny us knowledge of our time and place – to produce a fully-realized phantasmagoria that masks the obvious material conditions of life – the presence of Pizza Studio on a Johns-Hopkins-owned block of Charles Village, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. explains itself. “It's gonna suck when this creative artist space gets driven out by gentrification and Hopkins development,” one Pizza Club member observed.

Pizza Club quickly located the “Starving Artists' Wall,” really half a wall, in the back corner of Pizza Studio. The concept is to have local artists – presumed to be starving because we all know the difference between creativity-branded commodity capitalism and creativity the disease that makes you actually go to art school – hang their work in the restaurant and sell it to customers. This is great synergy because the theme of Pizza Studio is the mind-warping lie of the creative economy. Dwarfing the local art are numerous restaurant industry stock photo canvas prints with pictures of weathered, brown-skinned hands holding vegetables.

I ordered the requisite plain cheese pizza. I felt like a failure because I hadn't expressed myself using the infinity of options available to define my unique pizza identity. However, when the Pizza Club Power Lunch Team took a synchronized bite of our cheese slices, we all experienced the mysterious confluence of sensory cues telling us that this was, indeed, Pizza – a good-tasting cheesy bread object fresh out of a heating device. “I thought the crust was gonna be bullshit,” said one PC'er, “but it's not terrible crust.” We ate a wide variety of pies from the menu and from our own rich imaginations, all of which tasted like pretty good food.

The Pizza Studio banks on a psychic economy of additive flavor, where “flavor” feeds back into the creative expressiveness and perceived value of their product – what we might call a flavor-creativity-value complex. The crust has “no particular flavor” or texture. The unlimited toppings, which Pizza Studio fully expects you to pile on, are the building-blocks of flavor-creativity-value. Then there are “glazes,” bottles of liquid salt and sugar that you spray on top of the pizza to further boost flavor-creativity-value. We hardly noticed the difference in pies with gluten-free crust and vegan cheese because these elements – normally the foundation of a pizza – are purely structural, like the tortilla in a Chipotle burrito.

 All of this is a long-winded recapitulation of Pizza Studio's mission statement. They're going to be the Chipotle of pizza, which for some reason no one thought of being until now. If you like Chipotle, and you like pizza, you'll want to add this to your lunch routine. Like Pizza Club, you might ask, “do I have to acknowledge my guilt for enjoying a corporate franchised business?” To which we say, “Be who you are.” We had an excellent time at Pizza Studio eating fun, creative personal pan pizzas. We sated our appetites and returned to the office to make shadow puppets on the back wall of a dimly-lit cubicle until 5pm, when we went home to watch TV. One can only hope to move through today's phanstasmic creative economy like a Pizza Studio pie through its turbo-charged toaster oven, and emerge out the other side a certified Masterpiece.



5.5/8 slices

Credits: Scott (pizza photos), Graham (photos & research), and Kate (photos)

Philly's Best Taj Mahal Pizza

Don't let the name fool you, Philly's Best is located on the Avenue in Hampden. Philly's Best offers the usual pizza and sandwich options of normal carry out pizza joints, with the twist that it also serves Indian take out. We went there with a very specific pizza goal in mind, we were there to eat the Taj Mahal. We had been hearing rumors about an Indian food pizza that was off menu, now it is out in the open for the world to try. We ordered this pizza knowing nothing about it, except that it was exotic and therefore fascinating. There was an air of mystery as we sat in the car wondering what was inside the pizza box. We assumed that this was a vegetarian friendly pizza, but there were no clues either way. As we were staring at the box, we speculated that it contained the exotic, spicy mysteries of the Orient.


The anxiety and expectation were building, would this be a pizza like none we had encountered before? As we lifted the lid we saw the familiar markers of what we recognize as pizza. There was sauce and cheese, but the difference was indeed mysterious. It was like Palak Paneer, yet different and on a pizza. The crust was decent and nicely supported the toppings. It was crunchy, but not overdone. It was spicy, but not overwhelming. The slices are large and sauce and cheese had even coverage. There was still tomato sauce as a base, but on top of that there was spinach and vegetables, which might have been onions and broccoli.




After the initial strangeness faded into warm familiarity, we then voyaged into a discussion about the Taj Mahal and the Flavors of India. Was this a melding of America and India or was one more prominent? We debated if the cheese on the pizza was paneer or mozzarella, with the dominant taste being the latter. We would have liked to have seen actual cubes of paneer on the pizza to give it a more distinct flavor. For example, our friend Matt who arrived late to the game, bit into a slice and asked if it was pesto. While Laura, with her more discerning palate called it as Indian. This demonstrated it was a subtle, as opposed to a more pronounced Indian flavor as the unaware could be taken by surprise.

Matt stated that "I gotta give it props because there were flavors that weren't the things I thought they would be".

Overall, we decided that it was pretty high grade takeout and a nice change in your takeout pizza routine, but we would have preferred more adventurousness on their part.

Rating:5.5/8


Philly's Best
1101 W. 36th St
Baltimore, MD 21211
(410) 243-1301

Papa John's

I find that Papa John's pizza prices are usually quite high and unless there is a coupon involved, I don't consider it an option. As much as I am all for Pizza Bolis, Papa John's is having a pre-super bowl deal where all large pizzas are $10 including specialty. I got a large pizza with mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes. Their ingredients are good, fresher than most take out pizza places. The sauce is really sweet.

Papa John's also seems to be pushing the whole ordering online thing. Their website kept promoting it and when I went in to pick up my pizza, they informed me that in the future I can order online. I personally do not mind having to talk on the phone to order a pizza, though they do give you a lot of personal options to customize your pizza via the internet.


Papa John's Day 2:




I brought some of the leftover pizza to work the next day to continue with pizza research. The pizza was holding up fine. The onions were still crunchy. We concluded that either the mushrooms on the pizza were not canned or they were really good canned mushrooms. We were also impressed with the tomatoes, they also tasted real. My co-worker Joe thinks they "changed the game. It got real. They really stepped it up". He also remarked "it's not bad". Because of the sweetness of the sauce I wouldn't eat it everyday, but if your first choice is closed, Papa John's pizza is satisfying.

pre and post microwaving:





5.5 - 6/8

Gil's Pizza

I have driven past Gil's on Belair road many times and had been wanting to stop by for a while. After an exhausting trip to IKEA, we decided we needed sustenance; we needed Gil's pizza. No dining in here, this place only does carry out. They only serve pizza and one size of it. They do offer "double dough" as an additional topping. We were told that this is not Sicilian style, but an additional ball of dough added; same diameter, only thicker. We ordered a mushroom pizza. They put the topping under the cheese.


A plain tomato and cheese pie costs $9.25 with each topping costing an additional $1.25.


Gil's has been around since 1958. Sadly Gil is no longer with us. The current owner bought it about 8 years ago. It took him two months of non-stop pizza eating for it to get kinda old, I feel that pizza is one of the few foods that I could eat everyday and not get sick of it. He says he still eats pizza once a week. He has been making pizza for almost his entire life. Perhaps I am making that up, but Gil's pizza is definitely on it.


There was a comfortable balance of crust/sauce/cheese. After ordering the pizza, we stood at the counter and watched him roll out the dough, put on the topping, and put it in the oven. It really connects you to the pizza making process. This is the pizza that you imagine when you say "I just want pizza, no messing around." While the trend of Baltimore pizza tends to be on the thinner crust side, Gil's crust is of a more traditional thickness. This pizza would be perfect with soda and/or beer.




Real cheese. No nonsense.

7.5 out of 8 slices



Gil's Pizza
5132 Belair Road
Baltimore, MD 21206
410-483-4847