real nyc pizza

NYKate said:
Has anyone tried Pizza Piola? They are actually pretty good.
I'm a Brooklyn girl moving to BA next July so finding "real" NY pizza is a must!! My fiance is trying to convince me that BsAs pizza is the best in the world but he has to say that as he's a portaneo. :eek:)

Finding "real" NY pizza is a "must"? Yikes. Not going to happen. And your fiance is straight-up delusional (I'm sure he's a great guy and all, :), but there is no way that pizza in Buenos Aires is anywhere close to the best in the world).
 
Ryoga said:
actually LA's water has been rated amongst the top in the US. Santa Barbara has poor water

My apt water was fine, the water I got at the L.A. County Men's jail, not so good.
 
But it is all about perception, as to what tastes are. I like Argentine beef, but not cooked like Argentines cook it, for example. Often over-cooked, with no taste but the beef itself. I'm from Texas and used to grill my steaks in a smoker with some kind of light seasoning on the surface - I love the smoke flavor from Mesquite or Hickory, for example, which as far as I have seen so far, there is no equivalent here. Even if there was, the parillas don't ahve the ability to keep the smoke concentrated so the meat soaks up as much (although I have seen some barrel smokers for sale near here - I may give up my parilla soon, but I can't find any good wood!)

There's nothing like a brisket cooked long and slow (6 hours, say) with apple wood - slightly sweet and not so strong that the meat is overwhelmed with the flavor for cooking 6 hours. But here, a vacio cut (about what we consider brisket) is cooked like other meat, and it is a substandard piece of meat that needs to be lovingly cooked to get the best out of it. Yet I see a lot of people eating vacio here.

New Yorkers seem to like their steaks a la plancha, which to me seems like sacriledge! I get this from a couple of New Yorker friends I have here who talk about how good a good New York strip is cooked slowly on a griddle. Yuck!

As far as cheese goes - well, I have encountered very few good flavorfull cheeses here. I'm not talking about more "exotic" cheeses like bleu cheese or roquefort, which I only like in salad dressings, but more "common" cheeses. Much of the mozzarela I've eaten here is what I would consider sub-quality flavor-wise, which is a reason why the pizza, to me, is not as good. It is made here, and of course, imported mozzarela is going to be too expensive.

I also like crunchy crusts. There is a place on Talcahuana, near Paraguay, named El Cuartito which I think has pretty good pizza, but it's still not what I would consider great pizza. Sometimes they even have real pepperonies and not just salami!

There is nothing, to me, like a simple piece of crunchy (more like toasted on the bottom), thin crust pizza with a healthy layer of cheese, a little bit of well-spiced tomato sauce, and pepperoni cooked on top, with the grease from the pepperoni spreading out on the top of the cheese. You just don't find that here, but Argentines simply may not like that flavor because it's not what they're used to.

As far as Pizza Hut goes - I don't know that they tried to make them exactly like in the US, and therefore they failed because of price on imported items. I don't really know what the reason was that they failed. However, I've had Pizza hut in Asuncion, and although I found it to be better than most pizzas I've had here in BA, they weren't nearly the same quality that you find in the States. I'm sure that Pizza Hut here would have been "Argentinized" like all foods are in all countries when they are introduced, and it just didn't play as well as the pizzarias that already existed, is my bet.
 
@ElQueso

Damn, dude, I just ate and I'm stuffed but your post still made me hungry. When I get back to the US I may just take a few months to do a BBQ tour of the south. I may drop dead at the end of it but it'll be worth it.

One other fantastic thing that I miss from New York, though, is great deli sandwiches. Anyone find anything close here in BA?
 
ElQueso said:
There is a place on Talcahuana, near Paraguay, named El Cuartito which I think has pretty good pizza, but it's still not what I would consider great pizza. Sometimes they even have real pepperonies and not just salami!
Funny thing my Dad loved El Cuartito and I never liked their pizza.

ElQueso said:
As far as Pizza Hut goes - I don't know that they tried to make them exactly like in the US, and therefore they failed because of price on imported items. I don't really know what the reason was that they failed. However, I've had Pizza hut in Asuncion, and although I found it to be better than most pizzas I've had here in BA, they weren't nearly the same quality that you find in the States. I'm sure that Pizza Hut here would have been "Argentinized" like all foods are in all countries when they are introduced, and it just didn't play as well as the pizzarias that already existed, is my bet.

I lived here, when Dominos and Pizza Hut were in town.

Pizza Hut: I liked it, much better taste that the one I had in Houston,TX.

Dominos: just ordered once (1993), it came 1 hour after ordering. It was cold and the cheese looked like a melted candle. Called to complain and the owner of the ONLY franchise back then (Martinez), an American, showed up with a new pizza for free. I say to myself: "what a great service". The wife and the kids didn't like it at all, so, we never ordered again.

