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Manhattan? Fuhgettaboudit! Being white and middle class, we hate nothing more than going to a new place and ‘seeing the sights.’ No, we must see the side of Delhi its downtrodden workforce sees, and taste the bitter taste of Bangkok, as endured by its lowly street urchins. You won’t catch us following any umbrella waving tour guide – even if it means massive unnecessary expense and hours of aimless ‘exploring’. We won’t have it. So, imagine our surprise last month in New York when we found ourselves on a bus, speeding over Manhattan Bridge, utterly engaged by a tour guide named Tony Muia, enthusing about Brooklyn and its phenomenal pizza restaurants. Tony is as Brooklyn as it gets. Born and raised in the city, there’s very little he doesn’t know about its rich cultural heritage - and the food that comes with it. His increasingly popular Slice of Brooklyn pizza tour covers as many areas of interest, famous film locations, and historical landmarks as anybody needs to see in one day. But that’s just as well, because Brooklyn is the sort of place you could live in for ten years without ever getting to know it properly. The tour takes four and a bit hours, and rarely does Tony stop talking, but you’re unlikely to notice, or care. There’s a lot of knowledge to impart, and he imparts it in such an easy and compelling manner that even when he rants about the sale of his boyhood baseball team - the Brooklyn Dodgers - you can’t help but listen. We see the three bridges that join Brooklyn with Manhattan and Staten Island, the docks where Elvis was shipped off to fight in the war, the street where John Travolta filmed the opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever, and the famous Coney island theme parks. But all of this sightseeing and film watching becomes a second thought once the pizza arrives. The bus stops at two of New York’s most beloved restaurants, each the sort of place a visitor might overlook, and each serving the finest pies this Gobbler has tasted for some time. The first is a guide book favourite, but don’t let that put you off. Directly descended from New York’s first ever pizzeria (Lombardi’s in Manhattan), Grimaldi’s in the DUMBO district of Brooklyn (down under the Manhattan bridge overpass) serves a Neopolitan style pie, baked in a traditional brick oven. Regular folk wait on line for hours to grab a bite, but thanks to Tony’s connections, your table (and accompanying pizza) are there waiting for you when you roll up. The base is light and crisp, the mozzarella like none we’ve ever tasted and the sauce so pure and sweet, we’d happily spoon it onto our breakfast cereal. The second restaurant is not so well known. Located far deeper within Brooklyn, L&B Spumoni Gardens’ started life as an ice cream cart, selling the legendary L&B spumoni. Its speciality is a Sicilian style pie - deep and square and with cheese bubbling away beneath the tomato sauce. The problem here, is that by the time we reach the restaurant, we’ve already eaten four large slices of Grimaldi’s finest, and are feeling a little on the heavy side. Refusing to shirk a responsibility, Gobbler chewed on until Tony took pity and had the waiter package the remaining slices up to take home. In short; we can’t really recommend this enough, just make sure you skip breakfast. - http://www.thriftygobbler.com/106/

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