The area around MSG and Penn Station is pretty miserable, with a few exceptions. The most obvious one is the James A. Farley Post Office Building, the Beaux-Arts behemoth on Eighth Ave. between 31st & 33rd streets.
If you’re a New Yorker who’s become jaded to the amazing architecture that surrounds us, go have a walk around this building, which spans TWO CITY BLOCKS north-south and AN ENTIRE AVENUE BLOCK east-west. Buy some stamps inside and take in the colossal unbroken space between the colonnade and the service windows. (If you follow me from outside NYC, put the Farley Building on your itinerary if you ever visit.)
Need more of an excuse to check it out? I humbly submit the other redeeming quality in the vicinity: NY Pizza Suprema.
The plain slices are fantastic, as are its heralded “upside-down” square slices. But what’s drawn me down there on lunch break lately has been the “Hot Honey” slice.
It’s deceptively simple stuff: a white slice topped with mozzarella, ricotta, and mushrooms, finished with a post-reheat squirt of Mike’s Hot Honey. On this slice, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and it seems much richer than it is on the face of it. I’m so used to MHH being used as a foil for salty spicy pepperoni that it’s refreshing and unexpected in this combo.
So next time you want to remind yourself how great New York can be, open your eyes and your stomach to this little one-two trip. Until next post, hasta la pizza ??✌️
NY Pizza Suprema: 413 Eighth Avenue, New York NY 10001; 212-594-8939
(Bonus: A third bright spot — Salumeria Biellese at 29th & Eighth. Excellent salumi. The sandwiches are ? And if you can convince them to slice and sell you some of their pepperoni, it will amp up your home pizza game considerably.)