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Weekly Pizza Lunch: A couple pies with ‘JEL’ at Rubirosa

an ugly picture of pizzas from rubirosa
I know, I know, this picture is truly asstastic. Rubirosa, even during the daytime, is a bit dark unless you’re right next to the front window. And these days I’m shooting 95% of my photos on my iPhone. I never thought it would come to this, but like most people, I have my smartphone 99% of the time and am loath to carry a bulky DSLR around on the off chance I may do a pizza lunch on a given day. Also, I don’t want to look like a dbag shooting my lunch with a gigantic camera. I feel idiotic enough using a cell phone to do it.

I rarely write anything for Slice these days. Thing is, I feel there are a lot of expectations both from the editor(s) there and from the readers. The editors want a certain type of post, and the readers expect details on oven temperatures, dough hydration, and what not. I’m not saying that those things are bad, but I’m to the point in my (pizza) life that I don’t feel like fitting my words into a mold or checking off some boxes because I have to.

Where am I going with this? Well, I was going to say that even though I’m not writing on Slice much, one of the things that I truly value about the site is that it has allowed me to connect with pizza nerds from all over the country (and even the world). People like JEL.

JEL has been a longtime commenter on Slice, and he emailed a couple months ago to say he’d be in town and would I like to meet up for pizza. Wouldn’tcha know, I said, I’m trying to do these Pizza Lunch meals every week and they’re always better with a dining companion. Blah blah blah, Bob’s your uncle, and we’re at Rubirosa on Friday of last week.

I’ve long loved the vodka pie at Rubirosa progenitors Joe & Pat’s and Pier 76 (all three of those pizzerias are related by family members and serve the same pizza), so we of course had to try that. And then we got one plain pie with sausage.

JEL is more of a New York–style fan, as you can guess from his own blog, Ozio, so it was fun to introduce him to pizza that I think of as more a “bar style” pizza or at least a “thin crust” pie. It’s definitely thinner and crisper than the typical New York slice.

But more than that, it was fun to get to know the person behind the screen name and learn something more about his life. He had a lot of good insight vis-a-vis some pizza projects I’m working on and I was able to share some of my knowledge on writing for the web and/or blogs.

How was the pizza? Good as always, though now I’m sort of craving the meatball pie there.

Adam Kuban
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