I love pizza. I also live in Los Angeles. Pizza and Los Angeles aren’t friends.

When I’m in LA I almost never eat pizza for two reasons.

1) You need to plan your pizza eating

Let me explain. In a city like New York, pizza is often a spontaneous meal. You’re walking around, boom, there’s a pizza place. Walk a little more, bam, another pizza place. So you think to yourself, “I’m kinda hungry,” or if it’s one of those nights, “I’m kinda drunk,” and you go in and grab a slice. Pizza heaven.

Not so in Los Angeles. Mainly because we Angelinos are usually not out walking around the city, we’re sitting in our cars. This significantly reduces the opportunity for spontaneous pizza consumption. If we want pizza, we probably need to get in our cars and drive to it or have the delivery guy bring it to us. You see, we need to plan our pizza.

2) Pizza just isn’t an LA thing

There just aren’t that many pizza places. Certain places are known for certain foods and pizza just isn’t LA’s thing.

You can’t blame the city. In fact, it’s something to embrace. If I was eating incredible pizza in Los Angeles, chowing down on pizza when I’m in New York would lose its cool. It wouldn’t be special. It would just be…another pizza.

All of this pizza talk brings me to the point of this pizza post, to tell you about John’s of Bleeker Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village.

I started eating at John’s with my dad about 10 years ago, and now a trip to New York doesn’t feel complete without one of their large pepperoni and sausage pies My most recent trip to New York was no exception, and I even went with my dad.

As always, the pizzas are cooked in an 83-year-old coal-fired oven at 850 degrees. In just a few minutes they emerge thin, crispy, perfectly charred, and topped with tangy tomato sauce and a generous amount of gooey cheese. Enough said.

Granted, you can’t keep a pizza that good secret for long. And since John’s has been dishing them out since 1929, it’s safe to say that word has gotten out. Yes it’s a popular spot, and yes the tourists know about it, but that doesn’t make it any lesser in my book. What’s good is good.

What makes John’s even better is the atmosphere. I’ve heard it called one of the “New Yorkiest” places in the city. But it’s not “New Yorkie” by design, it’s “New Yorkie” because it is New York. It’s real, it’s authentic, and it’s not trying to be anything it isn’t. The ceilings are tin and the walls are lined with narrow booths with hard wooden benches. The benches and wood-paneled walls are worn and etched with the names of thousands of past visitors. The place isn’t short on character.

Couple the pizza (which you can only order by the pie - small and large - there are no individual slices here), with a pitcher of beer (preferably Yuengling), and the laid back vibe, and you’ve got a recipe for a great and relatively inexpensive New York dinner.

Sure there are comparable pizzas around town, some say even better pizzas, but I won’t be the judge of that. All I know is that I really like John’s pizza, and the next time I’m in New York, I’ll be back.

And if my opinion isn’t doing it for you, Vanilla Ice has been there and according to John’s website, Ice says, “Keep making the ‘dope’ pizza.” So it must be good.

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John’s of Bleeker Street is located at 278 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10014