Sticking up for Silvio
Last Friday night -- sometime during that post-2 a.m. hour known as "after the bars close" -- I buzzed into Silvio's for a slice of pizza with my friend JC. One of Silvio's twin grown-up sons, Gio or Romeo (they're identical), was working the counter, and I was happy to see one of my favorites out, the margherita.
"Doo-eh mar-gaa-reeta," I said. Actually, I didn't say that, but I wish I had. Being in Silvio's always makes me wish I spoke better Italian.
JC ordered a slice of something too, and Gio (or was it Romeo?) put the slices on paper plates and slid them into the window to the back kitchen.
No sooner had the slices been coaxed into the oven than Silvio himself emerged from the back. He shook my hand, but there was only a trace of his usual smile. Something was clearly upsetting him.
In his other hand he was holding a newspaper. He shoved it into the space between JC and me.
"Greasy!" he exclaimed.
I had no idea what Silvio was talking about, so I started glossing the page. Pictures of pizza. Numbers. Pictures of random people. Okay, it was a review -- I got that -- and from Silvio's reaction I was guessing it hadn't gone well. (Here's a link to the article sans pizza pictures.)
Turns out the local community college -- a place I'd formerly respected and enjoyed (having taken tai chi and attended numerous book sales there) -- had rated a panel of pizzas from five area pizza places. Silvio's had ranked second-to-last, but most damning were the comments:
One reviewer, the college president, "rated Silvio's Organic Pizza as his least favorite amongst the pizza places reviewed, but found them 'most unique'".
Another reviewer, a journalism student, "ranked Silvio's last in all categories, and described it as a, 'slice of grease…it slid all over my hand when I picked it up'". (By the way, Mr. Fitzgerald, what's the "it" in that sentence? Your sloppy writing?)
Silvio informed us that he'd sent over a pepperoni, a margherita, and a truffle oil pizza. He couldn't understand where "greasy" had come from.
JC -- who I'd taken to Silvio's before and was also an ardent supporter -- launched into a tirade of four-letter words making it perfectly clear what she thought of this so-called newspaper, the people writing it, and anything else that happened to be related. Silvio started going on simultaneously about the quality of the ingredients he was using.
To me the problem was this: The reviewers hadn't ever seen REAL PIZZA. It was as if you'd taken a group of kids who'd grown up on Chicken McNuggets and given them Chinese drunken chicken.
Like I've pointed out before, the margherita has three things: tomato sauce, a few slices of fresh mozzarella (Silvio gets his from a small farm in Connecticut), and some fresh basil. It's simplicity itself. But when you take people who have been getting taste-bombed their whole lives by chain-store pizza scientifically formulated to elicit maximum neural response, how do you expect them to react?
Just take a look at the website of the winner, Benito's. It boasts the "Big Benito" with "20/Foot Long Slices! Over 100 Pepperoni!". I don't even know what "20/Foot" means: Is that pepperoni density? 20 slices per square foot maybe? Or did they mean "20 foot-long slices"? That doesn't sound good either. And let's not get started on how "pepperoni" is technically uncountable: You can't have 100 pepperoni. Pepperoni slices, yes. Pepperoni, no.
Garbage web authorship aside, the message seems to be "Get a huge amount of stuff". But do I have to eat a huge amount of it to appreciate it?
Now look at Silvio's website: "Silvio's sauce is based on fresh organic herbs and organic tomatoes. The flavorful crust incorporates fine olive oil and is made with organic flour exactly the way Silvio's father made it."
You can't expect people who grew up with a pepperoni density mindset to immediately appreciate "fresh" and "organic". It takes time, time to shift their taste buds out of fifth gear and go slow. You know, chew. Don't inhale pizza. Taste it.
I made these points Friday night, but in the end I don't know if either JC or I succeeded in making Silvio feel better. I know a ton of people like his pizza, but sometimes all the reassurances in the world can't beat out a few lines in print.
Luckily there are other reviews out there.
To the guy who called Silvio's "greasy": You can duke it out with the reviewer from The Michigan Daily who said, "I liked how clean the pizza was. Not greasy at all. And the menu is the best I've seen. There are a lot of really creative combinations that I want to try."
