The Vent and Rant Thread

[Blossom]

I'm from St Louis home of thin crust style pizza. You'll have to excuse me but I don't care for NY style. Imos is the pizza king around here. I grew up on it but it's expensive. I love papa John's pizza though. The wheat crust with bacon and pineapple is perfect. Domino's has an amazing thin crust here I get with double bacon and pineapple.

There is no one way to make a pizza. It's the most customized food besides the sandwich.

Sent from my XT1528

[issybird]

The pizza here isn't very good. It fails on all the basics: crust too thick, not enough sauce, too much cheese. Worse, they put all sorts of things on them. Almonds! Potatoes! Broccoli! It's surreal and an affront to my native New York palate.

Here's an old pizza poll that I think lays the options out pretty well.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by issybird

The pizza here isn't very good. It fails on all the basics: crust too thick, not enough sauce, too much cheese. Worse, they put all sorts of things on them. Almonds! Potatoes! Broccoli! It's surreal and an affront to my native New York palate.

Here's an old pizza poll that I think lays the options out pretty well.

Wow! St Louis style is like cracker thin crust with provel cheese, the sauce is thin and the toppings are plenty. It's cut into squares. Hubby doesn't care for it but he will eat it. It's very good but not very filling. I get mine with lots of bacon and add pineapple. It's my favorite.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Wow! St Louis style is like cracker thin crust with provel cheese, the sauce is thin and the toppings are plenty. It's cut into squares. Hubby doesn't care for it but he will eat it. It's very good but not very filling. I get mine with lots of bacon and add pineapple. It's my favorite.

Sent from my Nexus 7

Pineapple. Ye gods, the heresy never stops.

:-)

Hitch

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

An old friend who's in San Diego these days moved to NYC from Red Bank, NJ, to pursue dreams of being a rock star. He took me along for a vist to the family home, and introduced me to his favorite "dirty water" stand.

A Puerto Rican chap owned a food truck selling hot dogs, and was smart. He bought a triangle of land by the railroad tracks, diagonally across from the Red Bank train station. He didn't build on it, so his taxes stayed low. He had the area graveled, and water and power lines pulled in. First thing in the morning, he'd drive up in his truck, connect to water and power, and open for business. All day, every day, people would drive up, park on the gravel, and grab a couple of dogs an a soda. He'd get a spurt of business every time a train stopped in either direction. His wife made the chili and onion sauces he offered with the docs. He worked during the spring, summer and fall months, and in the dead of winter, took the family back to Puerto Rico for the duration.

Dennis

I believe that triangle is now a small park-like open space, if I have the right triangle. The area is mostly bricked over small businesses and parking lots. Of course, there are no shortages of restaurants in the area. At the train station corner there is Juanito's, at one time, very popular but seems to have gone downhill recently. On the other side of the tracks is Senor Pepper. I've tried them both and wasn't impressed.

[cromag]

I grew up on NYC/Northern NJ pizza. The only other place I've found "good" (like in da days of my "youte") pizza is Rhode Island. And I only go to Mom & Pop pizza shops -- which are easy to find around here. I take my pizza plain, or with one topping consisting of pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers and onions, or sausage.

[Fbone]

Amazon returned my $100 gift card today. They forced me to change my password again.

We still have no idea how the hacker was able to access my account but Amazon and/or one of the CSRs didn't follow certain security procedures. The first CSR he chatted with refused to do the transfer so he kept trying different CSRs until he found one (by way of intimidation) that did.

From now on I will redeem gift cards immediately prior to a purchase and not keep a large balance. Hackers have found that gift cards are a weak point in Amazon's system.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Amazon returned my $100 gift card today. They forced me to change my password again.

We still have no idea how the hacker was able to access my account but Amazon and/or one of the CSRs didn't follow certain security procedures. The first CSR he chatted with refused to do the transfer so he kept trying different CSRs until he found one (by way of intimidation) that did.

From now on I will redeem gift cards immediately prior to a purchase and not keep a large balance. Hackers have found that gift cards are a weak point in Amazon's system.

Glad to hear you got it back!

