Love Me Two Times?

There's nothing better in this world than a good slice of pizza. Don't get me wrong. I love a good prime rib with horseradish. Or sarsoon ka saag at the best new joint in town. But my ever going quest for a consistently satisfying slice of pizza got a wrinkle on Wednesday. For the past year, I've depended on Momma's Pizza for my fix when I couldn't get down to the Big Slice on Yonge and Gerrard. And when in the East Side, I'll be buying my pie the Danforth Pizza House until the Italian gentlemen who appears to singlehandedly run the place moves. So I thought I had it all figured out. Until Wednesday. That's when I had Massimo's again.

You see, the best piece of pizza I ever ate was at Massimo's about 8 years ago. I went back nearly a dozen times afterwards, and they never matched the perfect balance between mozzarella, sauce, and crust. Salty, gooey cheese. Sauce tasted like the tomato base of the world's finest ragu. And a crisp dough that neither overpowered the rest nor skirted its substantive role. Yet day after day, week after week, the pizza I subsequently ate at Massimo's tasted little better than 2-for-1.

I don't know what had become of my once-beloved in the intervening years, but on Wednesday I found myself hungry and slightly intoxicated in the neighborhood of College and Spadina. On a whim, I decided to stop by, partly as a desperate ploy to avoid the ever-overrated Amato's down the street.

Is it possible to fall in love again? I don't know, but on that Wednesday night the old Massimo's was back. Could it have been the alcohol? Was I merely desperate? I don't know if we can make it work this time when our relationship failed in the past, but I've grown up a lot since last time and I know one thing: Even if we never again rekindled the magic and can't make it last, I know that on Wednesday I had the second best piece of pizza in my life. And nothing can take that away from me.