"It's just pizza"

So wrote a commenter in response to my recent pizza rant, and what he clearly thought was misguided praise for Angie's Margherita pie.

I had to laugh. It reminded me of a long-ago conversation I had with the late great Jonathan Gold, back when we both were writing for the Ruth Reichl-era Gourmet. I had fallen hard for Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. (Chef Chris Bianco, it happens, mentored Angie's chef Angelo Emiliani back in the day).

"This is one of the best restaurants in the country," I am pretty sure I was rhapsodizing when Gold interjected, "It's just a pizza restaurant."

"That's like saying Tiger Woods is 'just a golfer,'" I sputtered. Mind you, this was back in the late 90s, before Woods had fallen from pop-culture grace.

Well, I was right, Gold was wrong. That's the kind of stuff you have to believe if you're going to stick your critical neck out. Even if you allow yourself a secret chortle of recognition when somebody like my acerbic commenter decides to remind you that "it's just pizza."

For too many decades, I really was more in the "it's just pizza" camp. I came from the relatively pizza-primitive land of Vermont, and Houston was not exactly Pizza Paradise in the decades after I got here. The most celebrated local pies were at Valian's on South Main, not far from my college dorm. I recall nothing special about them, except for the colossal shish-kebab skewer that loomed outside the restaurant for reasons I found opaque.

Only when I bit into the Bianco era of American pizza-making, in the late 1990s, did I start to obsess about the genre—to chase it from one Houston pizzeria to the next, to one city after another, always alert to who was doing the latest and greatest.

I freely confess that the Neapolitan style turned my palate around so hard that other pizza genres paled in comparison for me. I would argue that in its simplicity and lively contrasts, a Neapolitan pie is everything: rustic and yet elegant in form; a round world unto itself; an invitation—nay, a challenge– to wolf ravenously before the fleeting magic from that hot, hot oven flees.

I even hoard the "bones" of crust from a well-made Neapolitan pie. I have been known to chew on them, unadorned, at midnight. I suppose I could do the civilized thing and dip them in a little olive oil, but if the dough is deep and resonant enough, why bother ?

"I knew about your love of Neapolitan style, but this rant seems like you want nothing else?" asked my friend and fellow pizza fanatic Dwight Silverman, the Chronicle's former longtime tech columnist, when he read my post last week. He reminded me that I am the deviant who induced him to try the macaroni and cheese pie at the late, much-missed Pi Pizza, where Anthony Calleo frolicked in the wilder fields of toppings and emerged unscathed.

"Where's the Alison who turned me onto the wild cherries on [Pi's] Huntsman pizza?" he wanted to know.

That woman is still around, still able to appreciate fine specimens of other pizza genres—although writing a rant kinda calls for an intemperate tone, with a dash of hyperbole.

I freely admit that when Pizaro's in Houston first launched their New York and Detroit styles, I thought the pies were well done. Tiny Champions does a fine job with gas-fired deck ovens rather than the domed wood ovens Neapolitan fanatics insist on.

A couple of years back, during an epic food romp through pizza-mad Chicago, I was able to appreciate the joys of well-made Roman style rectangles al taglia at Bonci and even deep dish pizza, a form I had long avoided as excessive. Of course, my pizza-cation through Chicago hit what I considered its zenith at a Neapolitan style joint, Spacca Napoli. I can't help myself.

At home, I'm really not equipped to produce a demanding Neapolitan pizza. Instead I bake a funky Sicilian-grandma style pie with a more forgiving, focaccia-like crust; or a cracker-thin crust with a pissaladière of melted onions and thyme leaves and Nicoise olives skating across the surface, plus an anchovy or three.

I confess that certain personal prejudices exclude me from much of modern pop pizza culture, which tends to be toppings-mad and meat-centric. (And fetishistic about it, too: along with barbecue and tacos, pizza has emerged one of the Big Three American food genres that inspire endless argument.)

I don't care for pepperoni. (There, I said it.) A scatter of crumbled fennel sausage, yes; coins of red-peppery sopressata, sure. Discreet shavings of speck, prosciutto or capicola are welcome. But the thought of a "Meat Lovers' pizza" groaning with assorted protein fills me with horror.

As to vegetables, I might like a bit of well considered onion, or pepper, or even eggplant in its place, but forget about a whole "veggie" pile-on—especially if it involves canned black olives, which should stay in their cans.

In the end I always migrate back to Neapolitan style with its careful edit, like an albatross returning to nest on its native headland.

Go ahead and tell me "it's just pizza."

I'll just lift and eyebrow and ask, "Shall we order another?"