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The Pita Pit
143 Dryden Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 277-8748
(According to pitapit.com, there's also one coming to 321 Sixth Avenue, New York City NY!!! When? It says "soon." There's also one in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.)
When one goes into the food service industry, there is a typical path that is taken. The first step is becoming excited that you get to work around a food product that you, I'm going to assume, like. Oh man, I get to eat free pizza ALL THE TIME! This is going to be AWESOME!! I see no potential REPURCUSSIONS!!!
Of course the next step is eating pizza all the time, and constantly eating pizza and sometimes eating pizza at 11am or something and hey, whattya know, you hate pizza. The very smell makes you sick. The goopy, slimy cheese/sauce paste is revealed for what it is: pretty freaking gross. It's just natural. If you eat too much of one thing, you get sick of it, figuratively and potentially literally. Most of the time.
At the beginning of my senior year of college, I needed some spending money. I hadn't gotten a job the year before, and decided to snatch the first thing I could find. So I delivered pitas for The Pita Pit. I'd been there twice ever, but I certainly enjoyed their wares. I could see working there. A job's a job. I could finagle a free meal twice a week or so. Nice deal. Fine, I'll work there.
Little did I know the bounty that awaited me. All the fresh ingredients! The delicious array of condiments! Some soup sometimes! Even the meat they used was OK, for a fast food place! I slid down the slopes of addiction quickly.
Except something strange happened. Or didn't happen, rather. I didn't get unaddicted. I never got sick of the pita. If I was hungry, a pita would always do. In fact, I was always actively in the mood for a pita. I would eat other things, yeah. But if Pita Pit was close by, the only reason I would choose anything else was to save face and not seem like some kind of disgusting monster in front of friends (this didn't work).
My theory as to why I never got sick of the pita was all the possibilities at my fingertips. No two pitas are the same. Consider these two pitas: one stuffed with lettuce and green peppers, cucumbers. Tomatoes of course, some sprouts for heft, yellow peppers for taste and then a dash of the Pita Pit's special sauce (the stuff the yellow peppers are kept in with a little vinegar added). That is a ZESTY pita. It could almost quench your thirst, but for that tanginess that keeps it in a savory place.
Contrast that with another favorite of mine: shredded cheddar cheese. A coupla black olives. Barbecue sauce. That's it. A sweet, thin little treat for snacking. Almost a dessert pita (an idea I bandied about to the owner, Dylan. This was roundly rejected.) These two pitas share nothing in common but the very pita bread they are contained in, which admittedly itself isn't that great. But do you see what I'm saying? How can you get sick of something if it is constantly re-imagining itself and changing identities?
The Pita Pit introduced me to falafel. Watered down, fake falafel, but falafel nonetheless. Tzatziki sauce was never much of an option before Pita Pit. Even tomatoes, I never liked so much as when they were nestled between a bed of lettuce and some ludicrous "seafood" (imitation crab). I tried new things! I expanded my horizons! All in the safe, generic environment of the Pita Pit.
I will admit. The smell is terrible. My car retained its smell till my brother and his smoking friends inherited it. My jacket still smells like it a little bit. Also, it's not the most imaginative of places. It's like a Subway, with the option of a gyro (I could never bring myself to try this). And I totally play up my love of the place to entertain my friends a little.
But whenever I visit Ithaca, I make sure to stop by the Pita Pit. This past weekend, I tried a new option, the Chicken Crave. Chicken, ham, pineapple and teriyaki sauce. It was great. 13/15.
- Geoff Haggerty
