The Return of the Revenge of Ridiculous Eats, Part 1: Give Me Lenten Pizza Specials, or Give Me Death!

Perusing Cleveland's Scene magazine has become a staple of my work-day lunch breaks. Cleveland's weekly alternative paper is one of the better free publications of most large cities I've been to. Competent writing, plenty of show listings, and hilarious ads. What more could one ask for? The comics back, for starters, but that's another article for another outlet.

Anywhozle, for the past few weeks I've been seeing adds for a pierogi pizza being served up by a Parma pizza palace called P. Jay's. Surprised? Maybe if it wasn't in Parma. Curious? You bet!

A very small amount of Google detective work led me to the P. Jay's Pizza website. A click or two later I arrived at this image:

Bam.

What more can say? What more could one ask for? I suppose my one question would be: Is there really extra butter added? In addition to the butter sauce? Seems a bit much, but then this wouldn't be a ridiculous eats entry if it wasn't, right?

I'm hoping to make it all the way out to Parma to give one a whirl soon. Further review when that occurs. In the mean time, sit back and revel in the knowledge that this is out there in the world, waiting to cram your arteries and gullet with buttery, pizza-y goodness!

Bowling Green Food Feast 2010!

On what seems to have been the greatest whim ever, Nicole and Cousin Jay made the turnpike trek out to the city of our alma mater, Bowling Green, yesterday. Their mission was to retrieve the most delicious food items offered by the myriad of amazing eateries in that sleepy little college town. As it has been several year since I last visited BG, naturally I was hungry for some of my favorite collegiate munchies and began considering my order.

My first thought was of Mr. Spots, a small chain of regional sandwich shops specializing in one of the best Philly Cheese Steaks out side of Philadelphia. Unfortunately a greasy, cheese soaked sandwich doesn’t make the best travel companion so I had to nix that (side note, does anyone know of a good cheese steak in Cleveland? I’ve yet to find one). My next thought was a Campus Polleyes Super-Mug of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. A whole liter of delicious hoppy goodness and a huge mug that could double as weight training equipment. Alas, open container laws and flat, warm beer are two of my greatest pet peeves so this idea, too, went by the wayside. What’s a hungry alumnus to do?
http://www.misterspots.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqhbrW6oMZw

But thinking of Polleyes got me thinking more, and it dawned on me: Stuffed Fucking Breadsticks! Fellow alumni, friends of Falcons, and family should all know about the magic of Campus Polleyes’ stuffed breadsticks, but for those who missed out on the magical powers of Northwest Ohio’s “World Famous” (according to their menu) Stuffed Breadsticks let me let you in. The stuffed breadstick is pretty straight forward menu option; a sheet of bread dough is layered with cheese and the customer’s choice of pizza toppings. Chicken and roast beef are likely the two most popular, but almost anything that can go on a pizza can go in a bread stick. While the chicken and cheese was a long time favorite of mine, this go round I opted for the taco style. In this iteration, the breadstick is filled with Colby-Jack cheese and seasoned ground beef. After a stint in the oven, the breadsticks are served with optional garlic butter on top (delicious) and customer’s choice of pizza sauce, house made ranch, nacho cheese, or barbeque sauce. The ranch and the cheese are the most delicious so I chose those two to accompany my sticks.

And were they as good as I remember? You bet! The ground beef is still a little spicy and delicious and the tang of the Colby-Jack adds a nice little bite that mozzarella might not. The nacho cheese is, well, the nacho cheese sauce you’re likely to find at a gas station or ball park, but that doesn’t mean it’s not delicious, in fact it might be one of the best condiments ever despite it lacking any real food qualities. And the ranch dressing is still creamy, delicious, and appropriately understated, unlike the white sludge for sale in most supermarkets.
http://www.campuspollyeyes.com/

