{"id":4907,"date":"2018-04-06T08:34:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T12:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/?p=4907"},"modified":"2018-04-06T09:11:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T13:11:29","slug":"guest-column-tomato-pie-city-god-forgot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/guest-column-tomato-pie-city-god-forgot\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Column: Tomato Pie and “The City that God Forgot”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note from Peter: I’m still working on my recap of the recent Pizza Expo in Las Vegas so, in the meantime, I wanted to share this very insightful post from guest columnist Joseph Calcagno, on the venerable tomato pie. Some of you may recall a series of columns we ran a few years ago by another one of our columnists, Bob Radcliffe, on the same subject (if not, you can track them down in the Guest Column archives section). But Bob discovered his passion for tomato pies in Trenton New Jersey (like so many others of us), whereas Joseph fills us in on a whole other rich vein of tomato pie intensity, as you will see below. So, thank you, Joe, for expanding my horizons and for writing about it so eloquently. Here it is\u00a0 — enjoy!!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UTICA \u2013 Home of the Tomato Pie<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe city that God forgot\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This was the moniker I found when researching the next destination of my lifelong pizza quest: Utica, New York. Undeterred, I traveled west along the Mohawk River in central New York and down into the Mohawk Valley, gazing at the snow covered mountains as the swan song of winter faded into the background of springs crescendo.<\/p>\n

The streets of Utica are a bit weathered. It\u2019s a blue collar city that\u2019s struggled, plagued by a dark history of political corruption and economic hardship. It has been coined a Rust Belt<\/em> city, due to the decline of the area’s industrial sector in the latter half of the 20th<\/sup> century. Amidst the hardship and poverty that exist within some parts of Utica, however, an inspiring identity has been quietly growing past city limits throughout the years. This identity has made Utica famous for the right reasons and one in particular \u2013 the Tomato Pie<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Tomato Pie in Utica is intrinsic to the local sense of cultural identity.<\/p><\/div>\n

As I familiarized myself with the regional vernacular, I graduated with a degree in Tomato Pie. This isn\u2019t pizza (even though this is Pizza Quest<\/em>, just trust me on this one). It would be an insult to Utica to call this pizza. This is Tomato Pie<\/em>. You order it as “Tomato Pie.” This is the no frills, unpretentious, leather-jacket-wearing older cousin of pizza. Better put, the Tomato Pie is the Rocky Balboa of pies \u2013 the underdog champion who is a regular neighborhood guy.<\/p>\n

And this is what has been keeping Utica alive and well fed over the years. A far cry from the pies seen at the picturesque, trendy pizzeria shops that celebrate different regional styles and push the culinary boundaries of pizza into a melting pot of flavors. Utica is fiercely authentic. They only need a few bold, hard-hitting simple ingredients to deliver the knockout.<\/p>\n

So what is the Tomato Pie?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A thin and chewy crust, topped with an extra thick layer of sweet and tangy slow-cooked tomato sauce and finished with a light dusting of Pecorino Romano cheese. Give or take a few variations, that\u2019s the Tomato Pie. Elegantly simple. Baked in a seasoned pan and served only at room temperature. I can\u2019t romanticize it any better than that but I can guarantee you\u2019ll fall in love at first bite.<\/p>\n

\"\"

As sold in the deli — always served at room temperature!<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tomato Pie in Utica is almost always a secondary item to the vast assortment of Italian goods a bakery has to offer, reminiscent of the way Italian immigrants introduced pizza to America. I ventured into a few of the local Italian bakeries where it\u2019s sold and embarked on a delicious journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got back from a funeral,\u201d said one patron as he exchanged pleasantries with the man on the other side of the counter, behind a curtain of provolone. \u201cThird one this week, can you believe it?\u201d Just making small talk as he moved quickly on the line that wrapped around the store, while the clerk kept working and acknowledged him endearingly. It dawned on me that while the walls may look old in the places around here, they\u2019re marinated with a rich history of stories, mumblings, and anecdotes like these that have created a sacred space for the people of Utica who call places like these home.<\/p>\n

I savored every bite of my Tomato Pie in the parking lot of each place I went to, watching an endless parade of people come and go. I listened to the sounds of birds chirping as my palate tried to identify each note of flavor bursting through.<\/p>\n

\"\"

It’s all about the sauce!<\/p><\/div>\n

The tomato sauce was unlike anything I had ever tried before. It was the star of the show and wanted you to know it. The perfect amount of sweetness to acidity, and ever so slightly touched by the salty sprinkled Pecorino Romano cheese. While pizza manifests as a holy trinity of balance in flavor and texture between the sauce, cheese and crust \u2013 the sauce on the Utica Tomato Pie creates its own rules and makes sure everyone else plays by them.<\/p>\n

I tried to wrap my head around it as I created an entry for Tomato Pie on my personal Pizza Quest. Certainly the pies are admired much differently, yet they\u2019re so uniquely and importantly intertwined in the history of Italian-American cuisine.<\/p>\n

\u201cA staple at every party,\u201d said one Utica resident when asked about what the Tomato Pie meant to Utica. \u201cIt was always on the table every Sunday when I was growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

But also about the balance between sauce and crust.<\/p><\/div>\n

And that\u2019s where it all made sense to me. People don\u2019t forget traditions like that. It\u2019s one that goes back thousands of years, throughout the history of mankind, no matter where you\u2019re from. Food has long been known to have the innate power to bring people together, shuffle off their mortal coils and define an entire community \u2013 giving a Pizza Quest a moral and magical compass to follow.<\/p>\n

The birds continued to sing that afternoon with melodies of hope and new beginnings that accompany each spring, especially after a harsh winter in the Northeast. I listened curiously, mesmerized by the last few bites of charm that Utica had to offer. This too, was a new beginning for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city that God forgot\u2026\u201d I thought. \u201c\u2026well, hopefully He\u2019s just too busy enjoying a Tomato Pie for now\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note from Peter: I’m still working on my recap of the recent Pizza Expo in Las Vegas so, in the meantime, I wanted to share this very insightful post from guest columnist Joseph Calcagno, on the venerable tomato pie. Some of you may recall a series of columns we ran a few years ago by another one of our columnists, Bob Radcliffe, on the same subject (if not, you can…Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3617,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113,578,577,33,41,114,575,576],"class_list":["post-4907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-s14-guest-columns","tag-bob-radcliffe","tag-cultural-identity","tag-joseph-calcagno","tag-peter-reinhart","tag-pizza","tag-pizza-quest","tag-tomato-pie","tag-utica"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGuest Column: Tomato Pie and "The City that God Forgot" - Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fornobravo.com\/pizzaquest\/guest-column-tomato-pie-city-god-forgot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guest Column: Tomato Pie and "The City that God Forgot" - Pizza Quest with Peter Reinhart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Note from Peter: I’m still working on my recap of the recent Pizza Expo in Las Vegas so, in the meantime, I wanted to share this very insightful post from guest columnist Joseph Calcagno, on the venerable tomato pie. 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