I Dream Of Pizza A Pizza Blog, Established In 2008
I’ve never been out to Roberta’s in Bushwick, but I hear great things. In response to a question about “food that tastes good and won’t kill me or the planet but that’s served without a side of virtuousness,” The New York Times thinks just like I would — pizza, pizza, pizza:
… you should think pizza. Not Franny’s, which is great but perhaps too pious for you. Roberta’s in Bushwick not only serves good pizza and innovative dishes like tongue with lemon puree or a good old giant T-bone for two, but it also grows the ingredients on top of a shipping container outside and gets its meats through the small-farm friend Heritage Foods USA. But it doesn’t promote this, so the only way you’d know is if you stepped outside to smoke. (Those people in the shipping container are broadcasting for Heritage Radio, which might be a little too loco-vore for your taste.)
This does bring up an interesting discussion about how places now promote “organic” food. There’s a fine line between keeping it a secret and plastering it all over your website, windows, menu, etc. I have no problem with restaurants promoting the quality of their food, but the issue is that consumers are unable to know the difference between, say, the organic meat at Chipotle and the organic meat at Back Forty. There’s no rating system. No standards across the board that are easy for diners to understand.
As my friends know, I’m the last person to care about calorie counts, organic meat, or knowing anything about where my food comes from. But part of this apathy is due to the fact that I’m not really sure who to trust. How can a restaurant guarantee that what I’m eating is organic? For this reason, I feel like a lot of establishments have turned to language like “locally grown.” Pizza hasn’t come under much scrutiny, which isn’t surprising given it’s basic ingredients.
But perhaps the world is ready for organic pizza? A quick Google search shows that Pizza Fusion in Florida is the country’s first organic pizza chain. Are they just trying to capitalize on a trend or is this something that people will really buy into?
