Palermo’s Primo Thin Garden Pizza

Dan speaks of Batesian Mimicry

Take a glance at the photo on the back of the father and son making an “old-world” style pizza, printed in black and white no less to authenticate that papa and his offspring were cooking pizzas sometime before the mid-50s when Technicolor became all the rage.  The only thing my father and I would be making would be Easy Cheese twists on Triscuit crackers…except my dad wouldn’t be smiling.  There’d be a thick layer of sweat on his brow, running down his cheeks and onto the crackers.  His mouth would be contorted in some unflattering pose, his mind intent on getting the shapes just quite right.  By this point in the photo, I’d be reduced to an out-of-focus head in the background, snacking on some of my mom’s gingersnap cookies.

Half the credit goes to Josh on this one.  I had low expectations when he brought this one to our pizza lovin’ world, but he had the Palermo faith.  I might have been skeptical because the orange box reminded me of Tony’s pizza.  In nature, this is called Batesian mimicry (look it up, kids!), but in this case, it’s reversed.  The other 80% of the credit goes to Papa Palermo.  Let’s drop the smoke and mirrors: this was tasty.  Good toppings with olives, no less.  The crust was really good and measured 1/16 of an inch thick.  (Yes, we got out the tape measure).  And really, hats off for a minimum of ingredients.  There was no xanthan gum, for instance.  And hats off again for a whopping 9 grams of fiber. 

(8.9 pizzas out of 10)

Joshua thinks of Jason Bateman and wonders when the hell that Arrested Development Movie is coming out

So how thin is their thin crust?  It’s so thin that I feel it’s started a whole new genre of comedy, known as “yo crust” jokes.

Yo Crust so thin, Kate Moss is Jealous!

Yo Crust SO thin Karen Carpenter is Jealous! (to soon?)

Yo Crust so thin our education system in the US is a joke!

Yo Crust So thin Wes Anderson wants to cast it instead of Bill Murray in his next movie

Yo Crust so thin it wrote a few new songs for the Britney Spears record!

Yo Crust so thin I could karate chop a dozen of them while still frozen in one swing

Yo Crust so thin that I swear to god if they cancel “sports show” with Norm Macdonald I’m going to drive out to the Comedy Central offices and demand to punch the president in the face

Yo Crust so thin a ghost could eat it.

You see where this is going.  Nowhere.

Not a bad pie, but you know how it goes, and it goes and it goes.  I’m looking for the spectacular, the epic.  They were honest, and the toppings were nicely placed, the crust description was accurate, and the family story on the back of the box was so engrossing I’ve forgotten in completely.  I wouldn’t not run screaming from this pizza if it were offered to me again, but I would not seek it out.  Fair enough?

7 out of 10 I swear “Yo Crust” would do better if it was developed into an MTV series.  Hit me up on my cell tv execs, I’m so generation next it hurts.

oh sure, it's a thin pizza, but is it as thin yet as vast as this black hole I stumbled upon?