Sunday. I am standing inside Mineo’s Pizza, which is odd because Napoli’s is only a block away and sells a better pie. But, I let my wife order, and she is unaware of the rankings. It’s OK. She grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, so of course, she likes Mineo’s because that’s where the kids from Allderdice High used to hang out after school, and if you come from the suburbs into the city as a kid, that sort of thing could sway you into thinking they sold the best pie. And it is a fine pie, but they go in this order, best first: Napoli’s, Aiello’s, then Mineo’s. Aiello’s is just a few doors down, in between Napoli’s and Mineo’s on the taste scale and geographically. In the face of this density of pizzerias on a single side of a hundred-yard stretch of road, a deep understanding of the rankings can only come through years of dedicated testing and retesting. You can’t get that from a few casual visits. Some things take time.
Of course, various people have their different ranking of these pizza places. They might even try to throw in a blurb for Fiori’s from the South Hills. But those people are wrong — all of them.
So here I am, in this third-rate pizza joint where a customer is walking from person to person, looking at their foreheads, reading their auras, and telling them they are “Oh! So amazing.” She stops in front of me and looks up, then frowns and moves on, not saying anything…
