This past Sunday, my girlfriend, best friend, and I met at this place for lunch before an afternoon on the farm. We had the full bad restaurant experience: lousy service, long wait for food, the food being lukewarm when we got it, etc., but that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about selling something that isn’t what it is.

One of the selling points of this place is that they do brick oven pizza. Who doesn’t love that shit, right? So, I ordered a Margherita pizza. I love Margherita pizza. It’s simple, uncomplicated, delicious Italian food. Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, a Margherita pizza should look like this:

Mmmm, Pizza.

We’re all on board with this concept, right? Right. So after waiting forever for it, the pizza comes out, and what do I get? A motherfucking plain cheese pizza. For half a minute, I thought about telling the waitress that I got the wrong order before it dawned on me that this most Americanized slab in front of me was their take on a Margherita. Cheap sauce, cheap cheese. No fresh mozzarella. No full basil leaves. To top it off, one side of the crust was scorched because it was either too close to the fire or in the oven too long. I’m betting both.

This is many things, but a Margherita it isn't.

I’m not even sure where I’m going with this, but I hate when restaurants misrepresent like that. This is motherfucking New Jersey. We know pizza. We can tell the difference between thin-crust and thick-crust; New York and Chicago; Neopolitan and Sicilian. Don’t try to sell me some lousy cheese pizza as some fancy shit when it clearly isn’t.

In any event, that’s the last time I eat there. They can take their cheese pizza and shove it.

Photo #1 credit xymox on Flickr. Photo #2 credit The Pizza Review on Flickr. Both photos licensed under a Creative Commons license. Also, you get a nice big cookie if you get the reference in the title of this post.

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