When weighing the challenges of DC life, people will zero in on different issues. A few popular gripes: rent is astronomically high, but government and non-profit gigs pay particularly modestly. The town is full of pit-bullish resume builders, and it can be dehumanizing to find that you’ve been objectified as a networking contact after a playful party chat. There is pressure to be in the know – I would rather show up at an orgy in granny panties than suffer the embarrassment of being caught blank-faced during a political debate in DC. None of these, however, is the worst thing about living in the District of Columbia.
The worst thing about this city is its pizza. I keep trying new places with a sense of hope. I keep thinking that there are other fish in the sea, that I just haven’t found the right pizza yet. I work my way down the lists on Yelp and Yahoo! Local with an increasing sense of desperation. I have already lived here for six months, and I haven’t found a pizza I want to eat more than once or twice.
I like my pizza like Oprah likes her books – safe and middlebrow. I want something more than a drugstore paperback, but I’m not after Dante’s Inferno in the original Italian, either. My real objection to DC pizza is that it fails to cater to the silent majority of us who need something in between a jumbo slice and ‘arugula, basil, pesto, pecans, organic turnips, and dried cranberries on a thin baked crust.’ I have no idea what the hell arugula even is, but I have ingested enough exemplary pizzas to doubt the wisdom of spoiling an already successful, simple formula with a cheese that sounds like it could be the name of a sovereign island. On the other hand, although I am far from above an occasional foray into greasy, mass-market pies after a boozy odyssey, the cheap-and-quick chain pizza leaves me feeling unfulfilled. This emotional conflict is perhaps best represented by a recent dining experience I had with Lindsay.
Some friends invited us to join them for dinner at Rustik DC, a posh pizza kitchen in the Bloomingdale / LeDroit Park area. Although we could not see our menus in the trendily-low lit space until we held them dangerously close to candle flames, I was disheartened to find a total of 14 ingredients I had never heard of. I initially counted 15 before I realized that “watercress” had been used twice. Watercress, for those who don’t want to open up a new Wikipedia tab, is a “fast-growing, aquatic or semi-aquatic, perennial plant native to Europe and Central Asia.” Although I commend the especial pretention of Rustik’s desperation to appease hipsters by providing them with the flora of faraway seas, I question the decision to put it on something that ought to consist of bread, sauce and melty cheese. I imagine that an uber-hip, mint-scented restaurateur got buzzed one night on imported sake while watching independent French allegorical films, and was just STRUCK by the sudden realization that pizza suffers a troubling deficit of foreign plants. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I am consistently shocked by the prevalence of these designer pizza joints – I feel bullied by the very suggestion that an “undershrub with sweet pine and citrus flavours” (marjoram – another Rustik ingredient,) could possibly be better than any non-marjoram situation. It is also worth noting that although I pulled that definition from Wikipedia, I am guessing that the wizards behind Rustik’s also add the extra ‘u’ to ‘flavors,’ just as they have fashionably swapped their ‘c’ for a ‘k.’ Furthermore, the very existence of ‘undershrubs’ makes me sad, because it makes me envision a very hungry person so desperate for sustenance that they would peek under shrubs and lick whatever is there in order to note whether or not it tastes like ‘sweet pine.’ Not to mention the fact that ‘sweet pine’ strikes me as more of a smell than a taste, given the fact that I don’t run around town suckling the needles off of trees.
After getting the up-tilted nose from the wait staff after ordering ‘just sausage and cheese,’ Lindsay and I locked eyes and shared a fixed gaze that can only mean, “we’re going to New York Pizza after this, yeah?”
…but this is still the District of Columbia, and their pizza isn’t stellar either. Thank God for their calzones.
- Natalie
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
