A Cook's Notebook: Lunch in the City

The pizzeria was crazy-busy on that steamy-hot summer day in the city ? it?d flung its doors and windows wide open to sidewalk seating and the chaotic streets beyond. Where time is money ? manners be damned ? the frenzied lunch crowd dressed in their business suits and real working clothes shoveled slices of sausage and mushroom, ricotta and mozzarella into their blabbering mouths. They simultaneously ate, talked on their cell phones, careened dialogue at one another and barked orders at the seemingly mute and prescient waiters who scurried like mice through the maze of tiny tables carrying trays heavy with drippy glasses of iced drinks, cold beers and carafes of chianti for the tourists wearing ?I ?heart? New York? t-shirts. Ignored children sitting in the corner booth blew the white paper off of straws and shot spitballs at one another as the mother and father placed their order for th...
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