Mmm, cheesy. [Photo: Robyn Lee]
There are all sorts of criteria I have for good pizza, from crust char to cheese-sauce ratios. Good drunk pizza, on the other hand? Something different altogether. Good drunk pizza needs to be 1. steaming hot 2. amply (or excessively) cheesy 3. ready when you want it 4. not terrible.
And within those bounds, pretty much anything goes, right?
My college food court had a Villa Pizza on the ground floor, conveniently stationed between the party street and the dorms, even more conveniently open until 3am on the weekends.
During the day, it wouldn't have ever occurred to me to grab a slice. I'd totally believe that most Villa Pizza is on par with Sbarro or worse. But at 2:30am on a Saturday, with a line twenty people long, pies cut up and slid out so quick from the oven they'd burn you on first bite? Those were some of the best slices I'd ever had, even the crust steaming as you bit in, the cheese so melty-sloppy-molten it hardly stayed in place.
That's fixed in my mind as the platonic drunk pizza, or at least it was, until I polished off about half a medium pie from a Frank Pepe's outlet at Mohegan Sun this Saturday in the wee hours. (I'm sure you're shocked to hear that industry wine and beer events often end up in people, er, drinking.) I never thought the other Pepe's could hold a candle to the original. But for a post-midnight pie? Fresh from the oven, it was pretty unbeatable, I happily mused as I chomped down my third slice.*
*Dinner was about four drinks and six hours back, and sometimes late-night hunger can't wait until Bobby Flay breaks open Bobby's Burger Palace at 3am to heat up the grill. True story.
Drunk pizza memories are some of my best (if not clearest) pizza memories. What's your favorite drunk slice? And is it something you'd ever eat in a more lucid state?
About the author: Carey Jones is the Editor of Serious Eats New York and co-editor of Serious Eats: Sweets. Follow her on Twitter (@careyjones).