Matchbox $20

Matchbox is a pleasant restaurant in Chinatown that serves anything but Chinese food -- burgers and pizza are the main to-dos of the menu, which I think is a sort of slap in the face to the strict reverence to Eastern design, cuisine, and language that all of ChinaBlock (... er, Chinatown) adheres to.

Nevertheless, Matchbox churns out decent fare for a decent fare. Twenty greenbacks will get you 2 mini-hamburgers (dolled up wittingly as appetizers so the price raises 50%), paper-thin french-fries (or were they onions? ... I really don't know, but they were greasier than a sweaty construction worker so I dont mind ... the worker, that is), and a thin-crust Italian-style 9-inch delightful pizza.

Now, I like a good pizza better than my own mother (can I get a whoop whoop? ... guys ... guys ... where'd everyone go?). So, I've been around the block a couple of times whoring myself out to various Italian pizzerias and allowing them to be the Sirens to my Odysseus (and yes, I did have to check the spelling of Odysseus).

It's been almost one year since I got back from Italy, and Matchbox was the first place to challenge my thinking that America couldn't pull off a proper Roman-style pizza unless it ordered it FedEx (those interested in attending their own pizza-making course should check out: http://www.il-pizzaiolo.it/school.html).

And there I was, wine-less but content, folding my pizza instinctively and ramming it down my face to the sounds of laughter, the chatter of good company, and a temperate calm in the middle of a bustling non-stop city. For a moment, I wondered if I had ever left.

Has it only been a year?