Pizza Wars: Monument Beach Pizza

Bourne Pizza Wars: Monument Beach Pizza

Representing the M-O-B 

(Editor's Note: Monument Beach Pizza is under new management, although he strove to keep things basically the same. I don't know if he looks like slim Kevin Smith or not.)

This column is forever in search of the best pizza on Bourne. It is a never-ending quest, as Bourne covers a lot of ground, and different regions of the town swear by different pizza shops. The Bourne Pizza wars are fought on battlefields both on the map and in the tummy. The battle you read of today was fought at Monument Beach Pizza.

We feel that the local House Of Pizza restaurants are reflective of the community. Leave the sushi joints to the inland yuppies. People like that get nothing but a beating in Monument Beach.

Man must eat, and more = merrier. Go down to Hyannis if you want a piece of tofu on a lettuce leaf served by some emo college kid. Go down to the Em Oh Be if you have a rumbly in your tumbly, and order your food from some local who looks like a more-in-shape Kevin Smith.

"Kevin" gets props early in the article, because he scored some points for his employer early in the meal. There were a couple of autistic kids in the MOB when we were there, and he happily allowed one of them to whale away on the cash register a bit. It made the kid happy, even though Kevin's register may have had $387284776013666.99 in sales that day.

This column has long felt that every local kid should work a summer pumping gas, hustling pizzas around, or anything that gets you in touch with a broad cross-section of the public. Kevin passed his test that day, and that was even before he had to process two nosy reporters snooping around and bothering the other customers.

Some restaurant critics prefer to keep a low profile, and stealthily investigate an eatery Phantom Gourmet style. Not me. I like places to be hustling when I dine there, and few things get a crew busting it more than a reporter snooping around.... especially if the owner happens to be managing that shift. I walk in snapping pictures, asking questions, interrogating the other customers, openly discussing the menu, checklisting the kitchen, and whatever else I have to do. I like people to get to steppin'.

MOB (all of the employees and regular customers refer to the place as "the M-O-B" or "Mo Beach Pizza") has been under her current ownership for about 4 years. At various times in the building's history, it was a post office, a general store, a fish market, and a few other things which I'd have in this article if I wrote it the day I went there. The owner insisted upon keeping the building the way it was, a wise decision IMHO.

It looks very much like an old-time general store when you walk in, which is always good for some points with me. You don't want a pizza place where the guy spends too much time decorating. You want a place that looks like a first generation Italian-American allowed his wife in for one half hour only to tidy up and direct the painters.

The crowd there was us, a crew of mechanics, and some COMCAST worker guy.

There are some obligatory old-tyme photos of the building from back in the day, and I have the impression that President Cleveland probably did some shopping in whatever store was in that building back when Bourne was the site of the summer White House.

The menu is of the New England Sub Shop mode, and I think that 80% of the people who go into a sub shop already know what they want anyhow. They did have some unique choices among the specialty pizzas- we saw "Salt Works," which was bacon and dill pickles, and something called the Ronk Steak Pizza that featured au jus sauce.

In the end, we got a Linguica Pizza and Onion Rings. Linguica is an important pizza topping, kinda distinct to Swamp Yankee Massachusetts... a sort of Portuguese Pepperoni. It is popular in the Northeast, on the West Coast (linguica pizza is called Portuguese Sausage Pizza once you go where there are no Portuguese), Hawaii and Japan. Hawaiians call it Portagee Sausage, and McDonald's serves it with their breakfast menu there. 

Onion rings are more world wide, but we tend to get them a lot because my boyfriend is all into them. No one knows who invented the onion ring (recipes in print for fried onions go back at least to 1802), but A+W popularized them nationwide in the 1960s. They enjoy particular popularity in a swath of New England that runs from Maine through Rhode Island. 

That's a fairly solid New England supper we ordered. I tend to stay away from seafood at sub shops, as I go elsewhere for seafood.

There's a fat slice.

Mo Beach Pizza uses diced linguica, and while I'm not into culinary CSI, I'm pretty sure that they prepared the linguica in-house. While your reporters are from Fairhaven and Duxbury and thus have some bias, we think linguica is probably the best topping.

