Dante's Pizzeria

So THIS is what NYC-style pizza is like... Hm.

Well I definitely don't prefer it to my beloved boat-of-sauce-and-cheese Chicago-style, but Dante's Pizza was tasty. LOVED the spicy sauce, but didn't love the random sprinkling of cheese dotting our Virgil's Specialty pizza. Why so little cheese?

$25+ for a pizza seemed pretty outrageous to me, but the size of the pizza helped a bit. SERIOUSLY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HUGE THAT THING IS!! I was eating it for an entire week.

Walk into a cloud of smoke from the ovens baking up some delicious pizza. not too big on decor, space or ambiance.  But large on taste of the pizza is what's going to keep me coming back.

You all might as well serve sides of dope to go along with your pizza.  Crack rocks, heroin, crystal meth, cocaine, krocodile (don't YouTube that last one)...  Doesn't matter if you did.  Your pizza is so unbelievably delicious, and like pizza almost always is- it's really bad for you.  Very little nutritional value, and an obscene amount of fat and processed carbohydrates.  But when going out for pizza, if that is something that bothers you- you might as well stay the hell at home.  And in coming here, I think Dante's really ought to think about rounding out all that delicious, bad for you, addicting food with equally mind-altering pharmaceuticals?

Which kind of fits the setting of Dante's altogether.  Dante ain't just some dudes name of Italian heritage.  The reference is obvious- in pictures of purgatory, demons, fire and pain.  All things that were brought about from a life of excess and sinning.

See, here's the deal...  You want a very reasonably priced, monster slice of pizza?  They've got you covered.  If you want something even bigger- just order up an entire pie.  A twenty-fucking-inch pizza.  It gets brought out to your table looking like it should be rolling down the street as some beat up Honda Civic's wheel.  If the slices are monstrous, then the entire pies are more than that...  Behemoths?  Giants?  Whatever you want to call them- they are massive.  Huge.  And yes- delicious.

The Minotaur was probably some Dante's employee's acid trip-induced wet dream.  "Man...  Could you imagine what it would taste like if an Italian beef with hot peppers had a baby with one of our pizzas?  That would be incredible..."

Yeah.  It's like that.

Italian Beef, shaved thinly (as it fucking should be), served with hot giardienera, banana peppers and on that cocaine-laced crust that if I had to compare to anywhere else in the city (and I say this lovingly) - would be most like Piece.  Except after dreaming of this stuff over the last couple days- I'd say I give the advantage of the crust to Dante's.  It really is about as perfect as can be.  I know a bit about pizza (slinging dough throughout high school and college), and this crust is a thing of beauty.  After just a couple bites, I wanted to know what they did to get it so chewy and yet not overly thick.  Is it a bit of malt to go with the yeast?  A special flour or a certain type of water?

It's probably that cocaine they put in there...  Delicious, addicting cocaine...  Rick James was right.  Cocaine is a helluva drug.  I just wonder if that guy ever had a chance to eat pizza like this.  Maybe he'd have died a fat man.