New NYC Mandate Threatens Future And Taste Of New York Pizza
If you only ate Chicago pizza, this would be not an issue.
The city of New York is cracking down on pizzerias, threatening their futures. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order pizza joints using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75 percent, reports the New York Post.
“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said.
“This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”
The rule would force pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy mission-control devices that could send local joints over their budgets.
A pizza restaurant owner in Brooklyn said he has already invested $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the mandate.
Though while owners are concerned, pizza eaters in New York are furious.
As Ben McDonald of The Blaze notes, "Banning pizza in NYC is gonna turn New York red."
If anything can, it's a crackdown on the top pizza joints across New York City. That and cracking down on crime, of course...
But as readers of OutKick know, we here are not worried about the eerie future of New York pizza. We last week named Chicago pizza the superior cut.
Well, I did. My colleagues disagreed. But, obviously, they are wrong.
In short:
New York pizza is a bit overrated. It’s essentially a thinner, more expensive alternative to pizza in every other city.
Chicago-style is unique. And the sauce makes a pizza. New York-style often neglects enough sauce to be elite.
Plus, the New York mandate could decrease the tast of New York-style pie.
According to one New York restaurant owner, "If you f—k around with the temperature in the oven you change the taste. That pipe, that chimney, it’s that size to create the perfect updraft, keeps the temp perfect, it’s an art as much as a science. You take away the char, the thing that makes the pizza taste great, you kill it."
"This is an unfunded mandate and it’s going to cost us a fortune not to mention ruining the taste of the pizza totally destroying the product, "he concluded.
What he said.