Linguica as a pizza topping runs the gamut from a sort of ground Alpo-looking topping you see on pizzas sold in places with no Brazilian neighborhoods, to the Mo Beach diced version above, to a strange looking disc you see in places that order it in bulk, to long canoe slices that I actually like best.

This pizza was about 14" (we forgot the tape measure, but I have developed a pretty good eye for these things by now), Greek (pan) style. I'm told that the New York-style style thinner crust pizza goes about 16". You need to use a knife and fork to eat it, always a positive in mine eyes.

I'm only 5'3" or so, but my boyfriend is over 240 pounds. We finished half of it, although we had appetizers first. We had further reporting to do that day, and couldn't afford to have the lay-on-the-floor-after feast that we may have indulged in at home. It is also important to save pizza so we can report on how it tastes cold. We're that hardcore.

They had very good onion rings, which is important in our judging. There were only about 10 or so (my co-author sneeched one before I could snap a picture... I had to arm myself with a fork and directly threaten him in order to get the whole-pizza shot we're ending the article with), but each of them were thick and battered with love... which looks awful in print, but pay that no mind.

These are the best onion rings in town, although we still have a dozen pizza places to try before I actually hand out a trophy.

Our fellow diners worked the menu pretty well for us, although we didn't put the camera on them or anything. Ideally, we let others eat in peace during the Pizza Wars.

The cable guy had chicken wings, and he was a regular to the point where the waitress just walked up to him and said "Chicken wings?" He looked like a very happy man, as he had a plate full of clucker wings working. I almost went over to mooch one off him, (I would have traded 2 onion rings for one), but we couldn't get ourselves kicked out or anything.

The greasers had a variety of subs, and they also appeared to be pleased with their choices. You can always tell when the food is good if a group of men becomes silent shortly after the food is served, especially if the TV has ESPN on. Usually at least one guy is running his lip, but these guys were mowing silently

We were there at an off hour, but they had a pretty good run of business. The delivery girl (more points) had to go out at least once during our time there, and we weren't there that long. 

Here are a few other things I noticed during my time at Mo Beach Pizza:

- Considerable time, science, and expense went into some mundane elements of the store. You'll notice, in the pictures of the slices, that they use technology to keep the crust from getting too greasy.  This involves a sort of ribbed (sorry, the only other descriptive term that comes to mind is "bumpy") pizza tray and even a ribbed pad in the delivery boxes. They elevate the pizza some, keeping the grease from seeping into the crust while concurrently leeching grease from the bottom of the crust.

Whoever invented that should probably own Obama's Nobel prize, no offense meant to the C-I-C.

- "Mo" and "Monumental" work their way into the menu language now and then.

- The onion rings had their own sauce, known as Boom Boom Sauce.

- Boom Boom Sauce is actually a brand made by Ken's (the salad dressing people), and it is a spicier version of the usual New England onion ring sauce. The owner told me that it has sort of branched out into other menu items, as customers frequently request it on chicken, steak, and, in one case, pastrami.

- I won't out myself or my boyfriend, but one of us liked the pizza better when it was cold.

- The owner figured out we were media fairly quickly, and he let himself be questioned willingly enough. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and it is fun to get a shop owner speaking at length about his craft.

- Mo Beach's main competitors are Prime Time Pizza "up on the highway," and Graziella's, which is over on Barlow's Landing. MBP does have a nice section of the village to themselves, though. They are about 50 feet off of Shore Road.

- Speaking of addresses, Mo Beach Pizza is located at 18 Beach Street, in Monument Beach, which is one of the Bourne villages. Hit them up on the phone at 508-759-3210. They also have a Facebook page.

Chatham Hurricane Special

Chatham is, if you view Cape Cod as a big fist being shaken towards Europe, the Elbow. Like any other elbow, it's gonna get banged off things now and then. In this case, instead of a table, its a Hurricane.

There are no imminent storms, Chatham is just next up to bat in our ongoing series.

