When I was a kid, we had a neighborhood pizza parlor called New Vaudeville Pizza. It was tucked between a Safeway store and the Eckerd Drug store in a strip center. This was the place every birthday party or every Little League banquet was held in the mid and late 1970’s. It was, for ten or fifteen years or so, an institution. There was no delivery then, you went out to eat pizza.
I remember how striking the smell of roasted pepperoni was when you first opened the door, which was situated between two rhomboid-shaped windows that were the only natural light allowed into this dark and mesmerizing world of velvet-touched wall-paper and bent-up pizza trays. What set this place apart, I am afraid, was not the pizza, though I loved it. It was the stage. They had a small, one-foot high stage where No No the Clown would often blow balloon animals or tell corny jokes. If there wasn’t a magician or clown on duty, there was a screen. Oh that screen!
There we all watched re-runs of Harvey Cartoons like Baby Huey, or Heckle and Jeckle. If you got lucky, it was the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy episodes. The employee responsible for switching out the film cassette never seemed to be enthusiastic though, and often we’d get the same old Woody Woodpecker three times in an hour. But still. This was the place to be in Sagemont in the mid-1970s.
I got my first baseball trophy there, a pathetic cup with a cheap Oshman’s baseball in it, upon which a coach wrote “Mets” with a blue sharpie. Later, it was here that I figured out magicians in top hats were not really in possession of magical powers. It was here that I held hands with Tonja Lynn … ahem, but wish I would have known my wife who lived less than a mile away. I know for sure that I never ran into her at the pizza place or else I’d have been swept off my feet by her ravishing charm! (That’s restitution for me mentioning another girl from 7th grade by name. But hey, we keep it real here). Through all of my years of elementary and intermediate school, which were spent in walking distance, this was the place to be if your parents would let you, and if you had five bucks. Even my Cub Scout den went here once on a field trip and we got a glimpse of the inside of the kitchen. Its a fond memory for area residents even now.
But I suspect it was really just a plain old pizza place with average pizza to the adults. I didn’t like going there for the flavor.
These days, I do notice the taste. I never knew that I liked “New York Pizza” until a legit New York Pizza guy moved to our not-so-significant portion of the suburban Houston metroplex. Here he opened up a no-frills pizza shop. I mean no frills, he even skimps on the A/C in summer. It must be 85 in there in August! But man, oh man! Its good.
I tried Sal’s classic and simple Margherita pizza, which most folks butcher by overpowering the basic building blocks of greatness with cheese and sauces.
This particular classic pizza needs only a few traits to make it great. First, it must have a wonderful thin crust. I wasn’t a thin-crust fan until I found this pizza. It needs ripe Roma tomato slices instead of sauce (really soft vine-ripened ones if you can get them), a light brushing of olive oil, fresh garlic (I like it diced, some like big slices), and big leaves of Genovese Basil leaf, julienned strips work well too. It needs some good quality mozzarella cheese, but not too much, to lay all the goods upon. Such a masterpiece demands a real pizza oven for a well-done bake. Its like a foretaste of the bliss of heaven. I’m petty sure the Wedding Supper of the Lamb will feature Sal’s Margherita Pizza.
I found such goodness, at least as close as you can get from a strip center pizza shop, at Sal’s Pizza in Friendswood, TX, walking distance from my front door. Now to be sure, they have other Sal’s Pizza joints, indeed some are franchises and the pizza is no good. But this one is not. This is some dude named Sal who moved from New York and answers the phone with an abrupt but New Yorkish, “Yeah! What’ll it be?” And that’s just fantastic. When I walk into the place, it feels like some of the places I’ve walked into in New York over the years, just with fewer people.
How unusual to find a great pizza in your own rather insignificant neighborhood. There is nothing famous about my suburb that would draw someone here. In fact, many pizza joints have failed in the very slot of this strip center in which Sal’s now thrives. After all, this is the day of convenience, pizza delivery, and online ordering. Like my childhood pizza at New Vaudeville, you have to go get Sal’s pizza. Its worth it.
Editor’s Note: Sadly, Sal passed away recently and his shop is no longer there. A gem that shone for a while is now hardly remembered by any driving by.
Alysheba Kitchen 