A Quick Drop By Tony's Pizza.....by Jamil Shawwa

The buzz at work is Tony’s Pizza; everyone eats it, talks about it, makes love to it and just short from creating a pizza statue in the halls of the company to immortalize it. I never tried Tony's until couple of days ago when I decided to break my routine and sway from going to my usual restaurants and usual menu to try this so called Pizza Heaven. I'm by the way is a pizza enthusiast, I love it, but I love it plain, original, cheese and tomatoes, thin crust. Well, my favorite is called- as you can imagine- the Margarita Pizza. Through the years, I came across few good ones such as the following places: in Jerusalem- I mentioned it in my Jerusalem piece here- at Richie, in Cairo at few places if I remember well, La Mamma , I think this is how it is called and spelled, it used to be, maybe until now, at the Cairo Sheraton in Giza, adjacent to Cairo. The third one was at the Nile Hilton, Cairo as well, at the Pizzeria. There was also one in Alexandria- Egypt, but forgot the name. Another one was- unbelievably- at the Pizza Hut in London, one of the best pizza and salad bar that I had in my life. In the US there are few, nothing so far tops our New York City Pizzerias and I have couple of places here in Virginia. I drifted as usual, but back on track, I finally went to this Tony's Pizza, and as soon as I entered the place, I was confronted with four persons at the cashier standing in line side by side and amazingly by the order of their height, maybe originally Italians or some Spanish, whom my first impression of them was, what a group of mentally retarded people. I feel terrible to say that, but this was my first impression. They looked at me, from the first second, all of them, with a crooked smile and start whispering and looking at each other. I think the way I felt about them was mutual, because I also interpreted their look at me as look at this jackass, not sure, maybe because I'm expressive, and probably people can read the way I feel from my looks, I make lots of facial expressions. The bottom line is that I truly believe that our first impressions were mutual. Finally, I bought couple of slices, no drinks, I had some in the car and went outside and ate the pizza. It was great, actually, but I am not going back to Tony’s.