Pizza in the Morning, Pizza in the Evening, Pizza at Suppertime

Since I arrived in Buenos Aires a week ago, I have been eating pizza non stop.

At the hostel at which I am staying, the proprietor, an African American knicnamed Obama by the local Chinese grocer because he couldn´t pronounce his name Melvin, told me that ``Portenos (natives of Buenos Aires) think that they have pizza down...they don´t.``  I assumed he was being overly dramatic in this denunciation of the local pizza.  After all, Buenos Aires has a healthy population of people of Italian descent as Eye Tie immigrants came here by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in the early 20th century.  So how bad could it be?  I decided to find out by taking a whilrwind tour of BA pizza.

If this foray into the world of Buenos Aires `za was to be scientifically accurate, I would have to order it for every meal, ensuring I was getting a sufficient cross section of the different pizzas the city had to offer.  My first pizza experience came on my first night.  It was midnight, I hadn´t eaten all day, and I had traversed much of the city by foot.  I felt pretty confident that if they put Elios frozen pizza in front of me I would have devoured it (that´s actually a pretty unfair swipe at Elios.  I considered it to be haute cuisine when I was young. To this day I still buy carts full of Jack´s frozen pies when Jewell does a 10 pies for 10 dollars special).  Unfortunately, St. Paul´s Elementary school cafeterias friday pizza would have been an upgrade at this place.  The crust was so cardboard like that even J. Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Dominos pizza and star of their highly successful new advertising campaign, would scoff at it (of course he has more confidence to scoff now, what with their revamped crust and `revolutionary` parmesan bread bites (Lori goes crazy whenever that commercial comes on ``They are just putting cheese on the bread!  How is that something special?!?!`` she will scream.  Then she turns the channel back to RuPauls Drag Race and is immediately mollified).  A bigger problem than the cardboard crust was the virtually non existent sauce.  Polly-O string cheese used to boast that the mozarella was the best part of the pizza.  I never questioned that logic as a I youth, but as a wizened afficionado of pizza I now see that even the best part of the pizza is nothing without a good crust and sauce.  Its like having Lebron (the mozarella) with a terrible supporting cast comprised of Mike Miller and Eddy Curry (the sauce and crust respectively).  It basically amounts to disgraceful early exits from the playoffs (is that reference still applicable?  I´ve been too busy eating pizza and drinking Malbec to check out espn lately).  So on a scale of Speedway Gas Station slices to Tarantellas with Famous Original Rays somewhere in the middle, I put that first Buenos Aires pie slightly below Little Cesars Hot and Ready.  However, what they lack in culinary skill and proper ingredients, they more than make up for in consistency.  Literally every pizza I have had subsequent to that first pie has tasted more or less the same.  Same weak crust, decent mozarella, and a dearth of sauce. 

Now that Lori is arriving tomorrow (along with her superior knowledge of Spanish), I can now diversify what I eat.  Perhaps a tour of the different steaks and meats offered by the city is up next....