Deal Of The Century

So, hold on a second. You go into the bar. Not just during happy hour, or only on certain days of the week, but any time on any day. (I was there at around 11pm on a Tuesday.) You order a drink. Not just expensive drinks, or special drinks, or skunked kegs that they're trying to get rid of, but any drink. (I had a draft Yuengling for $4; most drafts were $5 and a couple were $6, and most bottles were $4 or $5. Nobody I was with had liquor, but I would guess it would be comparably reasonably priced.) The bartender hands you your drink, and with it you get a ticket. It's just a standard red ticket, but it may as well be golden.

Because, you see, at Lulu's (formerly known as the Alligator Lounge, at the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Franklin Street a block West of the G train at Greenpoint Avenue), with each drink you buy, you get a ticket redeemable for a free personal pizza that's made to order.

Let me repeat that. Buy a drink, get a free personal pizza. How awesome is that?

And the pizza is actually pretty good. Made fresh when you order it, not frozen and heated in a microwave or something. You can add toppings for $1 each if you want; they had about four meat toppings, four vegetarian meat substitutes, and ten or twelve veggies. Here's mine, with pepperoni and mushrooms:



(Sorry it's a camera phone picture and not better quality.)

But I mean... even if it weren't great pizza, it's included for free with something you were buying anyway. This is just incredible, if you ask me. I'd keep going on about it, but I think it's pretty obvious by now how I feel.

By the way, tip the guy who's making the pizza. Totally worth it.

Detroit Part 2: Beer and Pizza and Beer

As I mentioned in my previous post, we went to a Red Wings game the first night we were in Detroit. We'd enjoyed some good beer with dinner, and it would've been a shame not to keep that going at the game, so keep it going we did.

Now, Detroit is practically in Canada, and one of the nice things about that proximity is that there's no shortage of Canadian beer. In particular, at Joe Louis Arena you can get 24-ounce cans of Molson XXX. If you're not familiar with this fine product (which isn't available everywhere in the USA), it's Molson's strongest offering at 7.3% alcohol by volume. It doesn't really taste the best (it's on the sweet side, if I recall correctly), but, like Samuel L. Jackson beer, it'll get ya drunk! (Or, if you prefer, like Uncle Jemima's Pure Mash Liquor, you'll get bent just as fast as possible.) So... mmmm mmmm good.

Another stop we made while we were in Detroit was for Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Pizza Papalis in Greektown. Those really thick pizzas (they're practically casseroles, they're so deep) take a while to cook, so they have a clever ordering system. First you put your name in for a table. While you're waiting for a table, you go to the pizza counter and put in an order for your pizza and they give you a receipt for your order. Once your table opens up, you give the server that receipt so that s/he knows to bring your pizza to you, and also order anything other than pizza. While you're (still) waiting for your pizza (which takes about 40 minutes), they bring you your other food (we shared a salad, which was probably a good idea), and then the guest of honor arrives and is devoured. Here's a picture (not mine):



The pizza (bacon cheeseburger pizza) was delicious, and tremendously food-coma-inducing. Chicago-style pizza: not really the same food product as New York-style pizza, but still good.

Later that same night, we also stopped at the Detroit Beer Company, a brewpub with some good house-made beers. I was still pretty stuffed from the pizza so I didn't have too much, but everything was tasty, and the decor was classic brewpub, with the tanks visible there and all that good stuff. I also snapped this picture, part of a bigger photo on the wall showing (if I'm not mistaken) a party celebrating the repeal of prohibition:


People and dogs agree: beer is awesome.

Dear Washington DC,

It doesn't matter how big the slices are, pizza does not have provolone cheese on it.

Love,
Everyone else

P.S. Oh shit, Katz's and Second Avenue Deli do battle over pastrami next week. I was wondering what they would pick to do an episode in New York, and this seems like a great choice. Send a salami to your boy in the army, because it's ON.

But... But This Is Brooklyn!

I love my neighborhood. I live in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, and it's wonderful in so many ways. As far as restaurants go, there's a good neighborhood sushi place, good cheap Thai, passable wings, a good local burger place, a good chain burger place, and, of course, FresCo. When I feel like cooking, there's a small local grocery store and a Key Food and Trader Joe's and the awesome Sahadi's and not one but two great wine shops and an incredible beer store, as well as plenty of bodegas if I need ketchup or cereal or whatever. Tons of bars I enjoy: Brooklyn Social, Ceol, Boat, Gowanus Yacht Club, Zombie Hut (yeah, I know it sucks, but whatever, it's still fun), Floyd and Brazen Head to name a few. Good shopping too, but that's sort of outside the scope of what I'm writing about here.

But here's what's missing. There is no pizza place open past 12:30am on weekends. Like I said, there are bars, there are drunk people leaving those bars, there are drunk people coming home to the neighborhood from bars in other parts of the city. So why, why, why, is Domino's (I'm not even going to link them, because friends don't let friends surf for chain pizza) the only place to grab a slice on the way home? It's inexplicable to me, and if I had lots of money to invest in businesses, I'd definitely go in on an open-late pizza place, maybe along Smith Street near the subway. Anyone have some investment capital and want to sell some pizza?