切片披萨何以成为最“纽约”的食物？

在格林尼治村的麦克杜格尔街上吃披萨和闲聊。1963年8月2日。 JOHN ORRIS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pizza can be a great divider in New York. In fact, one of the easiest ways to get into argument (without end) is to name a “best pizza in the city.” But at the same time, pizza — specifically the reheated, foldable, portable slice — is one of the city’s great uniters. There is no culinary experience that New Yorkers share more widely and more unanimously than the slice joint. Like catching a sunset over the skyline or stepping in an icy curbside puddle, the slice joint has, since its beginnings more than 50 years ago, become common currency.

披萨在纽约是件会挑起冲突的大事。事实上，要想陷入（无休止）的争论，最简单的一个方法就是说出“全市最棒的披萨”是哪家。但与此同时，披萨——具体是指重新加热的、可折叠的、便携式的披萨片——又是这个城市的一大粘合剂。切片零卖的披萨店作为纽约人的共有美食体验，其广泛和一致程度是任何美食都无法比拟的。就像看一眼天际线的日落，或是一脚踩进结了冰的路边水坑，切片披萨店自50多年前开始以来，已成为通用货币。

The price has changed over the decades, but the scene and staging remain much the same. Look at the crowd of New Yorkers and tourists alike bundled in winter coats on a recent Wednesday night at Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street. The pies at Joe’s, which opened in 1975, are considered among the city’s best. See how the customers rotate in a perfect line through the door and up to the glass case, their orders ready and their money in hand. “Three dollars,” the pizza man says briskly, after he has placed the requested slice into a decked oven. Out come the hot, bubbling triangles of cheese and sauce on thin, pliable crust. Once their slices are ready, the diners — if so formal a word even applies — grab a place at the counter in the window or push out the door, slice in hand, on to wherever the evening may take them. This is the “New York style.”

几十年来，价格已有所改变，但场景和展示仍基本保持原样。看看最近一个周三晚上胭脂红街Joe’s Pizza裹着冬衣的那一大群纽约人和游客吧。1975年开业的Joe’s的饼被认为是这个城市最棒之列。看看顾客们怎样以完美的队列在店门和玻璃橱之间轮转，他们点的东西好了，他们的钞票握在手上。“三块”，在把刚点的披萨放入柜式烤炉后，披萨男干脆地说。待取出，就是一片薄软的三角面饼，上面是热腾腾冒着泡的奶酪和酱料。一等到饼就绪，食客们——假若这么正式的词适用的话——便在柜台边占个位置，或者手里拿着披萨推开门，去到这个夜晚将要前去的任何地方。这便是“纽约范儿”。

胭脂红街上的抛饼比赛。1975年10月30日。 CHESTER HIGGINS JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES

比赛进入白热化。1975年10月30日。 CHESTER HIGGINS JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES

The origin story of New York pizza starts with large waves of Italian immigrants settling in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1920, roughly a quarter of the 1.6 million Italian immigrants in the United States were living in New York, establishing enclaves in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Such neighborhoods were home to the first pizzerias, like Lombardi’s in Little Italy, which opened on Spring Street in 1905. The namesake of the Neapolitan immigrant Gennaro Lombardi, the restaurant used a coal-fired oven to create pizzas with puffy, charred crusts and a bubbling layer of tomato sauce and cheese that made it one of the most popular restaurants in Little Italy. As if in biblical succession, as apprentices left to start their own pizza operations, Lombardi’s begat Totonno’s in Coney Island, John’s in Greenwich Village and Patsy’s in what is now Spanish Harlem. These are the four acknowledged prewar pizza pillars in the city. (Though none of them was a slice joint in the current sense.)

纽约披萨的起源故事始于19世纪末、20世纪初大批意大利移民在这个城市定居。到1920年，美国160万意大利移民中约四分之一生活在纽约，他们在曼哈顿、布鲁克林和布朗克斯建立了多处飞地。这类社区里诞生了最初的披萨饼店，如小意大利的Lombard i’s，它是1905年在春街开业的。该餐厅得名于那不勒斯移民詹纳罗·隆巴第(Gennaro Lombardi)，它家用燃煤炉烹制的披萨有着蓬松、焦脆的饼底，外加一层冒着泡的番茄酱和奶酪，使其成为小意大利最受欢迎的餐厅之一。随着学徒们离开后接二连三地开创自己的披萨生意，隆巴第衍生出了科尼岛的Totonno’s，格林威治村的John’s和位于今天西班牙哈莱姆的Patsy’s。这几家是本市公认的战前披萨四大基石。（虽然其中没有一家是当今意义上的切片披萨店。）

Hot, filling and eaten with the hands, pizza elicited breathless coverage from The Times fairly early on, as food writers marveled at the appealing combination of ingredients and convenience. By 1947, the paper was fully sold. “A round of dough is baked with tomatoes and anchovies and cheese atop, cut into wedges, then eaten with the fingers between gulps of wine,” the reporter Jane Nickerson enthused. “The pizza could be as popular a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew more about it.”

