Occasionally it can be fun to be a tourist in your own city. A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to take a tour of the borough I call my home with Slice of Brooklyn, a bus tour of downtown and south Brooklyn complete with stops at two great pizzerias: Grimaldi’s and L&B Spumoni Gardens.
Our tour guide Paula was fun and spunky, her thick Brooklyn accent charming the hell out of all of us despite being obviously exaggerated. What can I say? Girl lived in Cali for many years… eh, fuhgettaboudit. We stopped anywhere we could: the Brooklyn Bridge, Bay Ridge, the Verrazano Bridge, even the frigid Coney Island (this was mid-January, after all). Paula burst with trivia and fun facts about Brooklyn — none of which I can remember, but I loved it all the same. Video clips of Saturday Night Fever and Goodfellas played on the screen as we drove right past the locations where they were filmed.
Now onto the pizza. Is it worth paying the $75 ticket price for a bunch of random Brooklyn facts and two margherita slices at the world famous Grimaldi’s? Debatable, depending on how much you’re willing to wait in line for that coal-fired charred crust with a light covering of San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella. Yeah, it’s good. But Bus Tour Good?
Before you could question yourself too much, the bus pulled up to L&B Spumoni Gardens, a nonchalant little Italian joint located in a faraway land Paula kept calling “Bensonhurst.” In other words, “real Brooklyn.” This is the Brooklyn of yore, of classic mafia movies and celebrity childhoods, of old timey families and pockets of ethnicities that you don’t expect to live in pockets anymore.
Spumoni Gardens has got the classic New York-style Italian: from red-sauce pasta to fried calamari, and of course, homemade spumoni in the classic vanilla, chocolate and pistachio. But that’s not why we’re here. It’s the Sicilian pizza, which can only be described as “flufftastic.” A paper thin slice of cheese topped with a light sauce and sprinkling of pecarino sits atop the most beautiful crust — warm and chewy dough that melts away with each bite.
Now is it worth the price? Hell yeah, considering that I’ve been trying to get my friends to go to Bensonhurst for three months now just for another taste of that pillow of a pie. Southern Brooklyn might as well be China for all they care. But I will prevail, given the right persuasive arguments and a well-conceived bribe that may or may not involve buying everyone’s pizza for them.
In the meantime, I will just stare at my photos and drool. Fuhgettaboudit.
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Slice of Brooklyn Pizza Tour
Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays at 11 a.m.
Length: 4.5 hours
Price: Adults: $75 • Children under 12: $65
Price includes 2 slices of pizza & a soft drink at each of the two pizzerias
Looks so fun!