Made in New York Pizza’s new location can be found at 271 Amsterdam Avenue, between 72nd and 73rd Streets
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Its spicy pepperoni pizza is a thing of beauty. Each pie is draped with an entire pound of the highest quality pepperoni, the kind that curls into those crispy-edged cups.
Now we have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that Made in New York Pizza has officially doubled down in the ‘hood as its second UWS location opened this week at 271 Amsterdam Ave, between 72nd and 73rd streets. The now mini-chain has a third spot in the West Village.
Now the bad news: The pizza isn’t calorie-free.
In addition to the spicy pepperoni, other specialty pizzas include sausage and jalapeño, a grandma pie, an upside down pie and a white pie that will dazzle the taste buds of vegetarians in the same way the spicy pepperoni delights carnivores. There are also gluten-free options and for the carbo-loaders, there are pretty tasty garlic knots.
Here is a look at the menu from the original UWS location at 412 Amsterdam Ave (corner of 80th Street).
The new location, while smaller than the flagship, has indoor and outdoor seating and offers pickup and delivery (reach them at 646.449.8556).
Watch your bill….the register will say one thing and then, rookie move, the restaurant adds another 4% if you use AMEX, VISA or MasterCard to pay for your meal….even though they are supposed to accept those cards without charging a premium or additional charge for doing so. NYC tax is already at 8.875%….so, basically $ .09 on every dollar; show me .875 of a penny! Now add another 4% because they can’t accept credit cards without charging you EXTRA for using them. Nice miserly touch! Pizza prices they charge are already too high.
Pizza Peter:
The shop should make that credit card surcharge clearer. I paid cash the one time I ate there, but saw no notice of the surcharge. Worse, noted a live-in super from my street order as I left, and he asked if he could pay with a card for something like a 1 slide + Mexican Coke order, BUT the cashier made no obvious mention of the card/e-pay surcharge. That’s a failure of management, not simply a cashier error. And since the guy is a long term resident of the area, who will almost surely mention the added costs of paying by card to others, the less than forthright adding of a surcharge will get around the neighborhood to a lot of other building staff, and residents of his building, who’d gladly go there for a quick slice or 2.
I’d posit the reason they add the surcharge, which is normally 3%, not 4%, besides generally offsetting the charges cards add, is that many people insist on paying for $5 orders, even $2.50 drip coffees, with cards, or things like GoogAppPay. So if AMEX charges more that 3%, and it certainly charges at least 3%, on a $5 check/order, that’s at least 15 cents of net revenue lost out of likely not much net revenue, unless, it’s a café latte sale, and the place uses crappy milk + dubious coffee as Starbucks does.
There’s no law against the surcharge for card use that I know of, BUT it think it better to simply post a $10-20 card-epay minimum and stick by it. Even when someone starts whining about not being able to pay for a $7 Bud with a card.
(Now there is a law in NY State that places can’t just accept cards and epayment. Nothing to do with this pizza place, but unfortunately, it’s not being enforced. My objection is more to the minute data collection + tracking of individuals than having to have a bankcard of some sort, BUT I certainly know that there are people without bank accounts or the typical credit cards.)
Also, in a largely by the slice non-table service pizza place, it’s stupid to price things on the board/menu with tax not included.
It’s a basic piece of easy to learn/relearn algebra to work backward from the bottle of Mexican Coke is $3.75, tax + and 5 cent NYS deposit included, and/or the slice is $5.50 tax included, to what the gross take on each item will be after the state collects sales tax. Example, if the goal is a minimum $5 gross on the slice, the price should be simply $5.50 tax included.
(Solving for X, the simple formula 1.08875 times 5 = X confirms confirms that the price, were the tax to be added to $5, would be $5.44. So one picks $5.50 in this case. Reversing that: Starting with the tax included price of $5.50 divided by 1.08875 = a slice gross of $5.05 — meaning that the sought $5 gross per slice is achieved with a tax included price of $5.50. Using the same formula applied to after tax pricing, in 25, or 50, cent increments, allows for easily determining the gross revenue on each slide or whole pie.)
