No Slice for You: How Rockaway Beach Got Its Very Own Pizza Nazi

New York Magazine ^ | 2/10/14

[nickcarraway]

Slices aren't an option at Whitney Aycock's Rockaway Beach pizza shop, as he will happily explain to anyone who orders one:

[wbill]

Read the article. Sounds like a pleasant chap.

I love living in the south. I can go all week and not hear a single F-word in polite company. :-)

[I want the USA back]

I don’t deal well with nazis. If he tries that with me he won’t like the results.

[Dr. Sivana]

THAT is plain apizza, you #%$@%$ poseur.

It is at the top line of the menus in soe of the greatest pizza joints in the country.

And while it is not my favorite, Pepe's Apizza in New Haven was famous (in the early days) for making you a pizza whenever you wanted it, even at 2AM, as Pepe lived up stairs.

A plain apizza means the creator has the confidence in his dough and his sauce. A poseur pretends a pizza needs some list of ingredients out of an Indiana Jones movie.

This is NY. For all its problems, you can get great pizza without a bad attitude.

[wku man]

I wonder what diehipster.com would have to say about this?

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[bus man]

I would have to assume that the customers put up with the shop owner’s surly attitude because one simply cannot obtain pizza anywhere else within the greater New York metropolitan area.

Because otherwise, the only sound one should hear in there is the sound of the owner’s cursing echoing through the empty eatery.

[DemforBush]

He uses a blend of buffalo mozzarella and fior di latte, a cow's milk cheese, to lend lightness to his finished pies. Garlic comes from a farm upstate, shiitake mushrooms come from a mysterious forager who digs around abandoned fisheries on the Hudson.

Um, if I ever go there, remind me not to order mushrooms on my pizza. Mr. Mysterious forager only needs to be wrong once...

[Tupelo]

I just assume this type of attitude is a New York Thang.
But I am curious about one thing, what is a margherita?
I have never heard of this. I assume it is a super sophisticated New York drink or dessert..

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Ha! This guy sounds like a gun aficionado conversing with a neophyte looking to buy some clips for his new Ruger LC9.

[who knows what evil?]

A New Yorker acting like a pr*ck? This is news? I love living in the south. I can go all week and not hear a single F-word in polite company. :-)

Amen. Ten years in Tennessee; heard the 'f' word once. Here in soviet Red Hampshire (surrounded by New Yorkers), I hear it every ten minutes...and that's from the kids. :-)

Got to love NYC pizzas, though...

[Vaquero]

I live in NYS. You don’t buy a pizza from a Whitney Aycock’. You buy a pizza from some guy named guido or Angelo

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

I think I can live without sampling any of this self-important prick’s pies.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

A margherita is crushed tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella. And it’s delicious.

[Lurking Libertarian]

But I am curious about one thing, what is a margherita? I have never heard of this. I assume it is a super sophisticated New York drink or dessert.

Pizza margherita is a style of pizza from Naples, where the locals claim it is the "original pizza." It's topped with tomatoes, cheese and fresh basil; the story is that the recipe was created to celebrate the unification of Italy in 1861-- the toppings match the colors of the Italian flag, and it is named for Queen Margherita, wife of King Victor Emanuel I.

[onedoug]

When I was in London, daughter and I ordered a pizza by phone for “carry-out” rather than take-out.

When I showed up the guy asked me, “So, you want a margherita?”

“No,” I said. “I want a pizza.”

Wife back home thought I was nuts. But I’d always thought they were two different things.

[Dr. Sivana]

I live in NYS. You don’t buy a pizza from a Whitney Aycock’. You buy a pizza from some guy named guido or Angelo

YES! Tony, Sally (short for Salvadore), Pepe, Giuseppe are also proper.

[SECURE AMERICA]

“Aycock was fine with losing the sale if it helped him make his point”

Well if his point is to prove he is an asswad then good for him he succeeded..

[MplsSteve]

There’s no doubt (from reading the article) that the guy is passionate about pizza. He really puts his all into it. That’s very cool. In today’s society, no one seems to care about the quality of their work.

But he’s doing a really terrible job of getting that point across - swearing, blowing off potential customers, etc.

He needs to educate his customers in a much smoother way than that. There’s no cachet in being a pr*ck or a holier than thou a-hole to your customers.