Speedy Romeo? Yes, Speedy Romeo

What IS it about Brooklyn Pizza? As each neighborhood gentrifies along every subway line (at a rate that is both frightening and astonishing), someone opens up a pizza parlor in a corner building that used to be a crack house or sell auto parts. Next thing you know, the place is packed with hipsters and the place is turning out fabulous pizza. When The Great PD and The Great 5H find one of these, they save it for Plotnik. Last night we got to Speedy Romeo's on Classon Avenue on the corner where Clinton Hill turns into Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The pizza was delicious. Really delicious. Plus, Patsy is in town so everybody got to try on her trick glasses.

The conversion to Dodger fan is going more slowly than Plotnik would like, but progress is progress. Big hair may be an impediment.

Guess who ordered a steak at a pizza parlor?

As for Speedy Romeo, we'd say it's a cut above Saraghina's, a lot less trendy-poo than Roberta's or Grimaldi's and possibly even better than Giuseppina's. (* Further research is needed to test this possibility. *)

Until they get a picture of the pope on the cash register it will not be able to touch Di Fara, but you don't have to line up for an hour on the street before the place opens and you can sit down in a comfortable chair. The smoked mozzarella, wild mushroom and egg pizza is seriously delicious; plus they have really good draft beers and the desserts are 'way better than the usual Layered Sugar trucked in from Eddie's in Hackensack.

At two or three trips per year, Plot estimates these newly trendy neighborhoods will all have decayed back to crack houses before he and Duck can try them all. Right now, if you're looking for real estate, Plotnik suggests looking for crowds inside the local pizza parlor, with a few confused old-timers standing around outside wondering why everyone is crowding into the auto parts store.