Is Ceres Pizza Worth the Trek?

Three for the Weekend, March 21

Left to right: Ceres’ white, cheese, and mushroom slices

The latest “must have” slice

It’s my job to follow the stunt pizzas that are appearing all over the landscape — places that often look almost like ordinary pizza parlors, but then go on to one-up the classic product with refined techniques and wild-card ingredients. Sometimes paying a couple dollars more per slice is well worth it — in the case of Scarr’s — sometimes not — in the case of the West Village L’Industrie. Don’t get me wrong, I like L’Industrie well enough, but when I see the long line trailing down Christopher Street, I immediately turn tail and hop up to Made in New York Pizza, where I can get an amped-up neighborhood slice without waiting.

So, how about Ceres? It’s the most recent of the line-generating ilk, impossible to get into on the weekends or in the evenings, made more difficult by being closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So go in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday and wait only 10 minutes, as I did. Located at 164 Mott Street on the edge of Chinatown, the place treats its slices as if they were precious.