thank you jay for turning me on to aroma roasters. open til 11 on weeknights, midnight on weekends and the wireless is free. not too fast i’m discovering. but free.

i’m sipping a banana refresca which is like milkshake heaven. finally surrounded by a pleasant din that makes it so much easier for me to think. and it’s only 6 blocks away from my apartment.

my pizza making technique is unstoppable

i saw something today that turned my understanding of pizza making upside down. i’m a fan of new york style pizza—where the cheese and the sauce essentially become one, and co-worker mark, who is from manhattan, says mambo’s is like the only place he goes. so we were pretty giddy last week with the promise of a second mambo’s restaurant being opened in the fiesta plaza just down from o’reilly.

of course we made it out there the day before they were set to open. when i stopped by the next day, supposedly opening day, i found out they were running a little behind. my pizza craving would have to wait til i got back from indiana. til today.

they were open. they were cooking pizza, the slices were perhaps the largest i’ve ever seen sold by the slice. that plus a salad and drink for only $5.50? perhaps i’ll be able to afford california after all. anyway, what i saw was the girl making the pizza using a turkey baster to squirt several spirals of tomato sauce on top of the cheese, in addition to the sauce between the dough and the cheese.

apparently that’s the magic.