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Pizzeria Luigi – eat here now
Golden Hill
There are these places scattered all around New York and New Jersey, they are small, sometimes in a strip mall, with unassuming signs like “Brother Bruno II.” Inside you’ll find plastic red checkered tablecloths, each table with a shaker of parmesan and chili flakes, as well as salt and pepper and sugar. You’ll also walk into one of the best smells on earth: the smell of an established east coast pizza joint, the smell of the ovens, the cheese, bread, pizza, that hits you and surrounds you and hugs you like a long lost friend.
The pizza there too, it’s indescribable. I’m tired of using weird adjectives to describe food, like wow this was tasty, or gee this had too much sugar, this pizza on the East Coast, it’s a complex organism with several facets and layers of intertextual meaning. It’s thin crusted, ok, the sauce is tangy and red, the cheese is gooey and oily, and you fold it up like a taco and eat it. While toppings are always fun, these pizzas are best eaten plain, maybe some of that table salt, parmesan, chili, but not with goat cheese, fennel pods, carmel apple or any other thing some phony vegan from Santa Barbara decides to chuck on there.
sausage onion & tasty
My most favorite memory is a pizza place that still exists. I used to eat about 4-5 slices when I went there. They had Galaga and other types of candy machines. It is Colandrea Pizza King in Middletown New York (http://www.colandreapizza.com/), used to be sharing a mini-mall with Caldor (a type of weird Big Lots store), a bank, a movie theater where I saw ET by myself (I was like 12 or something), and other mini-mall type places. My brother still lives around there, and every time he goes into his pizza joint he spends like 40 minutes saying what’s up to everyone in the place, all the brothers working with their gold chain crosses, the dad, most of the customers, and everyone’s cool and nice, and most importantly the food is great.
Brother Bruno (one of the chain, I, II, or something) was this place, I remember going there with my Nana one of the last times I saw her before she passed away. Everyone in the place called her Nana. I think the dishwasher came out to see how she was. One of those types of places.
Here in San Diego we have Bronx Pizza. With its machismo logo of a boxing glove or whatever and its cute attitude that they give you when you order, like ‘next’ what do you want, ok, $10, next, cash only, that special something that is a totally made up piece of crap thing about East Coast “Atty-tude” like you have to be an asshole to make the order authentic. Well I grew up in the East Coast half-time (divorce) and I never came across this sort of behavior in any pizza restaurant. And I’m tired of going back for more.
Thankfully, and finally (you might be saying as I’ve meandered around to the point here) we have Luigi’s in San Diego. I thank Chowhound for steering me to them and will never have to try to double park at the liquor store near Bronx Pizza so that I can get some ok pizza and some bum atty-tude. The other day I went to pick up a pie at Luigi’s and the place was packed with cops. That’s a cool kind of pizza place.
It’s a nice restaurant, very casual, wooden paneling and plastic chairs, a little hipster (tattoos), but very low on the pseudo-East coast attitude and heavy on the down-low Cali-tude that is what is nice about San Diego, mellow vibes and pizza, pretty sweet, and best of all they have some damn fine pizza as well. Though no place I’ve had outside of NJ/NY has ever really come that close, this place is a pretty good substitute, maybe the best I’ve had outside the East Coast curtain.
Luigi’s is a fine place to dine and is the best east coast pizza in San Diego.
That’s all you need.
Large cheese is like $12 a pop too.
Tangy sauce (saw-sss), good thinly spread cheese, and a nice wafer thin crust combine to make Luigi’s a welcome home away from home.
Pizzeria Luigi is in Golden Hill (near the Turf Club)
1137 25th ST.
San Diego Ca, 92102
(619) 233-3309
http://www.pizzerialuigi.com/
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