Basil Pizza

OK, I'm back. Lowering my expectations once again so I can get back in the habit of writing every day. Today I'm writing about Basil Pizza, a new-ish (in the past 3 months) kosher pizza joint at the corner of Kingston and Albany in Crown Heights. It's one block off of Eastern Parkway, the Olmsted-designed main drag that cut through the neighborhood when it was called Crow Hill and inhabited mostly by free blacks, cutting the heart out of that community (an all-too-common story, as the residents of so many big cities will tell you). Around the same time the neighborhood's name was changed to Crown Heights and buildings like the one I live in now started cropping up to house affluent Anglo-Saxons - buildings with names like the Excelsior and Concord Hall, their rooflines adorned with fake castle turrets and their lobbies filled with strange details intended to give an old-world feel - a plaster lion and unicorn carved over a massive fireplace, a rotunda with carved flowers running up and down the walls.

But I'm not writing about all of that though. Not now. I am keeping it short, I am writing a snapshot. I am writing about Basil Pizza, the kosher pizza joint that also sells espresso and pastry and unbelievable-sounding $24.00 Italian entrees and is owned by a couple of old Hasidic guys and is just on Kingston Ave off Eastern Parkway, which is now the central boulevard not only of the neighborhood but of Hasidic Jewish community. I'd heard of the restaurant but never been, and this morning a woman had one of their coffee cups with "basil" in pale grey lowercase letters printed on it, and I knew I had to take a walk there on this mercifully cool summer night. What a place. Open windows, high ceilings, glass globe lights, bright music. I sat on an outdoor stool with my dog, ordered pizza, and felt like I was in Paris. Talked to a black guy from NC about his big mama pit bull while the 2 Hasidic owners looked on and hipsters in yarmulkes kept drifting up. Mushroom and goat cheese pizza with truffle oil. They also have espresso. They are in walking distance of my apt. Be still my heart!


Just another one of the thousands of reasons I just can't help loving my 'hood. Good night.