Giovanni’s rescues students from local pizza monotony

Tucked away on the corner of 110th and Columbus Avenue, the restaurant Giovanni’s features a motley cast of neighborhood characters and an authentically greasy vibe that distinguish it from other nearby pizza vendors. Although eateries like Koronet remain firm favorites in the minds of many Columbia students, Giovanni’s deserves at least a passing glance, if not lifelong devotion.

While “restaurants” such as Koronet serve up a distinctly downscale ambiance along with monolithic slices, the entire scheme oftentimes seems wholly constructed, a mere gesture at college student predilections. At Giovanni’s, however, nothing feels fake. Gruffly warm counter service, a series of televisions playing a mixture of cartoons and sports, and a conspicuously-lighted interior set the scene for spectacular late-night feasts.

On Giovanni’s obscenely cheap menu, a rotating selection of thin-crust pizzas puts Koronet to shame. Distinctively greasy, crispy, chewy, and oozing cheese, these slices are of no Lilliputian proportion. A study in paradox, each slice simultaneously tastes overwhelmingly rich and shockingly light, leaving hungry students craving more.

Standards like cheese and pepperoni satisfy just fine, but thinking outside the pizza box delivers surprisingly delicious results. Lasagna pizza features a meaty ragú and with roughly melted mozzarella. Hunks of ricotta and well-seasoned ground beef account for this pizza’s startling resemblance to traditional lasagna dishes. Most nights, the chicken ala vodka pizza successfully layers handcrafted, rose-colored vodka sauce with relatively moist chicken. And the white pizza, like its counterpart at virtually every New York pizzeria, drops a garlic bomb in the midst of ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheeses.

Not surprisingly, Giovanni’s enjoys experimenting with garlic, most often in doughy preparations like grotesquely bloated, indigestion-inducing garlic knots. Garlic bread appears predictably pedestrian, but Giovanni’s garlicky pastas are reliable pleasures when yet another slice of pizza seems unpalatable.

Students may also want to take advantage of Giovanni’s family special: a large pie, baked ziti, and garlic knots for just $18.95. Of course, going at the family special with friends is fun. However, attacking such a monstrous quantity of food alone is pure absurdity of the best variety, reason enough to engage in outright gluttony.

Giovanni’s excels not at refined flavor, culinary creativity, or noteworthy atmosphere, but rather at the opposites. Raw, aggressive, and utterly mundane, Giovanni’s straddles irony and reality, offering students the opportunity to live life without another over-hyped piece of Koronet’s pizza.