A long way for a slice of pizza!

While talking to Maribel at the Easter Egg Hunt in Westwood, she said that Marcelo wanted to have dinner at his favorite Uruguayan Pizza place (Marcelo is from Uruguay). As I mentioned in the previous post, Marcelo just lost his mother Norma, so he was in Florida all last week, helping his brother with all the details. I really wanted to go with them because we hadn't spent much time with Marcelo recently (before he was in Florida, he was in the Congo for work for a week and a half) and I wanted him to know he had our full support during this difficult time. But when Maribel told me the restaurant was in Elizabeth, NJ (south of Jersey City), I knew John wouldn't be crazy about the idea of driving so far for pizza. I wasn't sure if John knew where this place was, since we had both heard them talk about it in the past. I figured if he knew we were going so far, he was doing it in support of Marcelo who had just lost his mom. If he didn't know, then I wasn't going to be the one to tell him!

We agreed to meet at Maribel's house in New Milford and follow them to the restaurant. We got on the NJ Turnpike and headed south. As we passed the exit for Union City and then Jersey City, John got suspicious ... he said, "where is this place?" I said I didn't know, meanwhile I was texting Maribel (who was in the car in front of us), telling her John had no idea where we were going! They were laughing the entire way there! So, as we kept driving, John said, "This sure is a long way for a slice of pizza! It better be the best pizza I've ever tasted!" So I tried to make him happy by saying that we needed to be supportive of Marcelo right now, and of course his reply was "we could have done that back in Bergen county!" Anyway, he was a pretty good sport, since there was no turning back, but I know for a fact he NEVER would have gone if I'd told him it was in Elizabeth before we had left our house!

Maribel's brother Jose and his family (Doreen, Lauren, and Gabby) met us there too, so we took up most of the restaurant!

Joaquin

Joaquin and Marcelo

Lauren, Doreen, and Jose

Reagan and Gabby

Gabby and Joaquin

We ordered the pizza as an appetizer and it was awesome! The pizza is the plate at the top of the picture - the other dish was pizza withouth cheese, and the last one was something made of chick peas? Something like that ...

This was the "heart-attack on a plate" that everyone ordered for the main course ... I can't remember everything that was on it, but it was crazy delicious!

Sweet Gabby indulged Reagan and Joaquin, letting them climb all over her

It was a really nice night with John's family and I'm so happy we went. Marcelo was nice enough to treat us all to dinner, so THANK YOU!! It will be a long-running joke between John and Maribel now and I highly doubt we'll ever make the drive there again :)