He’s just days into his first term in office but Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s public eating habits are already being described as “embarrassing” to the city.
After he was photographed using a knife and fork to dig into a slice of pizza on Friday the Daily News visited Joe’s Pizza in Greenwich Village to review how to correctly eat a New York slice.
For starters, don’t ask for a knife and fork. At Joe’s, for instance, they don’t have any.
“You grab it, you fold it, you eat it, and you walk. Everybody’s in a rush in New York and that’s the way to eat a New York slice,” the owner’s grandson, Sal Vitale, said before taking a bite.
“Tourists will sometimes ask for knives and forks. We tell them to fold it,” he shrugged with a smile.
And Vitale should know how. His grandfather is Joe Pozzuli, a Naples-born immigrant who first opened a pizzeria in Boston before settling in New York.
So where exactly is de Blasio’s New York State of mind?
According to Joe’s, and many of the New Yorkers and tourists alike seen packing the pizzeria on a rainy Friday afternoon, he’s left it all behind.
“Eat a pizza the real way! Don’t be prissy about it,” Kelsey Brykman, 24, reacted to the mayor’s use of silverware during her visit from Rhode Island.
“It’s part of the fun. Not only the food you eat but the way you eat it can be more fun than others,” said Ines Kerzan, 27, who’s lived in the city for five years.
Angela Byers, visiting from Minnesota with her two siblings, was similarly shocked by the mayor’s style of eating insisting, “I would never use a knife and fork.”
“No,” her sister Sheila Byers quickly chimed.
“It sounds like a Seinfeld episode!” Angela laughed, perhaps reminiscing on an episode when George Costanza chows down on a Snickers bar with a knife and fork.
“If you’re a New Yorker, you don’t use a knife and fork,” summed up Vitale who called the mayor’s behavior “embarrassing.”
“If you have to get down and dirty with it, don’t worry. Fold it right in half, hold it like that. That’s how you eat a slice. Bill de Blasio what are you doing over there?”