Three Pizzerias - Angela's, Woodstock, La Roma

Little Red and I have eaten pizza at several joints  in recent weeks — at Angela's, on Route 9W in Lake Katrine, at the Woodstock Pizzeria on Tinker Street, and at La Roma Pizzeria at 516 Broadway in Kingston, in the Millard Building, right across from where you turn coming down from Benedictine Hospital.

All three of these pizza joints cook the pies “properly” from my point of view — and by this I mean they bake the pie, let it cool on the shelf, and then reheat a slice or several slices for each individual order.  That  is the New York style pizza I grew up with on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and for me this is the gold standard.  Serving a fresly baked pie without letting it cool and then rebaking slices means the crust will be flabby.  Some people like it that way — most of them willingly eat at Pizza Hut, I believe -- but the success of real New York Pizza depends more on the texture of the crust than it does on on the quality of the sauce and the cheese, though these are also important factors in judging a pizza.

Little Red and I stopped at Angela’s on a very cold night after visiting my mother at the Ten Broek Commons nursing home.  We were hungry and discouraged and Angela’s didn’t cheer us up much.  We sat near the back door, which was probably a mistake.  Angela’s is  a small place, popular with the locals, but the cold draft from the door was wnough to make us think we should have moved to a table that was closer to the pizza ovens.  We waited almost half an hour until finally Little red got up and asked where our pizza was.

“Omigod,” said the young waitress, clapping her hand to her mouth.  “Someone must have sent it out with one of the delivery orders.”

Angela's  pizza was passable — when it finally arrived.  But waiting so long made Little Red  cranky, and that is probably why she showed little interest in going there again.  We decided to try a few other pizzerias just to check to see what we could learn about the caliber of local pizza baking — just for fun..

Not because w e both love pizza, or anything like that.  I mean — Little Red still beliesves Pizza Hut makes pretty good pizza.  But I don’t like the sauce there — too much sweetener, the salt and pepper balalnce is too high, and the last time I ate there -- w0 years ago? -- they didn’t cook pizza by the slice “properly.”

The Woodstock Pizzeria, on Tinker Street — we stopped there about ten days later on the way back from visiting my mother at Benedictine.  It was on the way home.  My slice of plain cheese was cooked properly, but Little Red’s two pepperoni slices arrived scorched to a cinder.  Inedibly burned.  Never should have been served to a customer.  How can you explain -- to a teenage waitress/cashier? -- that when the slice is burned you don't serve it?  Little Red just took them back to the front counter and before long the definitely way too cute blonde brought two more slices of pepperoni.  These were only slightly too well done.  My cheese slices were okay.  Nothing extra.  This was disappointing — cooking a slice of pizza is properly is hardly rocket science, and one ought to be able to expect pizza good enough to eat.

La Roma Pizza, in the Millard Building at 516 Broadway, seemed the best of these three pizzerias.  The sauce was tasty.  The cheese was good.  The pies were cooked properly.  There was almost no one in the joint the two times we went, even though the physical plant seemed brand new.  Possibly La Roma does a good delivery business sending pies up to Benedictine and to Kingston Hospital?  The neighborhood’s a bit dicey after dark — not extra bad, but the streeets in Kingston aren’t very well llit, and a family might feel a bit unsettled going out to eat there at night.  They have a Wednesday  special of two cheese slices with a small soda for $3.99.  The menu shows a good variety of reasonably interesting "gourmet" pizzas, too, and they were willing to dot a cheese slice with ricotta when I asked.  Little Red and I went  back again, a few nights later, fairly certain we would find what we were lookiung  for: pretty darn good pizza in what we found to be a convenient location on the way back from the hospital.

I might even get up the  nerve to try a steak sandwich at La Roma, though I know it probably won't measure up to  Dalessandro's Steaks -- which is in Philadelphia on the north side of the Schuylkill at 600 Wendover Street, near the entrance to the park and the Walnut Lane golf course.  Dalessandro's Steaks is worth a  long detour any time you're in the neighborhood.  Hint:  It's not downtown on Mifflin Street.  Second hint:  Forget Pat's.