Behold, the $9 Slice. Yeah, It's Good!
Reviews of L&B Spumoni in Dumbo, Ceres in Soho, and F&F Restaurant. Plus: an essay on “The Subway," and an opening report on Corner Slice
Hey Friends!
I’m seeing quite a few new readers here this week. Welcome! Enjoy the free thoughts up top about pizza — and about a Mexican painter who had something to say about our city…
Not interested in a short essay on art? Not a problem! Scroll down past the paywall for more service-y notes on some amazing new pizza places. In the coming weeks, I’ll publish a few words about red meat, edibles, and other goodies.
Ryan!
The Subway
A Mexican vision of New York has been on my mind lately.
In the late 1920s, right before the Great Depression, José Clemente Orozco visited our sprawling metropolis. He called it, in a letter to his wife, “part amusement park and part growing monstrosity.”
Sounds like a city I know, lol.
Orozco painted a number of works during his trip, my favorite of which is “The Subway.” I’d always spend a few minutes staring at it in MoMA’s galleries, where it used to hang.
Take a look.
Subway poles gleam in the foreground, while three “stone-faced” commuters stand further back, in a dark and empty train car. And that’s it.
It’s the type of working-class story that the artist liked to tell.
Orozco was one of the three great Mexican Muralists, alongside Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. And trust me when I say these guys did not hold back; their art conveyed themes that reflected their left-leaning, pro-labor politics.
There’s nothing overtly political about “The Subway,” but the depictions might make you a little bit uncomfortable. This isn’t a nostalgic, easy-to-digest vision of the working class. This isn’t a photo of strong-jawlines or handsome blokes in overalls enjoying their lunch on vertiginous construction beams. You won’t see Orozco’s paintings in a kitschy diner while you linger over a $13 slice of cheesecake.
In “The Subway,” the only chrome that glistens is the pole you hold onto. The rest of the car is dim. Eyes barely peek out from under hats. No one is chatting. No one is reading a newspaper or clad in fur.
You could project a lot onto these figures. After the worst of the pandemic, MoMA had its own facilities and safety manager, Tunjii Adeniji, record an audio note to accompany the painting. You can listen to the whole thing here, but here’s a bit I like:
You see a person sitting down alone and just gazing, and the mood can be interpreted in so many ways — what is the state of my health? How am I going to pay my rent? How am I going to support my family? All those things it kind of demonstrates this somber situation that is somebody that is overwhelmed. And I experienced the same thing when I was riding the subway…
For me, Orozco’s painting is what I see when I learn about the city ticketing immigrant street vendors, or arresting them on the subway. It’s my steely visage when I hear that the world’s richest man is withholding aid to the world’s poorest.
Orozco’s tableau is about the hard life in New York — from a Mexican artist who quite literally painted his working-class subjects into dark corners, into the shadows. He finished the canvas a century ago, yet we feel the pain as if we were witnessing this scene today.
Because in a very real sense, we are.
Over 100 New York City immigrants have been arrested by federal authorities during the first week of The Trump Raids, The City reported this week. However: “little is known about where many of those arrested are being detained,” according to the publication, which adds that immigration lawyers are struggling to locate them, while “Local Democrats have also been iced out of lines of communication.”
Meanwhile, it appears that Mayor Eric Adams is trying to find a way to let municipal employees actively undermine our sanctuary city laws. And restaurant workers are scared, as Grub Street’s Chris Crowley reported.
On Ceres and the price of pizza
I was going to kick off my affordable eats series last week with Ceres, a very young spot serving extremely good slices. After taking a few bites of the tomato pie, I found myself quietly saying “holy sh!t.” It’s really good pizza.
Then I realized how much it costs to dine at this hip Soho slice shop.
Julian Geldmacher and Jake Serebnick, two Eleven Madison Park vets, opened Ceres a few weeks back.
They charge $6 for a standard cheese slice, about a dollar more than the city’s other top pizzerias. The fantastic tomato slice with optional ricotta and peppers runs $9. Or think of it this way: two crisp slices plus a soda can easily set you back over $20. And the “pie-only” pizza with ‘nduja and burrata runs $63. Holy sh!t, indeed.
At one point, I heard a patron ask why things cost so much.
This is not affordable eats, at least not by regular slice shop standards. But that’s not what these guys are going for. There are no shakers or squeeze bottles with red pepper flakes, parmesan, or hot honey. When I ask for salt, one of the owners ran downstairs to fetch a little ramekin of good Sicilian sea salt. Merci!
Ceres is the only pizza parlor I’ve ever encountered where every chair — there are 23 of them — are blonde-and-chrome Cesca chairs, in the style that Marcel Breuer first brought to life in 1928. In case Bauhaus design is something you look for when scarfing down a hot cheese slice. Or a tarte flambée slice.
They’re really comfortable chairs!
But let’s get back to the excellent pizza…in a few minutes.
Behind the Paywall: Where You Should be Eating Pizza Now
What to order at Ceres, including the “pancetta” slice
F&F Restaurant serves one of the city’s great shellfish pizzas
A brief opening report on Corner Slice
An ode to the square slices at L&B Spumoni in Dumbo
Bonus essay: Thoughts on “slice gentrification”