I can’t say that I have ever been as excited to eat at a restaurant as I was the night I stepped into the Original Pizza Palace for the first time in nine years. From the moment my feet walked up the cement steps, complete with metal handrails, and over the threshhold onto ancient, weathered hardwood floors, I knew that I had struck gold.
The place had but little changed. The spot lighting highlighted the same eclectic mix of local art hung tastefully yet unfussily on the newly painted yellow and green walls. The mood seemed the same, from the hustle and bustle of waiters and waitresses scurrying to and fro, from kitchen to table to kitchen, to the antique coke machines that still sat in the corners. And then there was the smell.
Dear god, that smell. I walked in through the doorway and it hit me like a well-aimed brick: I smelled my childhood of eating out, at least once a week, at this place. It was as if nothing had changed. Garlic, light albeit present, wafted through the dining room, accompanied by the smell of tomatoes and baking dough…. I was in heaven.
This was before the food reached the table. Because the ovens were packed that night, I myself didn’t order anything that needed to be baked. I was lucky, however, as in addition to my white clam sauce with spinach fettucini (!) and copius garlic bread, a friend a few tables over let me have a slice of her pizza as an appatizer.
I held the piece up to take a bite, but before I could, I got a smell. In that smell, ten years or so of memories came running back to me. I litterally sat there with this piece of pizza hangning from my mouth for a good ten seconds, looking like a total idiot, before I realized that I was getting stares. I finally let myself take a bite.
It was incredible. The exact same taste as I remembered it. The clam sauce was amazing. Everything that I had there was amazing. There was nothing wrong, nothing out of place, nothing unpleasant. It was pure epicurian, cuillinary bliss.
I have, in the last week, made another two visits just to make sure that I wasn’t fooling myself with the quality of the food by the placebo affect. I was not.
Pizza Palace is back, fired up, crankin’, and ready to roll back into Gainesville’s food scene as an incredible Italian joint à la bohème, full of spunk, local history, and above all, great food.
I can’t wait to go back!