When baked ziti meets pizza, life knows no bounds

Blessed New York pizza. The left is topped with eggplant Parmesan, which - for the uninitiated - is breaded and fried thin slices of eggplant, layered in a deep dish with tomato sauce, mozzarella and blobs of ricotta baked to bubbling.

The right is buried under baked ziti, typically a casserole-like dish where ziti pasta tubes are tossed with tomato sauce, mixed with ricotta, topped with mozzarella and baked until the edges of the ziti develops a salivatingly crunchy edge that works with and against the melted cheeses.

Here, an enterprising pizza man dumped the dishes on top of pizza. The ziti pizza in particular is a masterful experiment in Italian-Italian Fusion cuisine.


Other choices included (top shelf) sausage rolls, calzones, and pizzas including: (three closest, from left) fresh tomato and basil, chicken, and tomato sauce-less white pizza.

A key difference in New York pizza preparation is that the pizza is made then left to rest and cool on the counter for hours. You pick your slice and it is reheated in in one minute a blazing hot oven. Something about allowing the pizza to rest combined with re-baking makes the 'za sublime.

After enduring months of pale, feeble San Francisco pizza, it was a tough choice.


Spinach and pepperoni pizza rolls, eaten as a pre-pizza appetizer by true devotees of 'za.