热乎、饱腹、直接用手吃——披萨很早就在时报上引发了扣人心弦的报道，美食作家们纷纷赞叹它的诱人食材组合与便利性。到1947年，这份报纸已经被完全征服。“番茄、凤尾鱼和奶酪放在一片圆形面饼上烘烤，切成楔形，然后搭配红酒，用手指夹着吃，”简·尼克尔森(Jane Nickerson)兴奋地写道。“只要美国人对它了解多一点，披萨可以成为和汉堡包一样受青睐的小吃。”

Nine years later, The Times’s Herbert Mitgang contemplated the reasons for pizza’s popularity, writing, “The guess is that a number of Americans of Italian origin, aided by advertising and refrigeration, have made pizza as delectable as such other postwar imports as Lollobrigida” — referring to Gina, the saucy Roman film star. The Neapolitan-style pie became a chic dinner-party staple that could also be supplemented with a salad for a filling, family meal. But one innovation would change how New Yorkers enjoyed pizza forever.

九年后，时报的赫伯特·密特岗(Herbert Mitgang)对披萨受欢迎的原因作了反思，他写道，“我的猜想是，很多意大利裔美国人在广告宣传和冷藏技术的推动下，让披萨变得像劳洛勃丽吉达这类其他战后进口元素一样令人愉快”——此处提到的是泼辣的罗马影星吉娜·劳洛勃丽吉达(Gina Lollobrigida)。那不勒斯风格的饼成了时髦晚餐聚会的主食，佐以沙拉还可以成为一顿饱腹的家庭餐。但有一项发明将会永远改变纽约人享用披萨的方式。

布利克街上的John’s披萨店。1995年5月14日。 OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES

第六大道上的Ray’s Pizza。1984年11月30日。 LARRY C. MORRIS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Frank Mastro, an Italian immigrant and businessman, saw the potential for pizza to be as popular in America as the hot dog. He just had to figure out a way to make it quicker and cheaper for both restaurant owners and diners. So in the mid-1930s, he devised a gas pizza oven that maintained optimal temperatures even as the door was opened over and over.

意大利移民、商人弗兰克·马斯特罗(Frank Mastro)看到了披萨在美国成为热狗一样热门食物的潜力。他只要想出一种让它变快、变便宜的办法——对餐厅主和食客都是如此。于是在20世纪30年代，他设计出一种燃气披萨烤箱，能在门频频被打开的情况下仍保持最佳温度。

Although it is hard to pinpoint when pizza was first sold by the slice, the introduction of the gas oven with multiple decks gave New Yorkers the option of enjoying a crisp-bottomed slice either as a full meal or a substantial snack between meals as they moved around the city. Pizza shop owners no longer needed to learn how to operate a coal-fired oven, meaning pizza could be made quicker and with less training. By the 1960s, the slice joint boom was on. And it is the slice joint that really turned pizza from an Italian food in New York City into a New York City food — a meal shared across neighborhoods, ethnicities and age groups, equally at home in the Bay Ridge of “Saturday Night Fever” as in the Bedford-Stuyvesant of “Do the Right Thing.”

虽然很难准确地说披萨是何时开始切片售卖的，但多层燃气烤箱的引入给了纽约人一个选择：在市内四处走动时，在两餐之间享受一片酥脆的薄饼，当作正餐或比较结实的小吃均可。披萨店主不再需要学习如何操作燃煤烤箱，意味着披萨制作可以更快，需要的技能也更少。到20世纪60年代，切片披萨店风潮开始了。并且正是这种店真正让披萨完成了从纽约的意大利美食到纽约美食的转变——一种跨越各个社区、族群、年龄层的餐食，无论是在《周末夜狂热》(Saturday Night Fever)中的湾脊(Bay Ridge)，还是《做正确的事》(Do the Right Thing)中的贝德福德-斯图文森(Bedford-Stuyvesant)，它在各个人家里得到平等的享用。

位于布鲁克林第13大道区公园段的犹太洁食披萨店。1971年2月21日。 PATRICK A. BURNS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

This proliferation was also helped along by the same thing that brought pizza to this country in the first place: immigration. In the ’60s and ’70s, waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America began joining the work force and landing in food service roles, where the barrier to entry was much lower than in other fields.

