Ah people visiting NYC. The tough thing about writing a food blog is that people tend to turn to you for good places to eat or must try places. I’m not very good at this. I actually don’t go out THAT much and when I do I tend to go to my regular spots instead of trying new ones. SO of course you know how difficult it was to think of places to take my friend, Virginia, when she visited NYC. She was in town for a whole week and I haven’t seen her for a few years. Yeah even missed her wedding. I suck. I know.

How do you show your friend all the good things to eat in NYC in just few hours? Food crawl! Here’s where we went.

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As the New York Times pointed out yesterday, “New York’s pizza moment is stretching into a pizza era.” Case in point: Olio, a new Neapolitan-style pizzeria in the West Village, which barely got any press when it opened. What press there has been has been mixed — my friend Jess (of We Heart New York) said there major flaws with the pizza, and yet she couldn’t wait to go back. We met for lunch there last week, and they must have been having a good day because my margherita was excellent.

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Way back when I did my tasting of pizza along the L train, I had a really good Neapolitan-style pizza at Fornino in Williamsburg. I was excited to hear that there was a Fornino opening near me, in Park Slope, a few months ago, and on a recent Friday night I met up with my friends Jeff & Eva to check it out.

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My sister came into town a few weeks ago, and before she arrived the one thing she told me she wanted to do while visiting Brooklyn was to eat at Paulie Gee’s. I was happy to oblige. Paulie Gee’s is quickly becoming my favorite special occasion destination, due in equal parts to the excellent pizza and the graciousness of Paulie Gee himself. On this most recent visit, I realized that I had already made my way through most of the vegetarian options on the regular menu and so I went for one of the specials, the Honey Jones (Fior di Latte, Gorgonzola Cheese, and Megan the Bee Keeper’s Local Honey — usually served with Prosciutto di Parma but I asked for the meatless version). It was a great mix of salty, tangy, and sweet, all atop Paulie Gee’s chewy, crispy crust. Paulie is a bit persnickety when it comes to his crust — he sent us over a Bacon Marmalade pizza that he thought was too charred to send to the people who had actually ordered it, on the condition that we not photograph it — but when the result is as good as it is, who can complain?

The other day I came across a post on We Heart New York about Totale Pizza, and I was floored. Totale is on St. Mark’s Place, just a few doors down from 2 Bros. Pizza, home of the $1 slice, but it has a wood burning oven. It was apparently opened by the owner of 2 Bros. and someone who worked at Una Pizza Napoletana, which you may remember as my favorite pizza place in NYC, sadly now closed. I decided that I needed to grab lunch at Totale, and then I remembered that the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck is often at Union Square, just a short walk away from St. Mark’s.

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When it comes to Brooklyn pizzerias, two names leap immediately to mind. L&B Spumoni Gardens and Totonno’s of Coney Island have over 100 years of pizza-making history, collectively — but are they any good? On a recent spring day, Donny and I went and tried both of them.

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