Castle's Chessboard

The Lasagna Slice of Legends

I'm reaching the age where I am starting to reminisce about the past a lot and beginning to lament about the things I miss from my childhood.

From time to time my brother and I get into an animated discussion about favorite restaurants that we used to visit that no longer exist. There is one restaurant that always winds up coming to the top of my list. On the Upper West side of Manhattan, there was a small Pizza restaurant appropriately called "Pizza Town" that had the best Pizza I have ever tasted. My Father worked nearby this restaurant and on the occasions My brother and I would meet with him after school we would eat there while waiting for him to finish work.

For a long time, New York has been known to have a ton great Pizza places in the City and this small restaurant almost certainly would been overlooked by bloggers and review critics constructing their top ten lists today. Pizza Town's pizza was always excellent but it could very easily get lost among the many other restaurants with similar tasting pizza that was arguably equally as good.

Where Pizza Town shined though was one of their specialty items "The Lasagna Slice". In addition to the standard Pizza ingredients Marinara sauce and Mozerella cheese... a Lasagna slice is topped with Ricotta cheese for a Richer and Creamier taste and Meat resulting in cheesy awesomeness that is out of this world.

A Lasagna slice could be found in a lot of Pizza places and it is still very tasty but none of the ones I have tasted so far have been able to match Pizza Town's quality. They tend to go lighter on the ricotta and aren't as generous with the meat. Pizza Town went out of its way to provide large chunks of ground beef, sausage and meatball in their pizza making each slice so much more tasty. Each slice of pizza from the restaurant was perfectly baked and the dough was a ultimate blend of crispiness and chewiness that made even the crust enjoyable to eat.

My father stopped working in that Upper West side neighborhood a long time ago removing my reason for coming to that area. When I did get a chance to revisit the location I discovered that Pizza Town had closed down several years back.

I don't know whether it is nostalgia or the fact that I genuinely haven't come across a slice of Pizza quite as good in over 20 years but over time Pizza Town's Lasagna slice has developed an Epic reputation in my mind. My family knows it as the "Lasagna Slice of Legends"... the perfect Slice of Pizza that (as far as I know) only exists in memory today. If I had the ability to travel through time... I would love to be able to stop at Pizza Town, order a can of root beer and a slice of Lasagna Pizza and relive the taste one more time.