New York-Style Pizza

"There's nothing like New York pizza," said the cab driver. "You should do that while you're here."

"'Do that?'" I replied. "You mean eat a slice of pizza? Isn't this when you're supposed to tell me exactly where to go, the best place in New York?"

He was quiet for a few moments. I could see his eyes flick toward mine in the rearview mirror. His voice dropped. "Nah," he said. "They're all the same. A group of tech companies--Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, maybe Uber, I forget--formed a conglomerate a couple of years back, bought out every pizza joint in the five boroughs, said they could leverage efficiencies brought about by the Internet, change the game forever. They fired all the local guys, brought in pizza makers from India, built these new ovens that are more like one of those 3D printers, you know the kind I mean? Prints out the pizza right there in the box, comes out piping hot in like five seconds, you don't have to wait, and there's no more of that sad slice of pizza just sitting there under that weird red light, staying warm-ish until they throw it back into the oven. Just-in-time pizza-making, they call it."

"Wow, I've never heard a word about that," I said. "Does it work?"

"People seem to like it," he acknowledged. "But it's not for me. First of all, before they let you eat it, there's all these goddamn pop-up ads. You have to sit through some guy trying to sell you some kind of pizza-ordering subscription, I'm like, I just want a fucking slice, you know what I mean?"

"That does sound annoying," I said.

"And then there's the fact that no matter what you order, what comes out is two slices of pepperoni. You complain, all they can say is, 'It's in beta.'"