On a rainy Saturday morning, we headed down to the Financial District.  One of my co-workers had sent me a link to a pizza place that a friend of his said was the best in the city.  We didn’t really have any plans for the morning, so I googled them, found they didn’t have a website, and saw that they opened at 11:00.  We arrived on this little cobble stone street

about 10:50, with a fairly consistent drizzle falling.  We managed to kill ten minutes and walked up, pulled on the door and it didn’t budge.  Then I saw the sign that said that they didn’t open until 11:30.  How could the internet have been wrong?  The foundation of my world was crumbling, but that was another story…..

Now we had thirty minutes to kill, in the rain, with very few places open.  Jo, exhibiting the patience of Job, put up with my wandering around a four block radius for another thirty minutes (which included an extended visit inside a Duane Reade, where we went just to get out of the rain. In fact, it was such a good idea that an extremely wet terrier of some breed went through the automatic door ahead of us, which no one seemed to notice) until they opened.  When we arrived, we were (shockingly) the first customers. 

Adrienne’s is famous for their thin, rectangular “grandma-style” pizza, served primarily at lunch.  At dinner, round pizzas come into play from the ovens, but we went specifically for the rectangle.  Doing a bit of on-line research, it appears that grandma-stye pizza hit the New York restaurant scene in 2003.  There is an Italian term “pizza alla casalinga” (housewife-style pizza) which is also used to describe the grandma-style – it is the type of pizza that someone would make for you in their home if you came to visit.

Being at odds as to what to order (I’m a meat-o-mania, Jo is a veggie supreme), we compromised and ordered pepperoni, with mushrooms on (her) half.

Looks like a lot of pizza for two people, doesn’t it (this pan is actually covering the entire two-top at which we’re sitting)?

The pizza was thin and crispy, the cheese was gooey, the pepperoni and mushrooms were cooked to absolute perfection.  It was an excellent pizza.  We left one slice…