这种普及也受到了最初将披萨引入这个国家的同一种因素的推动：移民。上世纪60和70年代，众多来自东欧、加勒比和拉美的移民开始加入劳动大军，干起了入职门槛比其它领域低得多的餐食服务行当。

As one of the standard-bearers of the current slice-joint renaissance, Scarr Pimentel remembers his spot on 138th Street and Broadway. “Kids like me pretty much grew up in pizza shops,” said Mr. Pimentel, whose family moved to New York from the Dominican Republic. “If you had five bucks you could have a slice, a soda and some ice cream. It was a full meal and sometimes the owner would slip us an extra slice or something.” Mr. Pimentel opened his own pizza shop in 2016, the sleek and retro Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side. His slices and pies are made with organic flour, high-quality tomatoes and cheese and carefully sourced (often organic) toppings, but the slice-joint spirit holds true. “Who would’ve thought a kid like me from the Dominican Republic would own a pizza shop in New York City one day?” he added.

斯卡尔·皮门特尔(Scarr Pimentel)是当前切片披萨店复兴的旗手之一，他还记得自己在138街和百老汇吃披萨的地方。“像我这样的孩子几乎都是在比披萨店长大的，”皮门特尔说，他全家是从多米尼加共和国搬来纽约的。“如果有五美元，就可以吃一片披萨、一杯汽水和一些冰淇淋。那是很丰盛的一餐，有时店主会多给我们一片披萨或者其他什么东西。”皮门特尔在2016年在下东区开了自己的披萨店Scarr’s Pizza，时尚而又复古。他的切片披萨和整片披萨用了有机面粉、高质量西红柿和奶酪，以及精选产地的铺料（大都是有机的）制成，但它依然保有那种切片披萨店的精神。“谁能想到像我这样从多米尼加共和国来的孩子，有一天会在纽约开一家披萨店呢?””他说。

John's披萨店老板彼得·卡斯泰罗蒂展示他定制设计的披萨项链。1993年6月18日。 ED QUINN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

John Kambouris immigrated to Washington Heights in 1965 from a small Greek island about 200 miles east of Athens. “I had $10 in my pocket,” he said from behind the counter of Pizza Palace on Dyckman Street, which he has owned since 1979, when he bought the business from an Italian couple he knew from the neighborhood. “They say the Italians bring the pizza here, but we put our culture on it.” In the 1960s this area was Irish and Jewish, he explained. Today, the neighborhood is home to a large Caribbean population, including a large concentration of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. “I love what I’m doing … we’re making pizza that people want and I don’t have to be Italian to make good pizza,” Mr. Kambouris said, before noting, “I’ve put three kids through college off of this shop.”

约翰·坎布里斯(John Kamboris)于1965年从雅典以东约200英里的一个希腊小岛移民到纽约的华盛顿高地。“那时我口袋里只有10美元，”他站在Pizza Palace的柜台后面说。1979年，他从一对意大利街坊夫妇手里买下了这家店，从此后一直经营着它。“他们说意大利人把披萨带到这里，但我们也把自己的文化融入其中。”他解释说，在1960年代，这个地区曾是爱尔兰人和犹太人的聚居地。如今，这个社区居住着大量加勒比人，其中包括许多多米尼加共和国移民。坎布里斯说，“我喜欢自己的工作……我们做的披萨是人们想要的，不是只有意大利人才能做出好披萨，”他还说，“靠着这家店，我已经供三个孩子读完了大学。”

It’s in hundreds of shops like his around the city, many no bigger than subway cars, where you’ll find New Yorkers shoulder to shoulder, eating slices in near silence. “Teens, Wall Street guys, guys camped out with a shopping cart, a pizza place is the most diverse space in the city,” said Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, author of “Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza” and host of the Radio Harvester podcast. “Inside a pizzeria that dream of diverse New York City is a reality. I think that’s such a beautiful thing.”

在纽约，像他这样的店有几百家，很多还没有地铁车厢大，你会在那些店里看到纽约人肩并肩，默默吃着切片披萨。“十几岁的孩子，华尔街的，推着超市购物车在外面露宿的，披萨店是这个城市里最多元的地方，”《收割饼片：一部披萨回忆录》(Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza)一书作者科林·阿特罗菲·哈根多夫(Colin Atrophy Hagendorf)说。“在一家披萨店里，纽约多元梦想成了现实。我认为这是一件非常美好的事情。”

作者：Korsha Wilson

翻译：李建芳、晋其角

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