Brick Oven Pizza on 44th - Slice Harvester totally dug this

There's a lot of good pizza in this neighborhood, but there is also so much bad pizza that sometimes I feel too discouraged to try a new place. However, the gentleman at Slice Harvester has doing that work for us!

Backstory: Colin's mission is to have a slice of pizza at every pizzeria in New York City. He began making his way down Manhattan sometime year, and he's recently been through the Theater District (I wept for him during that painful phase) and Hell's Kitchen. You can read about all his adventures at sliceharvester.com.

Slice Harvester has very exacting standards about what makes a good pizza, and he doesn't hold back when a slice fails to meet his expectations. As I've read about his Hell's Kitchen experiences, this review caught me by surprise: Brick Oven Pizza, on 44th Street btwn 9th and 10th Aves. I think this is actually a sort of Annex to L'Allegria restaurant on that corner of 9th (per this yelp.com entry).

I finally tried it yesterday, inspired by SH's glowing review. I sat at the bar with a friend, watching the pizza maestro make the pies and put them in the brick oven right there in front of us. With a 3 second trip from the oven to our plate, our margherita pie was steaming hot, and so delicious!

One thing I do disagree with: the pizza maestro is so nice.  SH makes it sound like he's gruff and brusque but I promise that was not the case when I went.  He is a strong, silent type, ok? But still totally nice!