pizza barbecue

July 12

Oh what fun last night. My friend Julie Besonen, who assigns stories for Paper, and her friend Tobey Grumet, who has an apartment with a backyard in Cobble Hilll, Brooklyn, joined forces to throw a grilled-pizza party.
Tobey supplied the venue, Julie supplied her husband, Jim Knapp, who made the pizza — crunchy, barely smokey, with good, simple ingredients (I don’t like to comment on the quality of the restaurant food, because that’s a slippery slope toward becoming a “critic” — imagine Alfred Hitchcock saying “actor” — but I love to comment on my friends’ cooking, as long as it’s good). Punch was made using leftover free stuff sent to Julie — coconut-infused vodka, pineapple juice and something else, so it was a sort of non-frozen Piña Colada with vodka instead of rum (later we drank pineapple-infused rum as a cordial).
Dave Wondrich, a nicer person than whom I don’t think exists, made some sort of delicious classic punch, but I spent more time with the rosé wines that
Alice Feiring brought. I sipped them as she broke down her strategies for giving away all the wine sent to her that she deems unworthy of her palate.
Dave and Steve Kelley — formerly of the Institute of Culinary Education and now a wine merchant — exchanged stories of extreme drunkenness in their youth and stories in their recent past of dealing with a particularly dishonest, unpleasant and darkhearted co-owner of a trendy pizza place on Flatbush. Andrea Strong and I exchanged opinions of the food blog world.
I kept meaning to leave but insead stayed and munched on pickled garlic and olives as the hosts opened a forgotten bottle of rosé.
I finally left later than I care to admit, it being a school night, but I had good subway mojo; the 2 train arrived just as I made it to the subway platform