Pizza wonderland

I got back from lunch with Eleanor not too long ago. We had pizza at Gioia's, a little hole-in-the-wall place on Hopkins in Berkeley. The first time I ate there was with Yosh several months ago. She said she was going to take me to the best pizza in the world. And I was like, "Are we going to the Cheese Board?" But, to my disappointment, we weren't. She was taking me on an adventure to a place and a part of Berkeley that I never knew existed, and I'm glad she did.

The pizza at Gioia's is awesome. Thin crust with a few fresh toppings all tossed in the oven for a little warming when you order so that the crust is just a little bit crunchy when it arrives on its wax paper over a paper plate. I had a slice of sausage and red onion with a Coke (I never drink soda except when I'm eating there for some odd reason). Eleanor had a slice of asparagus. And we shared a ceasar salad and a slice of mushroom.

My slice of sausage was wonderful. The sausage tasted as if it was freshly made, meaty and spicey, and the onion was sweet and not too overpowering. The cheese, which I don't know what kind it was but didn't taste like your usual run-of-the-mill mozzarella, was so creamy and good. The mushroom slice, which is one of my favorites, was delicious, as usual. The mushrooms (I think crimini) tasted like mushrooms, earthy and dense, not all weirdly rubbery like at other places. And, the parsley gave it a nice bit of color while adding a little touch of freshness. I could eat that all day long.

The salad was yummy too. It didn't come with the usual romaine but some other type of lettuce that looked like a cross between butter lettuce and romaine (I think Eleanor said it was jewel lettuce or something like that). The dressing didn't look like the usual ceasar dressing either. It was a bit more yellow and a bit more tangy. The grated cheese actually tasted like cheese too, not some odd salty powder. (As I'm writing this blog entry, I realized that I write a lot about my food tasting like what it should taste like--a quality of good food that sometimes gets lost.) I started eating our shared salad with my fingers even before asking if it was okay. Totally rude of me, but I didn't want to lose any bit of that cheese or dressing on my little lettuce love boats.