Don't worry, Silvio -- we got your back!
posted by stewchang @ 8:14 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Well yes and no. Silvio submitted his artisan, conniseur pizza to the community college student paper with their buffoon editors (real food critics I am sure...). Like when you go in against a pig in the mud, he should've expected two outcomes:
1) A resounding win....against the cheap-o pizza joints (who won, Cottage Inn? Gross!). "Yup, sure beat that pig good!"
2) A smack-down by the provincial and unrefined students. "The pig pwned me but not before making me its bitch".
The first choice would've been not much of a victory (so...you out-wrestled a pig in mud. Good for you, you still went in the pigpen). The latter is the more common outcome (Pig takes you down, you're covered in even more mud. Good going.)
Perhaps Silvio should be more discerning about the venues he sends his admittedly quite delicious pizza? :)
I suspect the paper was geared towards exactly the frat crowd, who also similarly can't tell the difference between decent microbrews and 30-pack Natty Light's (in many cases the Natty's actually win).
Silvio shouldn't worry. This kinda stuff happens all the time. No matter how good the performance!
oh, noes!
not a smackdown by the provincial and unrefined students!
i just need to say. benito's doesn't suck...it's certainly better than dominos or pizza hut, and the like.
but, i agree...
your friend silvio was greatly wronged.
and i have to agree with you further that the bad reviews he got were more due to the relatively inexperienced palettes of the reviewers, and less due tot he fact that they were community college students.
i mean, to say 'i suspect that the paper was geared toward a frat crowd...'
well,
i attended this particular community college for quite a while, and as far as i could tell, there were no frats to be seen.
and i have always known the difference between a decent microbrew and a case of natty light.
is it really necessary to diminish the reputation of an educational institution, just because of a slice of pizza?
i went to community college, and then i went to a major university. later, i taught at that major university (granted, for a very short time). i never made it through a single day wihtout thinking about how mush i preferred the community college...the standards were no lower, the cost was managable, and the facilities were better.
i think it's a sad day when we measure education based on how much it costs...
but i suppose we've been doing that for a long time now.
Uh. Ok. In spite of the syntax, time, etc., of your reply suggesting you were drunk when posting this reply, I'll try to respond.
Your frivolous straw-man argument, putting me automatically in the position of being a class oppressor alone would be bad enough, but then you shift the focus from pizza to this braying rant about education pricing and its implications about the current state of the nation's affairs.
What gives?
Brace yourselves for some rationality....
I have nothing against community college, either the concept in general or this one, WCC, in particular. In fact, I've considered taking classes at WCC before, e.g., in a foreign language, just to be around other adults.
If I were to fault anyone in this case, it would be the chains that habitually crank out over-the-top product (remember cheese-in-crust pizza?) that appeals to our national love of excess. Gradually and imperceptibly, as with portion size in general, the benchmark for pizza in this country has moved. Most of us would hardly recognize pizza from Italy if it weren't for the distinctive round shape. But dismissing the real thing without giving it a chance -- that's passing up one of Ann Arbor's, and life's, little pleasures.
To any reviewer who didn't like Silvio's, I'd say, try not eating pizza for a few days -- push the reset button on what you think pizza ought to be like -- and then stop by Silvio's and say hi to Silvio. There's a reason why table-fuls of Italians eat at his place.
sorry about that, guys.
the whole thing was meant to come off as tongue-in-cheek (hence the beginning with 'oh noes').
i see that it didn't come off the way i intended, and i wouldn't have written a word of it if i would have thought i was giving anyone cause to question my syntax, etc. for the record, i almost always write this way in the blog-world.
and, no, i wasn't drunk, just exhausted from a 15 hour workday that ended at 4:30 am.
i'm usually much funnier than that, i swear.
at the very least, it's usually easier to tell that i'm trying to be funny.
the fault is entirely mine.
stew, i am truly sorry if i momentarily created a sense of malcontent in your blog.
i'll go away now.
*slinks back off into the blogosphere*
*slinks back in, quick-like*
i should probably note that when i say i almost always write like that, i do not mean that i purposefully include a lot of typing errors.
just in case anyone wants to make fun of me some more, i thought i should make that clear.
but, don't worry. there's still plenty of other reasons to make fun of me.
Oh, Tiffany. Carlos was just pulling your chain. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. If you ever meet him in real life, you'll realize that if Carlos was a country, pulling people's chains would be the national pastime.
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