Ode to Wildwood junk food
Dear pizza, I forgot how delicious you are. I forgot the joy that is mozzarella cheese congealing into a slightly oily nirvana paired with sweet sauce and hearty dough. After three years in Connecticut, I barely taste you any more after sampling their inferior impostors. But Mack's Pizza, you showed me the way back.
Fries! You I have missed, but not as much. Thanks to Five Guys, I have come to know fresh-fried Idaho cuts once more. But it is always beautiful returning to the source, back to the Paul's stand and eating you by the bucket.
Ice cream, I've come back to you in recent months as the supermarkets put you on sale and summer takes its toll. Half-fat, full-fat, I don't care. But to experience hand-dipped and soft-serve again, or to have two scoops of you sandwiched between two hot halves of a Belgian waffle, covered in powdered sugar ... bliss.
And water ice, you know how fond I am of your Italian origins. But your Polish cousin is pretty good too, poured from a soft-serve machine and whipped to creamy delight.
Sure, Wildwood is full of tasty seafood too, which I owe the Lobster Shack, Neil's and the Hot Spot much due. (Still, the Pacific coast spoiled me for seafood.) And Primo's kept me even-keeled with their broccoli rabe and eggplant hoagie. But the delightful junk I consumed from your boardwalk for five days was joy upon joy - a joy I will retire until the next time back to your cold shores.
Fries! You I have missed, but not as much. Thanks to Five Guys, I have come to know fresh-fried Idaho cuts once more. But it is always beautiful returning to the source, back to the Paul's stand and eating you by the bucket.
Ice cream, I've come back to you in recent months as the supermarkets put you on sale and summer takes its toll. Half-fat, full-fat, I don't care. But to experience hand-dipped and soft-serve again, or to have two scoops of you sandwiched between two hot halves of a Belgian waffle, covered in powdered sugar ... bliss.
And water ice, you know how fond I am of your Italian origins. But your Polish cousin is pretty good too, poured from a soft-serve machine and whipped to creamy delight.
Sure, Wildwood is full of tasty seafood too, which I owe the Lobster Shack, Neil's and the Hot Spot much due. (Still, the Pacific coast spoiled me for seafood.) And Primo's kept me even-keeled with their broccoli rabe and eggplant hoagie. But the delightful junk I consumed from your boardwalk for five days was joy upon joy - a joy I will retire until the next time back to your cold shores.