Nick's Great Pizza

Fri. 2-9pm; Sat. & Sun. 11:30am-9pm There are two reasons to love Nick's Great Pizza. First, Nick's is an authentic pizza joint -- no designer pizzas are pulled out of his oven, and no frivolous decor dots the restaurant's walls. The story goes that Nick, a diminutive New York Italian who favors dark glasses with tape in the middle (seriously), built the place himself just like he personally builds every pizza he serves. Reminiscent of a boardwalk hang-out, Nick's walls are lined with yellowing beer ads, an odd assortment of female body-builder posters, and a dozen or so mosaics made by Nick on his days off.

But the most lovable thing about Nick's Great Pizza is its pizza crust. Ultra thin and as crisp as a Saltine cracker, Nick's crust is a forgotten art. Eating pizza at Nick's isn't about eating sauce-slathered dough. In the tradition of New York's Little Italy, Nick's pizzas are light, and they actually taste like the toppings that cover them -- Italian sausage, pepperoni, black olives, onions, mushrooms, etc. Nick makes the dough from scratch daily, and if you're lucky, you may even see him whirl it agilely overhead before he slides it into the oven. His straightforward menu also features hearty oversized subs, a mammoth sausage roll, and the rather curious "chunk of cheese on a stick," a bargain at only 89 cents.

-- Rebecca Chastenet de Gery