New York New York Pizza (Hyde Park)
533 S. Howard AvenueI haven’t traveled in over a year. I haven’t left the state of Michigan in over a year. Even meeting my family, the furthest we’ve gone is New Buffalo. We spent a lot of times at parks this year in Berrien County hanging out with my parents. Christmas took place in early December at the New Buffalo Township Park pavilion.
Back in November, I got a call from work asking me if I was available for a big corporate trip at the end of January. I was hesitant at first but it was a good professional opportunity. J and I talked about it and decided I should go. We both secretly hoped that vaccine rollout would go better than it has and I would at least have the first shot by now (I don’t).
The plan was for a co-worker and I to be in Tampa, Florida eight days. We flew in on a Sunday night and left the following Monday. He and I did the same thing last year but in Miami (bonus points if you can figure out why we were in Florida during those times).
We got in to the Tampa International Airport a little before 5:00 on Sunday night. We were really rushed and had to hit the ground running. We had something we were really try to do before 6:00 in downtown Tampa so we grabbed our bags, our rental car, and headed for the Convention Center.
We didn’t make it by 6:00 so that task had to wait until Monday morning. We weren’t done for the night though. We still had to meet up with some co-workers from around the country at our Tampa office to get computers set up and settled in to our workspace for the week.
Our long travel day finally wrapped up around 9:30. I asked my co-worker if grabbing pizzas was OK as we headed to our hotel in Wesley Chapel. He said that was fine so I found something that was still open and not too far out of our way.
I picked New York New York Pizza on recommendations from some of the guys in our Tampa office. The local chain of pizzerias has 8 locations around Tampa. They also have online ordering so I put in an order for two pizzas and we headed out the door hoping to get to bed before long.
So…..I just mentioned they have eight locations…and I didn’t really pay attention to which one I ordered from. That wouldn’t have been a problem except I didn’t put the same one I ordered from in to my GPS first. We drove to the Ybor City location and after circling the block a few times, co-worker jumped out to go get them. When he got to the window, they said they didn’t have anything in either of our names. Crap…..I took us to the wrong one.
I circled back around the block to pick him up then figured out which one I actually ordered from.
I pointed the car towards the Hyde Park part of Tampa south of downtown. The correct New York New York pizza is on South Howard Avenue and West DeLeon Street in the Shops on South Howard plaza. Parking was much easier here as there is a lot for the businesses so I pulled in then jumped out of the car to go pick up our two pizzas.
The restaurant is pretty small and mostly a carry-out business. There is a table or two inside and a table or two outside of the restaurant. They do slices as well whole pizzas for carry-out. Just as I was walking in, there was a large group of teenagers who got in before me. They were all doing individual orders of slices so it took a few minutes for the cashier to get through them to get to me.
I ordered and paid online so once I finally got to the counter, it was a matter of giving them my name then grabbing the boxes. From there, we headed out to our hotel to get settled in for the night and dig in to this delicious smelling pizza.
I was having a hard time deciding between the Meat Eater and the Buffalo Chicken. I picked the Meat Eater but to my surprise, during checkout it showed me that I could do a half of each pizza so I ended up getting both on one 16″ pizza.
New York Pizza seems to be really big in Tampa. There were several pizzerias that advertised this kind of pizza..might have something to do with the Yankees having their Training Camp in town.
I started with the Meat Eater side of my pizza. I’m not an expert in New York style pizza but I do really enjoy it when I get it. The pizza is thin crust that is somehow crispy enough to “snap” but soft enough to bite through. The Meat Eater comes with pepperoni, sausages, meatball, and bacon. You can really taste of of the meats. They’re pretty evenly spread over the marinara so you don’t get a big overlap in flavors. Had I ordered this pizza as a whole, I would have been totally content with my choice.
The second half of the pizza was the Buffalo Chicken. This side was topped with chicken, Buffalo sauce, and Mozzarella. The sauce had a little bit of a Buffalo kick to it but nothing overpoweringly hot. It was actually a pretty solid Buffalo chicken pizza. It didn’t burn your mouth but still is full of flavor and chicken.
I got us each large pizzas (co-worker has a pepperoni and sausage) because we had separate rooms at the hotel and I wanted leftovers for breakfast or dinner the next day. I ate about half the pizza Sunday night then had half leftover when we got back to the rooms about 1 AM Tuesday morning after our Monday shift.
New York New York Pizza was one of the first places recommended to us when we got to town and I think I can see why. My co-worker is kind of picky when it comes to pizza and even he was happy with this choice. We kind of live in a void here in Michigan were good New York Style pizza doesn’t exist so I was happy to find something on our trip that we can’t really get here in Southwest Michigan.
SW Michigan Dining 