What??

Are you on something? What you people here eat can't even be called "pizza" where I come from (Serbia - 1 hour by plane from fuckin Italy!).

I've been all over Italy. I've eaten pizza all over Italy. Brooklyn kicks Italy's ass in the pizza-making competition any day of the week.

Gee, I've been to Italy a bunch of times myself, hoiw can you say such a thing??

Here, you get some burnt dough and a bunch of cheese and ketchup on it and you call that "pizza"??

How about thin slices of HAM?? How about origano (*not the stupid plastic bottle with holes by the counter)??

BASIC pizza in those parts is cheese, HAM, tomato and origano!! Here, you get 2 out of 4!!

Karol,
They're only closing the original storefront (for now). The one two doors down will remain open (for now).

I generally don't eat pork so ham is out. And I found Italian pizza to be kind of slimy, covered by a film of some type over the cheese. I love pizza so I was very excited to go to Italy and try the pizza there. I even have a pic of me holding up a pie. I just kept thinking I wasn't having it at good places but it was never better than average and never better than Brooklyn.

Aaahh, kosher pizza. OK.

There's one right next to Washington Square Park that I used to like. Don't remember the street, but it was good and cheap.

No, I'm not kosher, just not a big meat eater. And, I like my pizza plain, or at its most decorated with mushrooms.

Either way, I have to say I wouldn't quote you nor would I quote most other locals as any authorities on pizza, since what you get here is really a "redux". I don't know how muuch pizza you had eaten while living in USSR but I grew up on it pretty much, so...

Actually, the pizza now served throughout the world, including Italy, was invented in America.

Karol, the article you linked to says Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States, in the early 1900s. However, it was the 1950s when pizza caught on outside the Italian-American community, and quickly spread throughout the U.S. and became an international food, now found in every country.

I'm not sure how you get 'America invented modern pizza' - I only get that we popularized the mediocre version.

On the other hand, I've been to Italy and I live in Brooklyn. I'll take Patsy Grimaldi's over Italy every day and twice on Sunday. (And my failure to go to Di Fara is a source of much self-loathing.)

I love Grimaldis (though I think the Totonnos of Coney Island is much better) but the thing about Brooklyn pizza, for me, is that the random corner pizza place will be head and shoulders above the random corner pizza place in Manhattan (and, again, much less the country of the world). Brooklyn is consistent in its fabulous pizza making. You may find one great pizza place in other cities, maybe two, but Brooklyn has many.

Also, you should check out the original Patsy's in East Harlem. Gooooood. (At least it was 5 years ago.)

Also, check out Howard Beach for good random corner pizza joint quality.

BTW, Ugarte, do you live in 'fake' Brooklyn like Williamsburg, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, etc? Or, 'real' Brooklyn (the south part)?

I live on the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, near Eastern Parkway. Before that I spent ~3.5 years living on the border of Park Slope and "Green Wood Heights". Mom grew up in Coney Island and I spent a lot of time on Brighton Beach when I was a kid and my grandparents had moved to Avenue X and Nostrand in Sheepshead Bay. Evaluate my cred as you will.

What's with dissing the Manhattan-y parts of Brooklyn by someone that abandoned her home borough for Manhattan itself?

I'm not dissing, I'm just telling you what those neighborhoods are called in the South part of BK. I lived in Greenpoint and, as you said, live in Manhattan now. I was just wondering.