Plain Slice of Pizza

I was really hungry as I walked to the subway from a friend's house this afternoon so I decided to grab a slice of pizza at a standard neighborhood pizza place. I ordered up a plain slice at the cost of $1.90. An odd, but fair price it seemed to me. At this point I had an internal debate that I frequently have when ordering pizza. The issue is this: The guy sticks your slice in the oven to warm it up, but it usually ends up scalding hot. I always wonder if I should mention that I'd like it just warmed up a bit, but not too much. The problem is that this request often leads to confusion.

"Not warmed up?" the pizza man often asks.

"No, no," I often explain, "I do want it warmed up, just not really hot."

About half of the time things work out and I end up with a nice warm slice of pizza. The other half of the time I give up once it seems too complicated and end up feeling bad for confusing the guy in addition to having a scalding hot slice of pizza. In any case, I decided not to mention it today because this particular pizza man didn't seem to speak English very well.

After about a minute the guy got my pizza out of the oven and handed it to me on a paper plate. I took it and thanked him. I walked over to the things to sprinkle on pizza counter and looked over my choices. This is something else I am troubled by. For one thing there's usually one shaker jar that's empty and for another you almost always you have to ask for the Parmesan. I like to shake pepper flakes, oregano, and Parmesan onto my pizza. I was in luck in regards to the first two. The pepper flakes and the oregano were there, on these weird chains like pens at a bank, but they were there. However, as expected, the Parmesan was not. I don't understand the reason for this. Are they afraid that it might be stolen? Are they afraid it would go bad? Is it more expensive than the other toppings and they are therefor trying to conserve it? Whatever the reason it's rarely there and I hate asking for it. I always feel like the guy behind the counter thinks I'm trying to scam him or get more than I paid for or something. So this afternoon I did not ask for the Parmesan.

I walked out of the place, pizza in hand, and began once again to walk towards the subway. I could feel through my paper plate that my pizza was too hot and so let it cool down for a couple of blocks. As I got to the park that I go through for a shortcut I decided to give the pizza a try. I took a little bite. It seemed to be a good temperature so I took another bite. The second bite was too hot. I guess the little tip of the pizza that was hanging off the edge of my plate must have cooled faster than the rest of it. As I passed a trash can I threw away that little paper that they put between the pizza and the plate. I hate that thing. It's totally pointless and it's always flopping around under my pizza and it's also wasteful. I think it's supposed to protect your plate from grease, but there wasn't that much grease dripping off my slice and if there was I don't see how that piece of paper would make much of a difference.

Anyway, once my pizza was at an acceptable temperature I ate it and it wasn't very good. I won't say it was bad exactly, but it wasn't good either. I'll admit that the sauce was okay. Still, a big negative was that despite being slightly burnt on parts of the bottom it was a little squishy elsewhere. I ate the whole thing and was left feeling unsatisfied.

Plain Slice of Pizza from Neighborhood Pizza Place: C-
Initial Pizza Temperature: D
No Parmesan on the Counter: D
Overall Experience: D+