Walking into the storefront from the crisp mountain air we get an odd feeling as we transition from the blinding white reflections of the sun off the dirty salt and pepper snowbanks into the cluttered space that is this pizza joint, but we aren’t here for pizza.
Our eyes take a few moments to readjust to normal levels of light, bringing into focus a space that is packed with lifties, locals, and those who know, with two things in common, a hunger for life changing food and incredible goggle tans, an oddly satisfying night and day of pale to nearly burnt tan, a weird obsession, a badge of honor of great days in knee deep powder, out of bounds skiing your mom wishes you never told her about, the identifier of adventure, challenge and hunger.
The walls are covered with art that vaguely represents the food they sell and murals of New York City seem out of place with the only skyscrapers being the natural forming mountains we skied today. The ceiling is painted with the same red pizza sauce color that adorns their mouthwatering pies. This seems to be a motif for this spot, with the red sauce color appearing in the faux leather restaurant chairs that remind me of the local buffet style pizza hangout from my childhood. It makes me think about the tubs of chocolate pudding and breadsticks garnished with old kale and wonder if it still exists or has become a coffee shop I might write about here.
The pleather of the chairs are cracking at the seams, the introverts don’t help the situation as they nervously peel the cracking bits from the upholstery with the feeling of being stuck in a canyon between two conversations. The only reason for enduring this discomfort is why we are all here.
The floor reminds me of a giant chess board and I can’t help but think in my head, Knight to square C3, as we move up the line to the counter. Skip the pizza, skip the pasta, the sub is why I am here, there is nothing better than thin slices of boars head meats, cheeses and crunchy raw vegetables to make a sandwich memorable. I plan to talk a lot about italian subs here but this one, the differentiator for them all is the sauce. Some are a secret, others are store bought, but this one is simple.. just oil and vinegar. I get the feeling that there is no real science to how they drizzle this oily goodness onto the 'wich but I know there is something magical at play, helping tie these ingredients together… it could be the boars head cutlets… it’s probably the boars head cutlets.
We leave the pizza sauce walls and pleather chairs full of salami, mortadella and that other Italian meat that I can never seem to remember, piling back into our makeshift mountain mini van on our trek back home, a claustrophobic journey with thousands of other adventurers back to where we all came from. What makes our spaceship different than the others? We are filled with the complete satisfaction of a day worth reliving and a sandwich so good we aren’t ready to tell the world where we ate it.
It was all cool beans and some other things from here on out.
