Daniel B.
Yelp
Do you know how you can tell if a New York style slice shop is truly great? Order the cheese slice and don't put anything on it. No shaky cheese, no garlic powder, no dried herbs, no pepper flakes.
Just taste the basics. On their own. Unembellished.
In doing so, there is no place for imperfections to hide. Bland crust? Flavorless cheese? Meek sauce? They will stand out like a sore thumb.
Typically, I wouldn't advise doing this in Ann Arbor. We're far enough away from New York, that it's unreasonable to expect a close facsimile of the style. Pizza here is typically thicker, cheesier, and embellished with more toppings.
But since I've never been to NYPD before, I wanted to see how it stacked up to the new shop in town that just opened its first location outside NYC.
As expected, the cheese slice was uninspiring. The flavors in the dough were underdeveloped, and the dough itself was undercooked, producing a gum line between the bottom crust and the layer of sauce. There was too much sauce and too much cheese. Plus parts of the bottom crust were woefully undercooked, despite going in the oven for a reheat.
On the up side, NYPD does have a grandma pie, which looks tastier. Since it has the sauce on top, it shouldn't suffer from the gumminess problem. And the sauce has a little bit more love put into it. Plus this pizzeria has beer on tap. So I'm looking forward to return for a grandma slice with a pint, and hoping to produce a tastier outcome.
Also, kudos for the integrity of reheating all the slices to crisp up their bottoms. Despite its flaws, the cheese slice did have a crisp undercarriage.
It's also worth noting that most people seem to come to NYPD for their more topping heavy slices, which are surely tastier than the one I tried. But I was playing strict rules New York style pizza slice evaluations. Rules are rules.
Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that on a return trip, NYPD will earn that fourth star.