How many slices? Hundreds? Thousands? Like kisses, few are individually memorable. The Bronx pizzas of my eary childhood are lost in the mists of time. Only a handful (plateful?) of others offer themselves up for recall.
1. Mike's Submarines, Montreal, 1975. I was 11. I had never seen mozza that artificially elastic. Appallingly, I was expected to eat it with a knife and fork. Worse was in store. I had to take off my shoes on entering suburban homes, use a "serviette," and attend a sex-segregated Sunday school. Hello middle-class Canada, good-bye preppy/bohemian NY.
2. Portofino Pizza, Vienna, 1979. 15 years old. My best friend was an orthodox Jew. The pizza wasn't great, but (accidentally) it was kosher. We felt utterly grown up as we sipped our cheap wine. Three topics of conversation (boys, school, the future) in endless rotation.
3. An unnamed counter, Rome, 1981. 18. I threw countless dorm-room parties at my boarding school. As these reached full-tilt, and often just as some boy was starting to hit on me, I'd head out into the cool winter night, wearing my grandfather's green jacket.
The place was 2 blocks up the hill. Standing room for three customers. Two men, shirts pasted to sweat-soaked backs, heaving massive slabs of ai funghi from the ovens. 800 Lira/100 grams. Then I'd go back and let the boy keep hitting on me. This rarely turned out as well as the pizza.
4. Gino's, Kingston, Ontario, 1985. 22. A dozen toppings graced the Gino's special. My boyfriend and I substituted pineapple for sausage, and got anchovies on (my) half. After months of phoning in this order several times a week, we discovered that Gino's was only 2 blocks from campus. Gino was so tickled when we made our first order in person, he gave us free drinks.
That boyfriend has been my husband for 19 years.
There have been many pizzas since. Some were memorable. But you remember the slices of your youth with a sharpness and sweetness that the others never achieve.
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