American Style Pizza in Berlin

Gentrification got you down?

Greedy, weasely landlords throwing you out in favor of the uberhip?

Grab a fat slice of American style pizza!

 

We need the comfort food.  The taste of home that you can't quite get anywhere else:  pizza be thy name.  Everyone in Europe seems to hold the thin, bland, soulless Italian pizza in the highest regard and use it as the litmus test.  Then they go and fuck it up even further by putting corn, ruccola, potatoes and all manner of godawful shit on it.

Sure, thin, crispy pizza with a flavorless tomato stain and 10 strands of cheese might appeal to those with peasant taste and the appetite of a little girl, but when we Yankee Doodles haul out the pizza, we try to kill ourselves by exploding our guts.  We order XL pizzas and a 12 pack of beer, pass out on the couch and wake up and eat the cold remainders for breakfast.  And drink the remaining beer as well.

American pizza is not just thick crust; it's like a fluffy pastry which is crisp on the bottom and chewy in the middle.  It has so much cheese and toppings on it that you can't see the sauce or crust under it.  The sauce is rich, thick and flavorful.  And we make the pizzas in at least 4 sizes.  Boo-yow.

I FOUND THE PLACE:  Manhattan Pizza on Monumentenstr. 26 (xberg near Viktoriapark).  The Chicago Pizza is The One.  It is so good I think about it all the time.  It is perfection served out of a tiny hole in the wall on a back street.  And it comes in 5 sizes.  The small pizza is thick enough to choke a donkey.

Don't be fooled by the names:  it won't be like a New York style pizza or a Chicago pie.  But it's about everything else they throw on that makes it right:  the aforementioned perfect crust, the rich, zesty sauce and the piles of cheese and toppings that will make your Yankee flagpole rise.  I'm drooling as I write this.  I won't mention my flagpole.

The one called Chicago has salami, onions, ham, bacon and extra cheese.  Go there in the middle of the day and you will have the whole place to yourself.  They are mainly a delivery business, but damn is it a good pizza.  I didn't believe it, so I went back 4 times.  Then I ordered the second largest one they had (45cm), ate half of it there, then took the rest all the way home on the bus, pissing off everyone with the smell.

Then, gentle reader, I ate it cold that night for a late night snack.  Then I reheated the last piece for breakfast.  Yes, I am a fat bastard.  But a happy one.

Manhattan Pizza:  Monumentenstr. 26, Berlin-Kreuzberg. Closed Mondays.