Separately, pricing things, with sales tax included, in 25 (or 50) cent increments almost assuredly means more in cash tips for the counter staff. A not insignificant example: Much better to get a 1 dollar tip on a $6 (tax included) slice, than to get a 47 cent tip on a $6 + tax slice, that totals to $6:47.
Pricing every item as tax included means there’d even be cases, assuming no big screw ups at the counter, where orders of 2 slices at $6.00 apiece (tax included) would get counter staff $2-3 dollar tips.
Yes, I realize there’s the contra example of a $5.50 + tax slice, which totals $5.99, so the cash paying customer likely gets four dollar bills in change and may put one in the tip jar, BUT that’s a more than more than 15% tip for heating up a slice. Kind of high, unless the staff know you and regularly make take special requests even for slice orders. Therefore the tip, unless the customer has quarters readily at hand, may be zero.
Other thoughts on tipping:
Conventional inexpensive (Manhattan) sit down table-service places, where orders are often near or over $20 dollars these days, means more card use — as long as there’s no surcharge, + tips on the card — or better for the staff of small places, customers who are regulars (and who wish to remain in the good graces of the servers) tip in cash even when paying by card, then also tip extra for time at the table/bar in excess of 45 minutes — especially if the place is busy.
Not traditional NY pizza: greasy Sbarro airport quality. At least the current location is not a vortex of drug addicts, homeless, the stoned, and the generally sleazy and creepy like the 24 hour pizza next to the 24 hour head shop next to the 24 hours McD’s on 71st street. That block is now a combination public toilet, prison waiting room, vomitorium, and insane asylum.
Couldn’t agree with you more especially about the de-evolution of 70st-71st Street and B’Way. All the well-heeled diners strolling over to Cafe Luxembourg have to, HAVE TO have noticed the horrific change; I’m surprised CL hasn’t yet contacted its list of City Council, Mayor’s Office, police precinct VIPs to take a serious look at what’s happened on that block since Covid. At some point, the Broadway/Lincoln Center crowd WILL avoid Cafe Luxembourg because who in their right minds wants to begin and end their meal walking through the exercise yard at Alcatraz? The wafting pot smell alone that is akin to horse manure is odious.
If I’m not mistaken you can almost tie everything including the recent McDonald’s broad-daylight gunfire (pedestrian injured by errant bullet – city & police clamped down on the news about the aftermath of that incident) when Little Italy Pizza and McDonald’s put out chairs and tables to extend their ” fine dining options” during Covid shutdowns. Even more recently, in addition to its always being used as a waiting room for high school students eventually on their way to the 72nd Street subway station for #1, #2, & #3 trains, you have the addition of not one but TWO CBD and “medicinal” cannabis distribution and head shop paraphernalia stores already the subject of late night robberies and gun-related assaults and violence. Lather, rinse and repeat….until someone finally is mortally wounded during a robbery of one or more of the stores in the area or just a run-of-the mill assault or mugging with a firearm, knife or rock. Just wonderful to call that area “home,” isn’t it? Thank you Mayor and despicable Manhattan DA for your contribution to blight, discord and criminally noxious behavior in the city.
Pete:
I don’t believe that McDonald’s has official tables outside at that location, it has a trash barrel on the corner, which it only sporadically empties. But I’m sure that some McDonald’s patrons use the pizza place’s tables.
Worse, and this goes for pretty much all McDonald’s in Manhattan, that chain’s “restaurants” tolerate behavior inside, and just outside its doors, that no other fast food place (chain or not) tolerates in Manhattan. KFC in the 30s near Penn Station or near Times Square is a safer, not that I ever go to any KFC.