The second course of this nostalgia feast came from the one and only Myles’ Pizza Pub. An operational monument to extreme foods Myles’ loads and re-loads all their pizzas with double or triple the amount of toppings normally found on a pizza then tops their thick crusted beauties with handfuls of cheese. Not New York and not Chicago, Myles’ is a pizza unto itself and a must try for any/all pizza aficionado. Myles’ menu boasts a huge array of sides (tomato bread is a popular favorite), massive salads, and incredible pizzas. But the stars of the Myles’ line up are the “Lovers Pizzas.” To clarify, these pizzas are for lovers of their toppings and not aphrodisiacs, unless of course feeling bloated and overstuffed is your idea of sexy time. And with 9 in the line the Lovers Pizzas offer something for everyone. The Breakfast Lovers is topped with scrambled eggs and breakfast meats, the Mexico Lovers mixes seasoned ground beef and spicy sausage in tangy pizza salsa then tops off with all the usual taco fillers (lettuce, tomatoes, olives, etc.), the Wild-West Lovers is cram jammed with bacon, mushrooms, and ground buffalo (when available, otherwise it’s ground beef). But my favorite has always been the Spice Lovers. With a massive layer of spicy pepperoni, salami, and homemade Italian sausage sandwiched between Myles’ perfection-nearing sauce and mound of cheese, this pizza packs plenty of pleasing zing into every bite. Topped with a little crushed red pepper and this is pizza heaven. Should you leave Myles’ Pizza Pub anything short of filled to bursting, the Myles family also operates BG’s Dairy Queen and approaches the Blizzard and sundae making business in the same manner they make their pizzas: bigger, better, more. A small blizzard at Myles’ DQ is equivalent to the mediums at most other franchises, and has as much of your topping of choice mixed in as is structurally possible.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/myles-pizza-pub-and-sub-shop-bowling-green

Rounding out this hearty cast of characters is a lesser known, but my no means less delicious component of the Bowling Green food community: the hummus and pita chips from South Side 6. SS6 has been a part of the BG community for years and for most of that time they were simply a beverage store offering up a variety of beers and sodas on the southern edge of town. Around 2003 or so the owners of SS6, a family from the Middle East, added a food service counter to mix and started serving up gyros, falafel, and other fare from that region. Everything I sampled from there was pretty outstanding, especially the falafel pita roll and the fries with tangy garlic sauce, but the hidden jewels on the South Side 6 menu are the hummus and pita chips. The hummus seems simple enough, but there’s something extra special about it I’ve never been able to put my finger on. It makes almost anything that’s dipped into it mouthwateringly delicious, and my guess is that it has extra garlic and tahini in it. The pita chips SS6 offers by the bag full have something special about them, too, but their greatness is easier to pin down. First of all they’re fried crisp giving them a texture similar to a tortilla chip, but they’re also topped with a savory and slightly spicy herb and spice mix that certainly contains basil, oregano, garlic and onion powders, and sesame seeds. There’s got to more to it than than that, but anything subtler gets lost in the mélange of other spices and the hummus. South Side 6 pita and hummus makes a great snack or side, but it’s good enough that I’ve made meals out of it more than once.
http://www.southside6.com/

And how does one wash down a feast of such epic proportions? With no Super-Mugs or Mini-Pitchers available, we opted for the suds that so often filled the aforementioned chalices: Old Speckled Hen and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Old Speckled Hen’s balance of malt and hops is the perfect accompaniment to almost any hearty meal, and Sierra Nevada’s extreme hop bite is an excellent foil to the bold flavors in these food favorites.

This is but a small sampling of the delicious fare sustaining college students and townies alike in BG, but these are some of the most notable contributors to my freshman, sophomore, and junior fifteens. Eating them again I was transported back to a simpler time. While I can never return to those days again, I can always relive the memories with a few bites of food and a few sips of beer!