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

A friend of a friend was an NYC food inspector, and a member of the Society for Creative Anachronisms. The latter served him in good stead. He inspected a Chinese restaurant and gave them a failing grade, and an employee attacked him with a cleaver. Fortunately, he had just acquired a set of ring mail from a vendor who made period gear, and was wearing it under his suit. He got a bruise but no other damage. The restaurant no longer exists, and the last I knew, the chap with the cleaver was still a guest of the NYC penal system.
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Dennis

I agree with Hitch -- this wins the internet!! I used to do American Revolutionary War re-enactment. We didn't do ring mail, but as a costumer, I lusted after that too, just Because. I myself did more corsets than ring mail, but I collected tab-style pop rings for a long while, for some chain mail, before giving the collection away. I'm dying to know HOW he happened to be wearing it. Did he expect trouble?? Or was it literally just because it was brand new and had to be enjoyed?? (I can understand that.)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Blossom

So I found this in my Papa John's pizza.
...

What is that thing?

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Blossom

The corner of hard plastic from a pull apart container that one of the toppings come in is my guess. It could do some damage if swallowed. It's sharp, pointy and jagged. Luckily large enough to be seen before I bit into it.

Sent from my XT1528

Oh. Nevermind.

I bit into a dime in a Jack in the Box taco a few decades ago.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Oh. Nevermind.

I bit into a dime in a Jack in the Box taco a few decades ago.

Ugh. At least you were rewarded for your efforts??

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

I agree with Hitch -- this wins the internet!! I used to do American Revolutionary War re-enactment. We didn't do ring mail, but as a costumer, I lusted after that too, just Because. I myself did more corsets than ring mail, but I collected tab-style pop rings for a long while, for some chain mail, before giving the collection away. I'm dying to know HOW he happened to be wearing it. Did he expect trouble?? Or was it literally just because it was brand new and had to be enjoyed?? (I can understand that.)

IIRC, brand new, and getting accustomed to wearing it. It's not like he expected to be attacked by an employee with a cleaver after he gave the restaurant a fail...

I had dinner some time back at a restaurant in Brooklyn in a heavily Russian section. It had apparently been better in earlier days. When we ate there, it took about half an hour for a waiter to appear, he spoke no English, and we had to point at stuff on the menu so he could read the Cyrillic text and understand what we wanted. The food took a long time to come out, and was at best mediocre. I had to go looking in the back to get someone to accept payment for the meal, and looked into the kitchen and saw a guy smoking like a chimney while preparing food. And there were issues in processing the credit card.

There was a table full of patrons elsewhere who were part of the local Russian community, but they were hitting the vodka hard and quite happy, thanks.

My comment after the fact elsewhere was "If you are from another country and set up in the restaurant trade here, you do want to properly prepare and serve your native cuisine, but you probably don't want to properly reproduce the service levels back home..."

I was there again more recently, but it was no longer the Russian place, and had become an aspiring high end steak house. (I wasn't impressed.) I assumed the NYC health inspector had visited the Russian place, taken one look, and said "You're closed!"
______
Dennis

[Freeshadow]

Re wearing the chainmail: I too assume it was for getting used to the weight. I was once told a story about a guy who had them (real metal chain mail no deco stuff) during a larp event. Their ruleset gave each fighter 3 hit points; this guy managed to wear two mailshirts and asked if he can claim 6 hp. Knowing the weight of that stuff the GM said: "If you can really manage to wear that during the whole battle you deserve the 6."

Btw.: isn't there a branch of archeology doing exactly that on a fully professional level? Testing old construction plans and reconstruct old tools and weapons from descriptions to test if they worked as good (or bad) as the historic records claimed they did? archeological engineering was the term afair.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I believe that triangle is now a small park-like open space, if I have the right triangle. The area is mostly bricked over small businesses and parking lots. Of course, there are no shortages of restaurants in the area. At the train station corner there is Juanito's, at one time, very popular but seems to have gone downhill recently. On the other side of the tracks is Senor Pepper. I've tried them both and wasn't impressed.

The change would not surprise me. The visit I mentioned occurred back in the 80's. I expect the food truck guy is long since retired. (I heard he tried to sell the business at one point and got no takers. That stuck me as short sighted on the part of potential buyers, but things were different then.)

These days, food trucks are a thing, and if it's food, someone has figured out how to serve it from a food truck, and does. I speculated at one point that I could try a different ethnic cuisine every day for a year in NYC, buying entirely from food trucks, and still have cuisines untried at the end of the year. That's likely an exaggeration, but probably not much of one.
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Dennis