Not sure the police clamped down on information about the shooting outside the West 71st and Amsterdam McDonald’s location, they just didn’t say much more after it occurred, same is true of the shooting at the 95th Street and Broadway McDonald’s. They’ve also not said much about the recentish shooting/s in the low 100s on Broadway, Amsterdam, and Columbus. My point here is not to defend the police – the disbanding of the illegal guns unit about 2 years ago likely contributed to the rise in shootings, no matter how out of control, and dangerous to officers, the unit was — but to say: “look, it’s broad based silence on gun violence, [unless a cop is killed by a guy with a gun, who is not a cop, of course].
The pizza place south of McDonald’s sure contributed to the mess, BUT about a month ago, at least put up low “barriers” to delineate the outdoor dining area, and leave a north/south path along the storefronts.
The mass of more than 40 throttle e-bikes locked to the low fences around the trees certainly contributes to the mess of that plaza. Wonder why the apartment building tolerates that? Put up “bike” stanchions/racks with say 20 slots total, and immediately cut the locks of any “bikes” locked to the low tree protecting fencing, and the plaza would be clearer. I also propose that the apartment building cut the locks of any “bikes” left at the official racks overnight. And immediately cut the locks of any “bike” locked to the low fencing around trees. It’s a bit of an expense to move the “bikes” off site, I guess. But I’d posit if the locks were cut, the “bikes” would be gone within an hour anyway. Therefore likely no need for the apartment building to arrange for a big rental truck to haul away 40 “bikes”. Bolt cutters are inexpensive now, less than $75 for ones that are quite powerful, cable cutters able to cut 3/8 cable may be about $150, and lithium-ion battery powered angle grinders made by the likes of DeWalt-Milwaukee-Makita, though not super cheap, are readily available share the same battery system used by those respective manufactures, and almost all big apartment buildings have li-ion battery powered tool systems for use by building staff. Explicitly, what a bolt cutter, or cable cutter, can’t do, one of those grinders can do in less than 5 minutes using less than 20% of a low AH (amp hour, some times “watt hour”) rated battery.
No, I don’t like skunk weed’s smell either, and certainly associate it with the arrogant stance of “I’m going to pollute this area with my choice, eff everyone else”, but this is akin to many cigarette and cigar smokers. Then of course, skunk week, and good weed, became effectively legal (for personal consumption by persons over 21 not operating heavy machinery) after De Blasio became mayor Jan. 1st 2014. Then, despite federal laws, which are mostly stupid regards mary jane, weed became legal in NY State a few years later.
I’m a bit surprised at the proliferation of “convenience” stores, really cannabis oil fronts, in the immediate neighborhood. Who knew there was that kind of market for weed (seed?) oil, 24/7/365 in the lower west 70s at Broadway and Amsterdam>
Ironic observation, the rudest group (not the most gun shooting prone) I have ever encountered on that plaza was the women standing outside of Starbucks on the day of the early Jan. 2017 women’s march. The long standing, at that point in time, plaza-wide, block long, construction shed made their arrogance worse. Further confirming their lack of basic observation powers, and/or incapacity to find a go anywhere that Google, or Apple, maps didn’t tell them. Immediately next door to Starbucks there was a Paris Baguette with a bathroom, for customers, and better coffee. But of course it was just one day 5+ years ago. However, I know a neighborhood bar tender who reported them as also arrogant/rude at the bar she was tending that afternoon – no tips for using the bathroom or water ordered, and insignificant tips for food and drink. No skunk weed though, and no gun fire.
edit, well omitted part added:
“but to say: “look, it’s broad based silence on gun violence, [unless a cop is killed by a guy with a gun, who is not a cop, of course] is a reach.”
Tried it, had never tried the place on Amsterdam in the 80s. They make the classic error of using cheap (not good) flour, then try to compensate with good (not excellent, and certainly not extraordinary) toppings. Pizza Collective down Broadway also makes the same error.
This means the spicy pepperoni (pictured above) tastes good on top, but lacks in the dough.
The tomato sauce is good.
But I likely won’t be going back, unless I have to have pepperoni with a kick.