Fine Dining on a Budget in Cleveland

Fine dining and reasonable budgets don’t always mix, but if you know where to look you can find exactly that in the Ohio City neighbor hood of Cleveland. Located on West 25th street, around the corner from the Great Lakes Brewing Company, is Sam McNulty’s mini-empire. The most recognizable portion of this is Bier Markt, a bar modeled after Belgian beer halls, serving a variety of beers with a focus on beers from Belgium. Also located within the building is Bar Cento (pronounced chen’-toh) which is where my friend Kate and I ended up eating an amazing meal last night.

Originally we had planned on getting Indian food, but there is a dearth of decent sub-continental cuisine on the near west side of Cleveland. Hungry and undeterred we wracked our brains for food ideas. Ultimately we decided that (A) we weren’t hungry for any certain food stuff or ethnic cuisine so (B) any and everything was on the table and that (C) our destination should offer the following:
1. Good eats
2. Decent prices and
3. Beer
We also stipulated that dinner could not be too heavy as we both had post-meal plans.

Finally Kate suggested Bar Cento, a place I had heard of (it’s owned by my landlord) but had never been. Kate vouched for the tastiness and reasonable pricing of their food, so we made the trek. On our arrival things were jumping, but we were told there would be but a 10-minute wait for a table. This seemed reasonable for a Friday night so we grabbed a seat and some beers from the bar. The beer: Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Christmas Ale; rich, spicy, and with a hint of orange, this is the beer to drink this winter, hands down. But be warned its ABV is 7.5 so they can, and will, sneak up on you.

We noticed a few of our other bar mates were happily munching away so we decided to grab some menus and eat at the bar instead of waiting for a table. Bar Cent has a nice, big, heavy bar so this is not a problem. The menu is short but solid, boasting a variety of Italian fare, a strong beer selection, and a huge wine selection.

After a few minutes of scanning the menu we came to the conclusion that we wanted pizza, narrowing our choices from Bar Cento’s 10 pies down to 2. The finalists: Apple Prosciutto with gorgonzola or Sunnyside with provolone, pancetta, eggs, and black pepper. The victor: Sunnyside. While Bar Cento’s pizzas would make a fine meal for one, split two ways they might not make it so we ordered some anti-pasta, too. While there are a number of meats, cheese, olives, and pickles to choose from, we decided to try a bit of them all with the Big Board, a sampling of all the meats and cheeses.

Having ordered we sipped our Christmas Ales and waited. When our food arrived, and promptly, too—considering the number of people in the bar that night—we didn’t know where to start. The pizza looked like the dream of the breakfast lovers everywhere and the anti-pasta board was loaded with incredible looking fare. We tucked-in to the meats and cheese first sampling a little bit of everything. The Spanish chorizo was at the top of my meat list, along with the prosciutto. I was pleasantly surprised by something called bresola and Italian cured beef, with a tangy bite. Cheese wise I was pretty into all of them but there were two nutty, hard cheeses reminiscent of Romano and Parmigianino, and a delicious few slices of a cheese that tasted like a hard brie. The few slices of pickled cauliflower that came along were tasty but no mach for the rest of the board. The big surprise of this portion of the meal: prosciutto wrapped dried cherries, wow!

As for the pizza, well, I love few things on this earth more than pizza and breakfast. Sure, you can eat pizza for breakfast and it’s great. You can have breakfast for dinner, that’s great, too. But the two have never fully reconciled, until the Sunnyside. Rich, tangy provolone and pancetta set a delicious foundation for the 4 sunny-side-up eggs baked on top. This was really a perfect bite almost every time, few blank spots and plenty of the good stuff all on top a great thin crust.

As we digested and finished our beers Kate and I agreed on a few things. That (1) this was exactly what we wanted (2) neither of us had known that before eating and (3) that made it all the better. We also agreed after the Big Board had been all but licked clean that there are few pleasures in life as deliciously simple as meat, cheese, and bread. Very little else is needed, save for good spirits and good company. Economically speaking we did ok, too. About $15 each for some delicious pizza and a healthy portion of artisanal cheeses and cured meats, while not the dollar menu, is still pretty reasonable in my book.

For the full menu, directions, and links to Bier Markt and Speakeasy, visit their website here:

11 Short Films About Pizza Making

I now unveil to you, my cooking video/You Tube debut. Me and the boyfriend attempt to make our own pizzas with delicious results. On an ability scale of 1 - 5, I'd rate this project at a 1, so easy a hamster could do it. Yes, there are 11 (!) video clips here. I know it looks like a lot to watch, but all in all it's like 15 minutes. I just don't have a video camera and had to use the capture feature on my camera which only takes video for like a minute and a half at a time. In addition, I'm not what you'd call steady handed, so if the Blair Witch Project gave you motion sickness, then, uh, I'd turn back if I were you. We are totz profesh here at WWEIL. So sit back and drink in my sweet how-to-idness...and then go make yourself an awesome, organic, veggie pizza!

Misleading Pizza Article from MSN

I got really excited when I opened Explorer this morning and saw a link to an article about the best and worst chain pizzas in the country. While I'd much rather nom on some local or regional fare, the big boys do it right most of the time and will definitely do in a pizza pinch. My love of criticism, food writing, and pizza combine forces and my interest was piqued to say the least.

However, I was immediately disappointed by the content. This wasn't an article about the best and worst tasting chain pizzas, rather an assessment of the healthiness of chain pizzas. Yawn. Pizza's deliciousness, like most foods, is in direct correlation to how bad it is for you--this is why the Spice Lover's pizza at Myles's is possibly the greatest pizza on the face of the earth--and there for the article is somewhat backwards.

Also *SPOILER ALERT* one of the best pizzas on this list, and by best I mean healthiest in this case, came from Domino's. This is really the only way Domino's will ever reach the top of pizza heap.

Anyways check out the article here and decide for yourself: http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100239591&gt1=31036

ridiculous eats, pt. two: electric vindaloo

In a never ending quest for strange and extreme--but still edible--foods I found this, um, treat: deep fried pizza!

Apparently this is quite the rage in Scotland, last bastion of the die hard fryer, and has since been imported to these United States by Scottish emigres hankering for a taste of home.

This particular variation is a slice of pepperoni, topped with a hand full of field greens, battered and fried. Tasty, no?

I swear the next one won't be pizza related.

Are You Daring Enough for the Vegan McPizza?

Many of your distinguished palates are probably familiar with the McPizza. This is when a pizza is covered with Mickey Dees cheeseburgers, french fries, and chicken nuggets:

Or perhaps you have made your own concoction of fast food on a pie goodness. I know a favorite during my college years was the Taco Bell pizza:

Either way, being vegan I have always missed on this gluttonous side show, and for someone who likes junk food so much, it's been a sad hole in my diet. Luckily, there is this guy out in the world who was also pretty into this concept, but unlike me, he didn't let his diet stand in the way of making this priceless meal. With the help of two of the cutest vegan children I've ever seen he was able to craft one delicious looking pile of vegan junk food.

He describes the vegan McPizza as being, "very filling...it will only take a piece, maybe two, to fill you up…and I mean fill. I daringly went for two pieces…a half burger, half fry and a half burger, half nugget...I was stuffed." He goes on to give it more than favorable reviews, and to me, it sounds like maybe this could qualify for more than just junk food? Maybe... "The flavors were all actually quite good. The tomato sauce and cheese go well with all 3 toppings by themselves…chicken parmesan, cheese fries w/ marinara dipping sauce, a pizza burger. But all combined on a pizza…Vegan McMagic!"

To read more about the making of a vegan McPizza check out this post he wrote for the blog/website he shares with his wife called Ste Martaen. This is an excellent down to earth, welcoming vegan site. Plus, they sell what looks like awesome Vegan Gourmet Cheese. I haven't attempted to purchase it yet (online shopping intimidates me), but it's tempting. Please check it out for great recipes, thoughts on healthy eating, and of course fresh cheese!