TheAgitator.com
Killing My Inner Atkins
Thursday, March 11th, 2004A new restaurant opened near me called “Valentino’s New York Style Pizzeria.”
Monday night, I paid a visit.
For weeks now, I have heard of this mysterious New York City-dwelling creature called “the ziti pizza.” I was intrigued, but I’d always assumed it was a mere urban legend, a carb-blasted pile of greasy goo that image-conscious New Yorkers merely dreamt about between cigarette tokes and treadmill sessions.
Pasta stacked atop pizza dough? With three kinds of cheese? And marinara? Had anyone laid hand on such a creature? Or was it merely the stuff of water cooler talk and blury pictures in the Weekly World News?
Monday night at Valentino’s, I found the rumors to be all too true. There, behind the slightly fogged-up sneeze guard, I found it — a nest of just-born ziti-pizza slices.
Yes. I ate me some ziti pizza. I can’t begin to express the glorious gluttony. A three-dimensional hunk of warm, salty pie. Not a slice, a fucking pyramid. Of mozzerella, ricotta, parmesean, baked ziti and greasy New Yorkish pizza dough.
As for Atkins, I might say I cheated, but that would be misleading to the point of deception. This wasn’t cheating. This was cheating with three hookers, a Boy Scout, and a pony. This was wrong. Sinful. Slothful. Dirty. I might as well have poured a quart of sugar down my throat.
Sigh. Okay. I pretty much did that, too.
For desert, I had something called “spumoni cake.” Spumoni cake is six layers of gellato (chocolate, vanilla, rum raisin, mocha, mint, and one other I can’t remember) all slathered over a crushed Oreo cookie crust. And yes. It’s everything you might think it would be.
As I was leaving, I noticed a foreboding sign hung crookedly to the exit door.
It said, “we deliver.”
That gooey, glopping sound you hear would be the slow obstruction of bloodflow through my arteries.
You’re a runner, right? Don’t worry about it. Sure, the occasional gluttonous episode isn’t exactly ‘good’ for you physically, but there is something to be said for the positive effects of tasty food on one’s mental health.
Enjoy carbo loading. just keep running.
Carb-loving fellow marathoner
Mmmmmmmm . . . gooey, glopping sounds.
Looks yummy!
Heh. Back on Long Island, I remember a great little pizzeria that made the best “ziti pizza”. One pie could feed you for a month.
Good for you, Radley! Enjoy the other side of life once in a while.
In earlier era there was a restaurant in Georgetown called Geppetto’s (SP)that would pile on the toppings (i.e. pepperoni) so high you needed Sherpas just to get started.
I could look it up, but is it still there? Does it still pile it on? Radley is not too far from that place . . . Last time I ate there I think Reagan was in the WH so who knows, eh?
i can’t believe it. you’ve found yet another talent. food critic.
mmm, yes i miss the ziti pizza of my manhattan days…also the chicken parm pizza. oh yeah, that’s the stuff!
Valentino’s is great pizza.
There’s one north in Ames, but about twenty years or so ago, I seem to recall a boatload of ‘em in Iowa. (Along with “Pizza Nik.”)
Still, the pizza’s another good reason to go “home” to Nebraska.
“The body is not a temple, it is an amusement park”
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