The Margarita Sicilian slice at Pacini’s Pizzeria: delicious, but a bit lightweight for a Sicilian style crust. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge)
By JIM WILLIS
PieHole was out running some mid-day errands at the corner of Broad Street and Harding Road in Red Bank – visiting the bank, the cleaners and the Post Office – you know, that tiny little sliver of downtown that caters to people who actually live here.
It was close to lunch time and we were overcome by a need to nosh, and so decided to grab a couple of slices of pizza from Pacini’s Pizzeria on Broad.
The visit reminded us that we need to go out for slices more often. Sure, we regularly pick up a pie on a Friday night from one of the greater Green’s many decent pizza shops. But slices? They’re a completely different delicacy.
The thing with slices is that the pie has already been cooked and cooled. You walk into any decent pizza slice place and they’ve got an array of pies out that they’ll reheat by the slice to order. Only a culinary Neanderthals would think of this as warmed up “leftovers.” The reheating of the slice in a superhot oven imparts a special kind of extra crispiness to the crust that you don’t get from a pizza that’s only been heated once.
Pacini’s has a dizzying array of pies put out for slices: a chicken, bacon, Ranch dressing slice looked interesting, as did the calamari slice. But we’re purists, especially when it comes to the reheated slice. The less standing between us and that extra bit of crispiness, the better, so we ordered a slice of plain ($3) and a slice of the Margarita Sicilian ($3).
The slices came out of the oven hot and crispy. The plain had plenty of cheese and deep, rich sauce with had just the kind of crispness we’d been looking for. The Sicilian was thick and featured a bright and tangy marinara sauce, but the crust was a bit too light and airy compared to the denser, chewier crust we look for when getting a slice of Sicilian.
Still, for under $10, we were able to scratch that extra-crispy, by-the-slice epicurean itch.
