Whoring with Ken (at Ken's Artisan)

Mary Alecia, the Pizza Gigalo's girlfriend, said to the Pizza Gigalo: "do you want to go keep Kristen company while she whores herself to Ken?"

Evan said "yes!" and pimped it with the best pizza of the evening, in my opinion: the 

black olive. These extra-special olives are the vegetarian version of anchovies: super salty flavorful deliciousness. He did double duty (like a true gigalo) and added some anchovies! 

Another local pizza connoisseur, (Thank you, Ms Crowe) tipped us to get a side of the fresh red chilies which also added an extra bang to the plain margharita. My choice, the margharita + arugula, gave me a bit too much aragula.

Here's Gus, starting his pizza-loving life with Ken's sourdough. I appreciated the olive oil more than the bread, which was a little too crusty for my taste. But the crust underneath the pizza was pretty perfect, I just didn't appreciate the actual crust part. As I gave Aaron the title of crust hater because his was piling up, Matt wondered if there was ever a pizza whose toppings went all the way to the edge. This is what I wished was going on here. I had given Aaron such a hard time about denying his crust, that I was embarrassed to see mine doing the same. Bummer. 

The pizza's interior was delicious and delicate: great sauce with sporadically placed fresh mozzarella. The irregularity of the topping locations started another great pizza discussion. Is the topic location designed so that each bite has a different ratio of flavors? I'm not sure how I feel about this. I believe the best pizza is that which achieves the perfect sauce/dough/cheese/topping balance, but this gives you a different balance in each bite. So we must assess the whole pie experience, rather than one bite at a time. Bottom line here: mine had too much arugula. "Better too much than too little," said Matt. Maybe. But I couldn't stomach rejecting the lovely green along with my crust, so I ate it. It left my whole pizza experience imbalanced.

So, I started looking into my friends' pizzas -- Matt raved about his sorporsatta, the super-spicy-pepperoni-like meat pizza. Apizza whore confession: in 27.5 years of pizza loving I'd never tried a pepperoni pizza. So, if I am now, after all these years, willing to try the meat, why not start with a kind-of-like-but-not pepperoni pizza. Spicy! Some heat and a lot of flavor. One bite was enough for me, but it was tasty! 

 I looked around the table -- Aaron had one piece of his sausage and fennel left. I pondered it for a moment. (Keep in mind, I'm a life-long vegetarian; mom said I was born that way.) Lemme try it! Wow. Hands down the best pizza on the table (it one upped the black olive). The fennel was caramelized and he'd added the chilies before the pie got cooked. Delicious, and powerful. Maybe it would have been too much for the entire pie because it was really rich, but I have vegetarian taste. For meat lovers, it would be spectacular!