September 25 2002

IT'S A PIZZA place and a pub, so there were a lot of sounds in there: beer mugs on the bar, blah blah blah, music, kids, close-captioned TV (a visual sort of noise, at least for me). And there was also a very small, occasionally discernible sound from the kitchen: a pizza timer, which in pitch and interval fairly accurately mimicked our alarm clock – close enough that Crawdad kept rolling over in her sleep, mumbling, and slapping me right in the snooze button.

I'd tried to visit Lanesplitter Pizza in Berkeley four or five months ago for their anniversary party, when the pizza was free. But I was late, and the party had petered out, or moved on to Denny's, or something. This time it was regular business hours.

"Hey, happy belated anniversary," I said to our waitressperson. But she just looked at me blankly, and we still had to pay for the pizza.

Buck-seventy-five a slice for thin-style, $2 Sicilian. And it was happy hour (before seven) so our beers were $2.50. I lingered over the selection: two long columns of names of beers on a chalkboard over the bar, hardly any of which I recognized. When I mentioned as much, our waitressperson immediately took me for some rube from Ohio (as opposed to a wino). "This is California," she pointed out. "Nothing but microbrews."

(Whereas I could of sweared I seen some Buds around here somewheres.)

Anyway, the point is it's not bad prices in a good place for eating and drinking and staying awhile, drinking some more, maybe having a little snack, a drink or two, little something to munch on, don't mind if I do, and so on. Brick walls, skylight, motorcycle wheels, a whole damn motorcycle, tasteful track lighting, pretty damn real damn art, for a pub. The bar itself is lifted from a bowling lane. And even if it's not happy hour, you can get, from the specials section, the 7/10 split, for example, which is two one-topping slices and a pint for $6.50 – same as same would run you before seven.

Then too, at lunchtime, between noon and three, slices are only $1.25, 25¢, as always, a topping.

Are you ready for the bad news? This is California pizza, to paraphrase our waitressperson. Which isn't to say that it sucks, exactly. But it sure ain't New York. Sure ain't even Ohio. And seeing as how the place came recommended to me with references to New York pizza and a mention of Zachary's, inasmuch as Zachary's is Chicago-style pizza and Lanesplitter New York-style, etc.

Let me tell you, I welcome these comparatory recommendations wholeheartedly and hollow-leggedly. (Thanks for writing and please keep writing, in other words. Eventually I will follow every lead to every bad pizza place in northern California, eventually.) But it's like this: I've eaten pizza many times in Chicago and many times in New York (and New Haven, and Boston, Providence ...) and the thing about Zachary's is that it's actually better than Chicago-style deep dish pizza in Chicago. Whereas none of the alleged "New York-style" pizza places I've tried out here even come close to New York pizza in New York. And, by the way, I love Chicago Chicago pizza, probably even more than New York New York, so all of this that I'm saying is really saying something. I think – hold on, let me reread it.

Yes. Me and Crawdad, between us, took care of three Neapolitan (thin) slices – one plain, one pepperoni, one black olive – and one Sicilian (thick) with sausage, and never once for even one split second during our meal did we even almost feel like maybe we might be in New York. And it wasn't just the microbrews, or the really great, really huge fresh green salad with bean sprouts and garbanzo beans in a lovely homemade garlic vinaigrette ($2.75). It was the pizza. It was California pizza all the way. The crust was good, at first. But then it got soggy too fast. And the sauce was just fine, but just that: just fine. It was the cheese, we think, that was the pizza's downfall – ironically, this being California (to paraphrase our waitressperson), and it (to paraphrase the cheese industry) being the cheese.

Anyway, something was unpleasantly grainy about the pizza. Granular was the word Crawdad used. I was thinking grainy. She thought it was the cheese – cheap cheese, she said, which doesn't stretch the same as real cheese and tends to granulate instead of melting. Well, whatever.

I'll go back for the brew. I'll go back for the atmosphere and general hangoutability. But next time, unless it's an anniversary party or something, I'm getting lasagna.