What this neighborhood really needs is a good...

In my case, laziness . . . i can't get Wendy's or Taco Hell to deliver . . .

Do you live near a college or university?

There is a branch of the local community college nearby - but not dorms or a big campus or anything like that.

I think laziness is a part of it. I know there are days that I cherish the pizza delivery person!

I think pizza falls into a less guilt niche somewhere between fast food and home cooked. I think that's the big allure.

I have no idea nutrition-wise of where pizza falls into the scheme of things. You can't get much healty fast food but you can surely cook un-nutritious meals at home and I suppose that there are some fairly decent frozen, microwavable foods -- but pizza seems like a reasonable choice on those days you just can't cook a full meal and you have neither the cash nor the inclination to go to a real restaurant

Nutritionally speaking, would that be correct?

I'll bet that even within that context that not all pizza is created equal.

For sure -- a Pizza Hut stuffed crust pepperoni monstrosity is WAY different from a little family-owned place that makes crusts according to an old recipe with olive oil and fresh tomatoes and topped with um green peppers and mushrooms.

There was a totally fascinating article about ketchup someplace, how that one thing hits every taste receptor on our tongues. Sweet, sour, and some great word that I thought while reading it "oh great word, gotta remember that", but now... :-? Vaguely Japanese? It means like meaty or proteiny.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is I think pizza does that too. Hits all of our hard-wired taste preferences at once.

You really can get the full flavor of four basic food groups on a good pizza!

I've not heard that about catsup but I have heard it about catsup and french fries (savory/sweet, crunchy/creamy, hot/cold) and about peanut butter and jelly.

I'm a pretty strict savory girl, sweet doesn't do a lot for me. I have kind of weird taste in pizza - things they don't/won't make at the chain places so I typically go for the dinky joints where I can do the "When Harry Met Sally" ordering.

Unfortunately, Mo digs Pizza Caboose because of all the model trains. Still, they have a good salad bar, so......

Thinking about pizza....

When we were kids eating out was a BIG deal. We hardly ever did it. When we did it was almost always at Lea's Pizzeria.

Lea's made me think of Eva.

Eva, if you stop in this thread, Lea's was a Cherry Street (then still called 15th street) institution. Situated across from the "White Elephant" and just a block or so away from "Mary Ruby's Dress Shop".

I believe my pizza preference is forever owed to Lea's.

Living in a very small town with my Irish grandparents, the only pizza to which i was exposed when a child was my grandmother's Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza. Occassionally and very rarely, we got some pizza when visiting kin in New York. To this day, my preference in crusts is thin and crispy.