J&J's Sausage Pizza

My living arrangement is slightly odd. I occupy an autonomous apartment on the second floor of a house, which I share with a guy named Greg whose room is upstairs, but whose kitchen and bathroom are on the ground floor. All we share, aside from supporting the same sports teams, is a hallway. We get along just fine, but never really hung out until Greg started getting Netflix movies that appealed to us both. Thursday night, with a white blanket silently solidifying on Philly streets, we watched The Story of Anvil, a documentary about a failed metal band from the 80s and took advantage of the resilience of the delivery men at J&J's Pizza.

Pizza in South Philly can be pretty hit or miss. Sometimes a tried and true place will send you a downright hot circle of garbage. Granted, there are plenty of places with consistency (my personal favorite is Lorenzo's, not at 4th and South, but at 9th and Christian. The one not filled with a steady flow Jersey trash from Friday to Sunday). I'd never had J&J before, but I was in the mood for pizza, and I'd never had one with sausage on it. It arrived just in time for the movie.

I was inclined to associate sausage either with something from breakfast, or something dry and preserved. This was a new entity all together. The pizza was covered in little brown pellets, partially embedded in the cheese. They kind of looked like rabbit turds. I'd seen pizza with crumbled sausage on it, but I couldn't imagine what the starting point of this sausage looked like. The pizza looked ok.

Sure enough, the pellets crumbled further upon eating, but were not nearly as unpleasant as they looked. There was a saltiness to them that complemented the cheese as opposed to out-salting every other ingredient like pepperoni does. In terms of flavor, it wasn't too noticeably a departure from a plain pizza.

I considered that next time I get a slice in passing, maybe I'll get it with sausage. Again, I felt a preemptive guilt for eating pork unnecessarily, particularly when it wouldn't make that much of a difference in taste. However, having a plain slice will now always feel just slightly empty, considering that pepperoni is nearly always an option.