Zine: Slice Harvester #1

As mentioned previously on this blog, I am fairly lactose intolerant, which means that I can’t easily enjoy one of mankind’s most perfect creations, the cheese pizza slice. When I do indulge, I have to make sure to chew a few Lactaid tablets and be careful not to overdo it (as in not eat an entire pie by myself, as I have been known to do). So when I do decide to eat pizza, it has to be damn good pizza.

Un/fortunately, I live in Philadelphia, and there is a dearth of decent slices in this town, a lack of slices with tasty sauce that aren’t smothered in cheap cheese, that come out of the oven with a thin (but not too thin) crust still dusted with cornmeal, strong enough to support the weight of the slice, but not so thick that chewing is a chore. The sad fact is, any mediocre slice of NYC pizza is better than a Philadelphia slice. I stand by this assertion. It could be the water, it could be the many years of crust built up in some of those ovens, it could be the latitude - all I know is that NYC slices are worth taking Lactaid.

Colin’s goal with SLICE HARVESTER (the blog and zine) is simple. From his mission statement:

“I am going to eat a slice of pizza at every pizzeria in New York City. I'm going by neighborhood, starting in Manhattan, getting a plain slice at every place. I am fucking sick of the current trend in Pizza Journalism that's all about fucking artichoke guacamole tahini pizza on rice dough. That shit isn't pizza. Sorry.”

The reviews in SLICE HARVESTER include as much detail about the pizza joint, the trip with friends to get the slice, and weird rambling, semi-on topic tangents as they do about the slice itself. If Colin wasn’t such an entertaining writer, it would feel horribly forced and not work at all. Go over and read the review for Mt. Carmel Pizzeria for a great example of an off-topic, tangential review that works.

It’s also difficult to write a review of the same food item over and over and stay fresh and interesting, but Colin succeeds. Here some ways he describes sauce from places reviewed in Issue #1:

“The sauce was adequately sweet, but still retained a fair amount of the natural tartness and tang of the tomatoes.”

“The sauce was a horrid mess, though. Tasted way more like jar red marinara than pizza sauce, if that makes sense. It was super salty and garlicky in a really unpleasant way, which made it way overpowering, so I couldn’t even taste the cheese.”

“But the sauce was really what made this slice. It was sweet in this really natural way, like fresh, homegrown tomatoes right off the vine.”

“The sauce tasted heavily of garlic powder and tasted like it was sweetened with corn syrup.”

“And the sauce was weirdly sweet. It was in a way that you totally don’t notice at first, but then it has this shitty aftertaste.”

SLICE HARVESTER may one case where the blog format may be preferable to the zine format, if only for timeliness. The blog is updated frequently, and is tagged by locations, so you can easily find all the slices in east Midtown. Plus, there’s lovely photos of the slices! I’ll be using this as a guide for some of my visits to NYC this fall.

Available for $3 from Slice Harvester Headquarters, 442D Lorimer St #230, Brooklyn, NY 11206 or via Paypal to sliceharvester@gmail.com. Issue #2 is now available as well. Blog: www.sliceharvester.com.