Micucci’s Pizza

How can something called “The Slab” taste so sweet? Maybe it was the weather. I had never been in before and was unabashedly charmed by the India Street market. Perhaps I was hallucinating and high on premature spring temperatures, but I felt as if I had been there before, adding chick peas and Pellegrino to my basket. Up the stairs to the right, I found baker’s shelves stacked with freshly made imperfect squares, and without further ado, boxed one up, paid and hightailed it home. If you haven’t had Micucci’s pizza, we are living in parallel realities. I am different than I was before.

There is something so sublime about this pizza, unlike any I have had known. Thick as the name implies, but not at all heavy; the dough of the crust is soft and airy. Sauce that is fruitsome yet not cloying. And a cheese layer that inspires the best of us to employ a lighter hand when slinging mozarella. Each component has integrity and complements the whole. Each bite invites the one that follows, until the inevitable end. Also, in case you had not gleaned from the name, it is enormous. Our ruffian technique was to rip the giant slice in two and eat standing up in the kitchen.

My favorite pizza in the world resides, not on storied Wooster Street, but at Modern Apizza on State Street, a dirty stretch of road below I-91 in New Haven. My favorite pie in this good old town is white with spinach, garlic and lemon wedges, served on a gleaming dais above red-checked plastic cloth. It is nothing like The Slab. But now that The Slab exists my heart has been opened just a little wider. I am a better person for it: more accepting, compassionate, loving and chubbier. Thanks be to Micucci’s for making life in Portland more beautiful, but most of you already knew that. If only they had Foxon Park soda.

Tagged as: pizza

About the Author: Jillian Bedell

Jillian grew up in Connecticut, went to university in Boston, college in New Haven, did some post-grad soul searching in New York, exiled herself to Mexico, married her longtime sweetheart, and lived in a house on the ocean. She suspected Maine might be the perfect place to raise a family, so she came back home to New England two years ago. Now a mom to Violet Maeve and living in Rockland, where she hopes to settle for a good, long while, Jillian reads, writes, walks, and practices Nia, when not watching Malcolm photograph sandwiches.