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Chatham at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five of these hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

Zoomed out... blurry, but anything unshaded is flooded....

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC

Falmouth Hurricane Information Special

Falmouth holds a corner lot on Cape Cod, facing both Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound. You never want to have multiple county-sized bodies of water looking to push ashore into your town when a storm comes, which leads us to today's topic of discussion.

We have two maps for you to analyze with your friends and family. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation Map. It comes from FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and NHC, will be written about by ME, and read by U.

"Inundation" is a fancy word for "storm surge," which are two fancy words for "water pushed ashore by a storm." This is the killer in a storm, it's what did in New Orleans 10 years ago, and the maps give you several views of it.

You can see where water will come ashore in a direct hit hurricane arriving at high tide, and you'll see what degree of storm (via the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale) will flood different parts of town. They are based on the zany-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge inundation.

These maps do not project freshwater flooding things like rain, overflowing rivers and sewer backups, as well as people just spraying the hose into the street for the hell of it, mid-storm, because Falmouth is a hardcore sort of town.

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. The Blizzard of '78 and the Halloween Gale are good examples of Category 1 storm damage, although neither was directly a hurricane. If those didn't hit hard down there (I'm a Duxbury kid, and was on Duxbury Beach for '78 and '91), use Hurricane Gloria as a hits-at-low-tide benchmark.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was a weak Category 2, and yes we do realize that "weak" and "Category 2 hurricane" are odd words to chain together.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five storms of this strength hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded history, in 1635.

Flesh = 100 Year FEMA Flood Zone. This is the "hundred year storm" you hear about, although you have to go pre-Colombian to find them. New England was hit by storms greater than Category 4 in roughly 1100 AD, 1300 AD and 1400 AD. They can tell by checking layers of sand on salt marsh muck.

Sorry about "flesh," my knowledge of colors was greatly dictated by the people at Crayola in the 1970s.

You can check these maps in far greater detail by going here and zooming a bit. It's disaster porn, styled to your very home!

Again, these maps do not depict freshwater flooding, and freshwater flooding will cause a whole slew of problems on her own if a hurricane says "Wuzzup?" to Wood's Hole.

Remember, you don't have to get flooded with seawater to die in a hurricane. You can get hit by lightning, sucked into a river, mashed in a road accident, have a tree fall on you, step on power lines, stumble into a sharknado or be killed by looters.

These maps show you what dangers face your particular house, and you can use them to decide on whether to make a run for it or not.

We'd also advise you to chat up the oldest guy with the longest residency in your neighborhood. Find out what Carol did to the house you live in now. Find out how high the water was in the street, how long the power was out for, what roads become impassable, and any other k-nuggets of knowledge the old fella might have.

Cranberry County Magazine stands strong behind our philosophy that your hurricane preparation planning is incomplete until you talk to some white heads. Your neighborhood's Old School is an asset which should not be underutilized.

FEMA and GRAMPS may hold differing opinions as to when you should flee, but FEMA most likely wasn't living on your street in 1954 when Carol came ashore. Gramps was. If he says your street floods and FEMA doesn't (my own neighborhood floods in nor'easters, but FEMA gives it Category 4 status), you may want to do some serious merit-weighing when deciding if you should Get To Steppin'.

This leads to our second map style, the Evacuation Map,

This is the map the authorities use when determining which neighborhoods will be evacuated. You don't HAVE to leave when the police tell you, but you also want to remember that the cop you were reading the Constitution to before the storm might very well be the one who has to make a decision as to whether or not to dive in to the maelstrom after you and your family.

I'm not chastising you. I watched the Halloween Gale from a waterfront home, with the police on a nearby hill blasting a searchlight on us the whole time.

Of course, that was a stupid move, so we'll work the other side now, and tell you about Feets Don't Fail Me Now, Heading For The Hills, and Running Like A Scaled Dog.

This map is easier to follow. It has two colors:

Pink = They have to evacuate.

Yellow = You do, too.

Here's the Evacuation Zone map:

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC