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by Robert Simonson | photos by romney carus0

Last fall, my son Asher went off to college. And like any kid born and raised in New York, he ventured into the hinterlands with a few firmly held beliefs on what is acceptable in terms of certain kinds of food and drink. He knew what a good bagel should taste like, and the proper architecture of a cream-cheese schmear. He wanted seltzer, not club soda. And where pizza was concerned, he had standards. This made me proud. I felt I had done my job as a parent because, by the time he reached maturity, Asher had two favorite pizza places in New York — one for slices, and one for whole pies. It was right that he had two, for slice joints and pizzerias are not the same thing. They make different kinds of pies for different needs. Neither of his choices were marquee names, the kind that make best-of lists or appear in weighty tomes about the history of pizza. They were local businesses. This also struck me as apt for, no matter which pizzerias New Yorkers think are the best in town, everyone has their favorite neighborhood haunt. And at the end of the day, these are the places where, pound for pound, you spend the most time and eat the majority of your life’s allotment of pizza. Asher’s slice joint is the wonderfully named The House of Pizza & Calzone, in the neighborhood that used to be known as Red Hook, but has now been rechristened by real estate brokers as the Columbia Street Waterfront District. The House has been serving its waterfront community since 1952. They make a solid, consistent slice with a tangy sauce; not too thin, not too thick. For many years, the slice’s signature was a thin dust of cornmeal on the underside of the crust. Asher’s full-pie place is even older: Sam’s Pizzeria. In business since 1930, it is easily the oldest going concern in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood. The restaurant is the personal fiefdom of its gruff, completely non-PC owner, Lou, whose approach to hospitality is of the my-way-or-the-highway sort. But Lou likes kids, so Asher’s patronage has always been welcome. The pies at Sam’s are of the classic Neapolitan sort, with a sauce made of three tomato varieties. We always order green olives, a topping not often found and a specialty of the house. The pizza comes out within 10 minutes of ordering, and the piping-hot freshness of the pie can’t be beat. In a city like New York, of course, one isn’t limited to the pies within walking distance. So, as every Gotham parent should, I took my

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