Co.

It was 5 p.m. on a Thursday and my only plan for the night was to heat up a Lean Cuisine and watch Whitney (yes, I just admitted that out loud). So when my friend Cayla suggested we grab pizza for dinner, my obvious answer was Hell no! I got plans with Whitney, bitch!

Okay, so I immediately said yes and headed downtown after work for what looked like some seriously serious pies at Co. in Chelsea. I arrived a few minutes before she did and my two options were wait 20 minutes for seats at the communal table or snag the caddy-cornered bar seats that just happened to be open (score!). It was super cute inside–very warm and energetic, yet casual. We were going to be eating pizzas, after all, but it was obvious that these weren’t your $2 slices at the place downstairs.

We planned to split a pie, but I wanted one with pork on top, which Cayla doesn’t eat. Here’s a hint to my heart: just say the word “lardon,” and I’m yours. So naturally I opted for the “Flambe” pizza, which had bechamel sauce and was topped with parmesan, mozzarella, caramelized onions, and lardons. Just typing it makes me giddy.

Photographed by Cayla Rasi

One look at the photo, and you know it’s gonna be good. And it was. It really, really was. The sweet, caramelized onions paired perfectly with the salty, crispy pork fat bits. And it was so interesting to have bechamel as the sauce, rather than tomato. What really brought the whole pie together, though, was how wonderfully well-done it was. It’s one more thing to add to the list of traits I’ve picked up from my Mom, who orders her pizza in the same breath as saying, “Extra thin and extra crispy!”

It was delicious, different, gourmet, high-end, and really expensive pizza. $17 expensive for a personal sized one. And I finished the entire thing, which just doesn’t happen often for me. Let’s call it special occasion pizza, because it’s hard to justify spending that much more for something that New York so readily offers at half the price.

It was the lardons. They kidnapped my sensibilities.

Co., www.co-pane.com, 230 Ninth Avenue (at 24th Street), New York, NY, 212-243-1105