The long, dark road that leads to the string of clubs at RCA is peppered with a few eateries, some trying harder than others to be the sort of place you would come to even if you weren’t stranded and starving after a night of partying. But we have a special warm place in our heart for 2+2 Pizza—for its barely average food, yes, but especially for its idiosyncratic personality and the fact that it’s open till 3am. Stepping here feels like a wormhole into a trashy Italian-American, New Jersey dinner: corny tablecloths, chalkboards and lots of woodwork and fake plants. You’d almost expect to see a signed photo of Frank Sinatra among the numerous, oversaturated photos of food on the wall. But speaking of the food, it’s less Italian-American and more Italian-Thai, even if there’s no fusion: pizzas, pastas and salads in the front, Isaan and stir-fries in the back. The Italian fare has its pitfalls (namely, underdone bread and processed cheese), but not enough to stop us from ordering seconds, particularly when there’s booze to soak up. The pizza with salami picante (B270) is inoffensive: thin crust, sauce that tastes canned and decent meat. Slap on some dried oregano and ignore the fact that the crust lacks salt, flavor and char marks. The pasta carbonara (B230) fares slightly worse, despite the ambitious but bizarre presentation (in a bowl covered with a bread crust). The underdone crust is a useless addition and the blob of pasta is swimming in rich, egg-y sauce. Over on the Thai side, too, the food is acceptable though far short of fireworks. The somtam Thai (B70) is plentiful and packs lots of dried shrimp, but the overall flavors, while balanced, are quite mild for our taste. We like more garlic, more lime. Other drinking foods, like the fried chicken (B110) and the yam neua (beef salad, B120), too, are all right, falling somewhere between catering to Thais and foreigners. So overall, while we would never go out of our way to come here, or recommend it to anyone, we kind of enjoy the surreal experience of going to 2+2, particularly with group of drunk and hungry friends.
