nosh nook #100 - saturday, august 1, 2009

how america eats has changed; snacking is the new meal (link)
07.30.09 - the register herald (beckley, wv) - by john blankenship

straight out of brooklyn, the $5 slice (link)
07.30.09 - the ny times - by manny fernandez

sorry for the nosh nook delay, folks. yesterday morn was a little off the normal schedule for me. i was planning on heading to liberty park for the all points west fest (more on that debacle to come later), so in order to leave work at a reasonable enough time, i planned to get into work at the SHOCKINGLY early time of 9:30. when i woke up yesterday morn to pen a nosh nook about john blankenship's thursday piece about how america's meal habits are becoming more snack like, i came across this OTHER ny times article & decided i just had to write about that instead...so i waited on it til today. plus, it's the 100th edition of the nosh nook so i like to be happy with the pieces tied to randomly important sounding numbers. i know...excuses, excuses.

so this times article by manny fernandez focuses on di fara pizza, a new york legend located in the midwood neighborhood of brooklyn & run by a 72-year old guy who only uses ingredients flown in from italy. they recently raised the price of a slice to $5, which is a big deal to a lot of people because as fernandez notes, "the price of a slice has long been one of the city’s unofficial economic indicators." even bloomberg's had something to say about it. “the real question, relative to the local economy, is whether people are trading up from a $2.75 slice or down from a $25 entree, and from what i hear in the subways and on the streets, it’s probably a mixture of both. but if you’ve ever had a really great slice of pizza, you know there are worse deals.” ok bloomy, we get it. you ride the subways like us regular folks.

a mother of a friend of mine works somewhere in the public sector in a job that has something to do with the city economy, so they contacted her for this article. she let them know that they should contact her son, who i've heard rave about di fara at least once a week for months now. while he didn't provide an official comment, he told his mother to tell them that "hell yeah it's worth it." i haven't tried it yet myself, but don't see anything wrong with paying $5 for a slice if it rules that hard. anyway, the times article looked at it from a slightly different angle (more with the ties to the greater economy), but it's a topic that the ny post already reported on way back on monday, so i wonder if some scooping happened here. mmm...scooping.