posted 04-13-2005 01:17 PM                       

quote:

---

North by Northeast
Bet You Can't Eat A Whole Pizza
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Darrin Kebbel

This pizza place needs a wider front door. Or maybe a 3-foot escape hatch.

"I've been thinking about making a slot in the wall for the pizza," says Nick Gabra, co-owner of New York Style Pizza on Cleveland's West Side and the creator of what may be Ohio's only 36-inch round, hand-tossed pizza. That's right. Hand-tossed.

"There's no secret," says Gabra, 48, whose arms seemingly disappear as he wrestles with the ever-expanding disc of dough. "It's experience."

That, he says, and a mother who can make dough "thin like newspaper."

It all started with a challenge to make a pizza as big as his oven. If Gabra succeeded, he would receive a $95 bottle of Johnny Walker Gold Label scotch whiskey from Jim Palazzo, president of R.D.P. Foodservice, which supplies the shop with mozzarella cheese, pizza boxes, buffalo wings and salad dressings.

"He tried to tease me," says Gabra, who took on the challenge on a weekday about two hours before closing time. The critical moment came when it was time, as Gabra says, to "make [the pizza] free," or "drop" the dough off the "peel" (wooden spatula) into the oven. Gabra made his own 36-inch peel just to hold the planetary pie.

"He did it," Palazzo recalls in amazement. "[I remember thinking] 'That pizza cost me $95 dollars. I'm gonna eat as much as I can.' "

That was two years ago. Now Gabra bills his shop as the "Home of the Largest Pizza in Ohio." He sells up to 10 of the big pies a week. Cost starts at $30 for a cheese-only. Just one slice, however, seems the equivalent of a regular small pizza.

"It's New York style pizza," explains Gabra, who once lived in Queens. "You have to fold it."

Trust him. Your mouth isn't wide enough.

New York Style Pizza, 15233 Triskett Road, Cleveland; 216- 941-2500. The shop will deliver within a 5-mile radius.

© 2005 The Plain Dealer.

---

posted 04-13-2005 04:49 PM                    

quote: Jeffry L. Johnson

---

Never tried this, but must admit a 3-foot pizza sounds tempting

---