When you are in Battery Park City, you live in Manhattan but you are also somewhat removed from reality. That is, you are West of the West Side Highway (which doesn’t seem possible) and depending on which side of the World Financial Center you are on, your choices for all things, dry cleaning, groceries, and dining out, are limited. Now, of course you can cross the West Side Highway and be right back in the thick of things. You can also cook in your, probably, amazing, gourmet kitchen, and of course, if you’ll pay someone enough, you can always have the best food from anywhere in the world delivered.
But often people will maintain some kind of loyalty to their neighborhood locations; they will feel a certain affinity for one place or another and that is understandable. So if you want pizza and you’re living, working, or visiting South End Avenue in Battery Park City, you have essentially one option; Picasso Pizza. A quick gander at the meager surroundings of Picasso Pizza in no way reflects the level of quality afforded this place; quite the contrary! Remember what your mother told you about judging on looks alone? This should be taken into account when you’re considering Picasso Pizza. I would probably call the setting at Picasso Pizza plain. Nothing special despite this pizzerias glamorous neighbors.
That’s fine for your needs because all you should really care about is the pizza. Picasso Pizza offers a wide selection and, by their own accounts, uses only “the highest quality ingredients.” This attention to quality and detail is due in large part to the fact that the “pizza staff have been trained & supervised by the new owner, Michael Magliulo, Master Pizza Chef, who learned his profession from his grandfather while working in his pizzeria in Naples, Italy where pizza originated.” You can’t get much better attention to detail than at the source!
But again, these are all ancillary matters, ceding to what we like to remember as the “quality factor.” Truth be told, I was in here for lunch the other day, and, as is customary when I first visit an anonymous, new pizzeria, I dined on a slice of plain cheese. The cheese was good but to be honest I was in even more appealing company. There were people to the left and right of me dining on plain pizza with eggplant, peppers, olives, chicken, sausage, and other styles of pizza like Sicilian and Chicago Deep Dish which made me question my selection process implicitly.
And that was just the pizza! Picasso Pizza also serves calzones, heroes, pasta, and larger dishes as well. Living in Battery Park City is something which seems like it could be a wonderful experience, having spent just a small amount of time here. Picasso Pizza also has delivery available for orders of $7.00 or more; “merging Old World Pizza with 21st Century technology.” While being limited by the obstacle of the West Side Highway would make me feel anxious, the fact that I have excellent pizza available in my neighborhood makes the thoughts of living there a little bit more tolerable.
