Reports From the Field: Pizza
After I spilled out of a long flight onto California soil, my sister said, “Come on, we’re going to Cheeseboard.” I was jazzed; Cheeseboard has its own following on Menuism, as well as in Berkeley. It’s famous for being worker-owned, as well as breeding long lines of gourmets stringing down Shattuck Ave. And maybe the most unique element? As user JanetHan writes, “They only serve one kind of pizza each day! Can’t go wrong though!”
My sister and I bought a half-pizza ($10) and carried it back to her house with all of my luggage and a bottle of Pellegrino. That day, the pizza had a base of mozzarella & feta with roasted potatoes, onions, garlic olive oil, cilantro, and halves of miniature key limes, turned face-down.
dmo writes, “The eating experience can be a fun one. A live band is present at times, and if it’s too crowded indoors, plenty of people flock to the median where you can watch traffic from Shattuck Ave. flow around you. Apparently there are signs telling you not to do so, but hey, I’ve always seen people on the grass when I drive by.”
Because it was sunny, we saw people on the median squeezing lime juice into their slices and taking large bites, nonchalant in the face of cars whizzing by on both sides. They were blissing out.
There’s loving pizza, and then there’s real pizza love that you see popping up from time to time, like the careful pizza cook-offs detailed in DC Pizza Blog and the administrator in Berkeley’s admissions department who saw well-made pizza as a real selling point:
and, of course, Chicagoans and New Yorkers who will get out their rulers and measure a crust just to make a culinary point.
Pizza: definitely a topic I want to return to.
Anyway, after all of that pizza nirvana, it was only too good to curl up in front of Top Chef with a big piece of pudding cake and some bubbly wine. Anyone else hoping they’ll be asked to make a pizza in the finale?
