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Whether you’re in a hurry and need to eat fast or have a quiet night off and want to unwind with take-out, chances are a slice of pizza is the perfect New York comfort food. It’s easy to make, easy to eat, and easy to afford… until recently. A new survey says New Yorkers pay an average of $33.65 for a one-topping large pizza, the highest price in the nation, thanks in part to the rising costs of ingredients and doing business. But fear not, says Scott Weiner. The owner of Scott’s Pizza Tours appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to reassure listeners that, no matter how you slice it, pizza is still actually a bargain for your buck.
“Fourteen inches is the standard large pizza for all the chains and everything,” Weiner told Berman and Riedel. “Meanwhile, in New York, how big is the pizza? Eighteen, at least. Could be twenty. When you go from a fourteen-inch pizza and you jump up to a twenty-inch pizza, that’s double the pizza, so if the pizza costs even slightly more, our pizza is actually less expensive per square inch than most other cities.”
Weiner says you shouldn’t be too concerned with the numbers, however, as there is a red sauce joint out there for every wallet. “That’s the beauty of pizza, is that we’re always going to have pizzerias that, they may not be a buck a slice, but there’re always going to be cheap pizzerias that are in the $1.50, $2 range, you know, relative to the economy. Then there are always going to be pizzas that are right in that mid-range that you splurge, and there are always going to be the obscene, $2,000 pizza with edible gold on it.”
Yes, if money is no object and pepperoni is too blasé, you saw that right. Weiner says one restaurant actually once offered edible gold as a topping. “There was a place- I don’t know if they still have it- but it was called Industry Kitchen over by the South Street Seaport, and they had a pizza with foie gras, Stilton cheese, edible gold, and if you want to pay another $700, you can put on some caviar.”
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