Dub dot dash

All about pizza
I was having this random conversation via Twitter today with a fella from LA (Jon from LASnark) - he asked the question "Anyone know that LA pizza place that supposedly imports their water from NY to make authentic NY pizza?" I've heard many great things about NY pizza from places like Lombardi's, so, what is the deal?

So, bit of searching uncovered some stories which I fired his way, including this article from the LA Times on the best place to get NY style pizza in LA (turns out the importing water story is urban legend).

Then I found this link to an LA pizza place that import Massachusetts water, which led to this story about a recent blind taste test where three pizzas were made, one with LA water, one with Chicago water, and one with NYC water. All four of the tasters preferred the NYC pizza (read the comments there for more on the special qualities of NYC tap water, the special ingredient in NYC pizza).

So, that's great and all if you live in LA, but I'm in Auckland. So where is the best NY style pizza in our burg? Looks like I'm gonna have to check out Sal's Pizza in Commerce St. Ciaran, a former resident of Queens, NYC, has opened up Sals - he based it on his favourite local spot back home, also called Sals. You can read all about it over here, on Frank Liew's blog.

Excerpt: "10 years ago he approached his favourite local joint in his neighbourhood - Sal’s Pizzeria in Queens to talk about opening up shop outside of NYC

For one reason or another it didn’t happen back then, but over the years he kept the thought in the back of his mind - and last year when he was back home he went back to Sal’s with his idea, who ended up giving him their original recipe, the same recipes they’ve used for all their pies since they opened in 1975.

Funnily enough, they didn’t want anything for it, just to share good pizza with the world, so in return he named his own joint after them. Sal’s Pizza, Auckland New Zealand."

Ciaran added this to the comments on Franks blog', talking about how he got started with Sals... "Nick (my business partner who I met playing tennis in the south of France 15 years ago) came to visit NYC for New Years 08′ and has always loved the pizza in NY. After downing a couple large 18″ pizzas (on consecutive days:) he kept saying how good it would be to have pizza like that in Auckland. After that conversation, we did a bit of research and decided to go for it…"

Photo credit: Sal's Pizza from Frank Liew's blog.
ADDED: Sal's Pizza, 4a Commerce St. Auckland City, phone 09 379 7257. Open Mon-Sun, Midday until late