AFAIK, they never changed their offering to adapt and it seems that the public didn't favor them with their business.

See what's going on with McDonalds in Argentina: they've adapted and the most sucessful McDonalds in the world in a given month (can't remember the year though, 1992?) was the one in Unicenter.
 
ElQueso said:
But it is all about perception, as to what tastes are. I like Argentine beef, but not cooked like Argentines cook it, for example. Often over-cooked, with no taste but the beef itself. I'm from Texas and used to grill my steaks in a smoker with some kind of light seasoning on the surface - I love the smoke flavor from Mesquite or Hickory, for example, which as far as I have seen so far, there is no equivalent here. Even if there was, the parrillas don't have the ability to keep the smoke concentrated so the meat soaks up as much (although I have seen some barrel smokers for sale near here - I may give up my parrilla soon, but I can't find any good wood!)

There's nothing like a brisket cooked long and slow (6 hours, say) with apple wood - slightly sweet and not so strong that the meat is overwhelmed with the flavor for cooking 6 hours. But here, a vacio cut (about what we consider brisket) is cooked like other meat, and it is a substandard piece of meat that needs to be lovingly cooked to get the best out of it. Yet I see a lot of people eating vacio here.
Ok, so in addition to being from Texas and liking El Cuartito, I bought this thing in August.


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A Weber Smokey Mountain 721001 (18 1/2")


I bought this smoker with the intention of bringing it back down here in September. But I can't keep it at my place (no terraza) and friends moved from the other place I was considering.

I'm still considering bringing it back down in February, but the whole part about the wood is the latest problem. If you can't get any wood for smoking, then it's not really worth the effort to bring down here. I cooked my first brisket back in September, I kind of messed it up, and it was still one of the best things my mother had ever tasted. My mom's friend kept asking for more and my brother and his wife made sure to take some home.

The beef ribs and all of the leather meat that they eat here would be perfect in there. They don't exactly cut their beef like brisket, but you might be able to get a butcher to do it, or you just get the brisket without the point.

Yum, but yum yum yum.
 
Kike:

I never really liked Pizza Hut myself too much, really, although at TIMES they would hit it just right.

I could never stand Dominoes in the States. The crust was usually too doughy and never really had a good flavor to me.

As far as El Cuartito goes, every once in awhile, to me, they hit it right too. Sometimes I get a really nicely toasted crust, which to me is very important. I like their Atomica because it's one of the few places in BA where I can actually get something spicy that doesn't just barely tickle me - I used to eat jalapeños raw! There are a few Thai places around town that give me that sense as well, and spice like that is actually much better than spice on a pizza, but ya gets it where ya can :)
 
Napoleon:

Ah, the memories! Nice smoker. I can't find anything like that here - the best I've seen is a literal barrel on it's side with a wood burner on the side. Not bad, but what you show in your post would be much better!

But you're right, it wouldn't make too much sense to use it down here without the good woods to go with it.

I've found wood for sale for parilla, and it's a very hard wood, seems much like mesquite. But it doesn't seem to have a real cooking flavor. I don't know what it's called.

And yeah, the vacio is not the same cut, but it includes part of the actual brisket cut we use. I've bought a couple from the local butcher and once I actually got the double-layered chunk of meat like I got in the States, but it was a lot thinner. I marinated it for a day before I grilled it (so I didn't have to cook it so long), but I still have problems getting the parilla adjusted correctly to not either burn the meat or not cook it at all! It was ok, but not near what I used to do in my backyard...
 
Napoleon said:
Well done with loads of salt? :confused:

I don't think so.

no, that they are close to fanatical about.. watch people from chicago go at over deep dish
 
ElQueso said:
Napoleon:

Ah, the memories! Nice smoker. I can't find anything like that here - the best I've seen is a literal barrel on it's side with a wood burner on the side. Not bad, but what you show in your post would be much better!

But you're right, it wouldn't make too much sense to use it down here without the good woods to go with it.

I've found wood for sale for parilla, and it's a very hard wood, seems much like mesquite. But it doesn't seem to have a real cooking flavor. I don't know what it's called.

And yeah, the vacio is not the same cut, but it includes part of the actual brisket cut we use. I've bought a couple from the local butcher and once I actually got the double-layered chunk of meat like I got in the States, but it was a lot thinner. I marinated it for a day before I grilled it (so I didn't have to cook it so long), but I still have problems getting the parilla adjusted correctly to not either burn the meat or not cook it at all! It was ok, but not near what I used to do in my backyard...


I found these plans to make a smoker but it's close to impossible to know where to find this stuff... might make a good scavanger hunt!
http://cruftbox.com/cruft/docs/elecsmoker.html

as for the wood, you can always soak it in something and make it worth burning....
 
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