Circuit Court New Orleans
Mark Twain's Pizza
Landing
2035 Metairie
Rd
Metairie, LA
Map
This Restaurant
6/4/02
 Close
your eyes. C'mon now, humor me. Now, picture in your mind the perfect
pepperoni pizza. Go ahead, you can do it. Got it?
Now,
let me tell you about mine: A thin crust, no more than a quarter of an
inch thick, crispy on the surface and bready-chewy on the inside. A considerable
layer of herbal, aromatic tomato sauce of a deep, rich red color with
a tiny kick of garlic. A sprinkling of cheeses, starting with a good quality
parmesan, then following with mozzarella. Top it off with thick, silver
dollar sized slices of spicy pepperoni, then into the oven for two minutes
longer than it needs and, well...
Excuse
me while I wipe the tears from my eyes.
No pizza
I have had in New Orleans even comes close to my pizza ideal for one reason:
New Orleans just ain't a great pizza town. The industry is dominated by
those barely tolerable fast food joints whose only motivation is to make
a buck, not produce a great pizza. The closest I have had to my perfect
pizza is Ben's pizza in Arabi, LA. It's worth a trip through the Bywater
district just to taste it.
With
this fact in mind my latest venture was Mark Twain's Pizza Landing on
Metairie Road, otherwise known as Samuel Clemens Pizza. Get it? Samuel
Clemens...sorry, no more obvious literary references. It was an inviting
dining room with two large rooms that were nearly empty the time I visited.
I ordered the pepperoni pizza and asked that it be cooked well done. No
problem, said the helpful young lady behind the counter. After three beers
time (thirty minutes for those not fluent in beer time) in the adjacent
Oscar's bar I returned to discover that:
Them:
"Huh? Who are you? Oh, you're that guy who ordered the pepperoni?
I think we gave that to someone else. You want us to make you another
one?"
Me: stunned silence
Them: "Sir?"
Me: "Um, like, Yeah?"
What
a weird, Kafkaesque experience. Like the guy who was arrested for that
crime and put on trial but nobody would tell him what he was on trial
for, and...whoops, I said no more literary references. My bad.
 So
I finally got my pizza, after two more beers in the aforementioned Oscar's
(great place, by the way) and it was alright, I guess. The crust was too
thick for my taste, and there was WAY too much flavorless cheese. The
sauce was quite good, though, and the pepperoni was thick, spicy, and
plentiful. Overall, it was not the pizza experience I had hoped for. And
it occurs to me that you had to wait too long for my review of the pizza.
Kind of like my experience, don't ya think?
Weird.
Contact
Magistrate Loupe at magistrate@neworleans.com
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