Moo Eats: The Subway Rule

There is a rule here in The City. Don’t get on an empty subway car. If you do you quickly find out why it’s empty. Maybe no airconditioning, no heat, more likely an unidentifyable stench……that quickly becomes identifyable, enough said. Just don’t do it.

I decided when i started my Moo ratings that I would only list extraordinary restaurants and no bad reviews.

Ive been meaning to try L&B Spumoni pizza for years. The photo’s look fantastic and it’s been on the NYC pizza rave list for decades, but it’s over an hour a way on the ‘D’ train, and I don’t have the time. While looking at instagram i notice that someone has rated a pizzeria just across town better than L&B, in fact 3rd in The City. That’s extraordinary for a place I never heard of. Also they advertise they have Boylan Soda (Pop for you Non-New Yorkers), my favorite, So I go.

It’s a little after 3pm, not prime time for the lunch crowd. There is no line, In fact the place is empty. The subway rule comes to mind, against my better judement I go in.

There is one young woman working in the place, they have new non-standard pizza ovens and the pizza on display is cold an unappetizing. I ask her what i should get. she says ‘get the vodka’. I don’t like vodka, she argues. I consider walking out, but I at least want the Boylan cola. We settle on a corner slice of peperoni. I get a glass and go to fill it at the Boylan fountain with Cola. She puts the slice on the table (after heating it for maybe 45 seconds) and I show her the cola is out of syrup – only soda water is coming out. She looks at the machine with disdain and says: “Pick something else.” I’m not sure what my reaction was, but it wasn’t good, and she said “Ok, i’ll find someone to change it, i don’t know how.”

As I sit there eating my pizza, with soda water and as I take a second bite I notice the music is gangsta rap and is spewing racial epithets, words I wouldn’t dare say in public and other phrases like “crack-ho”, “SHIT”, “Asshole-Fag”. The experience was so perfectly bad, I actually started to laugh. Let me say, the musical ambiance did not add to the already otherworldly experience.

• 

The gimmick this place offers is sauce on the side with your pizza. The pizza was breadlike, tepid and meh. The sauce, in contrast, was excellent. $9.25 for what you see above. The gansta rap says: “Asshole Asshole Asshole Asshole.” There was no extra charge for the ambiance, attitude and lack of management. In all fairness, I’m sure the counterperson was abandoned by the owner/manager who did not supply the resources necessary to do her job. The pro’s: No wait, easy to find a table.

During the entire time, not one other person came into the pizzaria …..store. I finished up as the counter person watched me throw my glass of soda-water into the garbage (she didn’t offer a refund or any kind of acknowledgement). I don’t need to name the place, they will be out of business soon.

The lesson

Don’t get on an empty subway car.

and

stick to my list of places to go to.