Plus Prison Ministry Stuff

Today I went to a class for people who want to help out with my church’s prison ministry. Apart from the pastor running the show, there were five adults present. Not a big group, but enough to start.

We didn’t talk much about the ministry itself. I learned that we’ll have a wing of a local jail handed over to us, but that’s about all I know. We talked mostly about fundamentals. Christians should read the Bible. We should memorize scripture. That kind of thing. Good, solid, essential information.

I don’t know where we’ll go with this, but I’m glad I went. Maybe I can accomplish something worthwhile in my remaining time on earth.

On the way home, going against common sense, I decided to give a local pizzeria another try. My area has two pizzerias that keep going out of business: Riviera Pizza and Cozzoli’s Pizza. In the past, these places have failed over and over, and I believe fake cheese is the reason. I can’t prove it, but the cheese always tasted mealy and disintegrated as I chewed it, and it didn’t really taste like cheese.

This morning I noticed that Riviera was under a third (at least) set of owners, and it got me wondering. My policy is to try any new place in the area, or any place that changes hands, because I figure some day someone will make decent pizza in the South Miami region. Right now we have Domino’s and Papa John’s, which are really bad, and we have Miami’s Best Pizza, which is weird and frequently burned or raw or covered with the wrong stuff. To get good pizza, you have to go to Bird Road (La Dolce Vita) or Ludlam (The Big Cheese), at least.

I decided to be bold this afternoon. I went into the new Gables Pizza and Salad (formerly Riviera Pizza) and asked the owner whether they used real cheese. Why play games? I’m tired of spending good money just to find out someone is feeding me thickened vegetable oil or a quasi-dairy product known almost facetiously as “pizza cheese.” Why not just ask?

Surprisingly, the owner did not seem happy to have a stranger barge in and loudly ask if he was cheating his customers, which is sort of what I did, but he told me the cheese was real, and that it was not all mozzarella, and that it was 2% fat. I think I have that right. He said he did not use Grande cheese because he thought it did not live up to the price and hype. He’s right about that. It’s very good, but it’s not the only good brand out there.

He claimed he had never heard of fake cheese. He must not be Jewish. Jews who keep kosher eat some of the scariest fake cheese imaginable. They call it “parve cheesy.” Anyway, you can Google and read all about fake pizza cheese. They may call it “non standard” cheese, or they may use the innocuous-looking term “pizza cheese” to describe it, but it’s lame, whatever it is.

I ordered a slice of regular and a slice of Sicilian. The verdict? It’s okay! I guess that doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is. The other stuff available locally is so bad it’s only worth eating when you’re starving. Gables Pizza makes pretty good pizza, and around here, that’s a big achievement. Making pretty good pizza is very hard.

The cheese seems real. It didn’t make me want to get up and dance, but it tastes like cheese. The crust is fine, although for some reason the Sicilian was a little wet. He uses too much salt. The sauce is acceptable. Personally, I’d make it a little sweeter and tangier, and I’d use a little more than he uses. A small amount of sugar and some white vinegar would improve his sauce a great deal. But he’s as good as The Big Cheese and not much worse than La Dolce Vita. That will get the job done, as far as I’m concerned.

This guy did not want to hear my input on the local pizza market, and that was a mistake, because he is in an area that is desperate for good pizza. I know exactly why his predecessors failed, and I know how he could improve his product and be virtually assured of a steady flow of customers. If he would start using Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce as his sauce base, he’d be a millionaire in three years. But there is nothing wrong with solid B-plus pizza, which is what he’s making. I’ll return and buy more in the future. Everyone pray he makes money, so the dark days of bad pizza don’t come back to torment us.