Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.

I have just cancelled my membership to TheLadders.com, Inc., a company offering an online job search destination and content for $100K+ jobs that I could see and apply to, but unfortunately come nowhere near securing.  The fee for the premiere membership was only $30 a month, a small sum when you consider that I am already managing nearly $4000 a month in fixed expenses on an income of about $2400 (unemployment insurance and the interest I’m receiving from savings accounts I’m too afraid to transfer into higher yielding vehicles), but I’ve found a better target for the money.  I have decided to devote my burgeoning free time to dining my way through New York Magazine’s top 20 pizza places, and I have 14 more restaurants to go.

I know what you’re thinking.  How exactly is eating at 14 more pizzerias going to help me manage the frightening inequity between my new income and expenses, and reach my diet and exercise goal of fitting back into a single digit sized interview suit?  The answer is that the pizza quest isn’t helping me in any career directed or self improvement oriented way, but it’s relatively inexpensive. Eating my way through the list is also an easy enough goal to reach.  I need to start creating satisfying accomplishments other than finding a job or garnering press for being an unemployed former yuppie.  Despite doing everything I can to keep the depression and sense of hopelessness at bay, it’s beginning to set back in again.  I think it may have something to do with the fact that it rains every day now, and with a former colleague telling me that she’s incredibly depressed about turning 29 and being out of work for one month.  I’m at the point now where I barely remember my twenties – despite the fact that my newly revised resume may suggest that I’m still in them – and I think I slept through my entire first month of employment.

Have you heard about the group of guys who go around eating at burger joints and then rate their meals on a blog? They are seven white collar professional men in their 30s and they started “Burger of the Month” (burgerrankings.com) or “BOTM” to highlight their rankings and solicit suggestions on the next burgers they should try.  They’ve now been featured on several television programs and have been profiled extensively in print. I’ve even heard that a movie is being developed about their story. Wouldn’t it be great to develop an unemployed version of this where a group of laid off gourmets set out to visit every pizzeria on the top 20 list, and perhaps all the well loved places that have caused such controversy based upon their exclusion?  Why should the gainfully employed be getting all the fame and fortune for eating the same thing over and over again? There seems to be a unique convergence between the escalating number of unemployed people and the proliferation of upscale pizza places, and there may very well be an opportunity to use this synergy for marketing purposes.  “Nine out of ten laid off investment bankers prefer Neopolitan to Sicilian,” or “downsized first year attorneys who may never get a legal job because they will be competing with several classes of deferred summer associates protest the exclusion of Grimaldi’s from the list of top pies of the moment,” could be sample advertising slogans.  At the very least, couldn’t someone sponsor one laid off recruiting manager for an expedition to try all the best examples of this recessionary favorite?

Now let’s go back to the list.  I had already tried Franny’s in Park Slope/Prospect Heights (#3), Co. in Chelsea (#4), Adrienne’s near Wall Street (#14), and Luzzo’s (#6) and Artichoke Basille (#18) in the East Village when the rankings were published. This was a respectable number, but certainly nothing to brag about for a lifelong New Yorker with an Italian sounding last name. I had enjoyed all of them in different ways, and Adrienne’s in particular still fills me with warm memories of the Stone Street corridor behind Goldman Sachs where bankers and traders go to see and be seen, and others go to hook up with these masters and mistresses of the financial universe.  On a Sunday in August when I was convinced that half of New York would be out of town, and the other half would be huddled indoors because of the torrential downpour, I set out to try the #1 rated spot, Kesté.  You have to love an upstart that makes it to the top of the list only a few months after opening, and at this point my rejection bruised ego is so fragile it’s a boost to say that I’ve reached #1 in anything.

Kesté did not disappoint.  Unlike Grimaldi’s it did not have a long line of guidebook clutching tourists at the door, and unlike many of the new hot spots it is open for both lunch and dinner (on more than four days in a week), doesn’t appear to shut down immediately when the dough is gone and accepts credit cards.  I was seated right away too, although distressingly near a couple who was committing what I consider to be the cardinal sin of discarding their crusts.  I thought about saying “Hello, I’ve recently been laid off and would like to have your crusts,” but thought better of it.  While I couldn’t understand one word of what the waiter said due to the combination of his accent and the noise level in the small space, my pizza arrived piping hot and so quickly it appeared that they knew I was coming.  At $12 for a Margherita it’s also a bargain compared to many competitors in the top-ranked New York pizza world and thus a boon to us 405ers; Franny’s charges $16 for the standard pie, Veloce (#7) runs $15, and Di Fara (#10) in Brooklyn will run you $5 for just one slice now.

The superlatives accorded to the restaurant run by the American chapter president of the Associazone Pizzaiouli Napoletana also proved justified.  Top 20 listmakers Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld wrote that “never in this town have oozy blobs of melted buffalo mozzarella and brightly flavored San Marzano tomatoes frolicked in such ecstatic harmony,” and added that “a few bites in you are struck by the sensation that life, such as it is, may have nothing more to offer.” I’m no food critic, but beside the aforementioned deliciousness, I was particularly struck by the perfect size of the pie for one hungry customer.  Some of the less cheesy and puffier artisanal breaded variations at highly rated places like Co., for example, will leave you desirous of ordering a budget busting second pie for just one mouth.

It was still raining miserably when I left Kesté, but I felt refreshed, exhilarated, and ready to take on the world.  I was pleasantly full, but still had enough room to wash the pie down with the contents of nearly two pints of Turkey Hill ice cream.  I know this sounds rather glutinous, especially when you consider that I ate both of them without a spoon by pushing the contents up to the top, but there was a 2 for $3 sale at Key Food that week.  The calorie content of the lower-fatted brand is actually one half of a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and they cost less than one pint of the Vermont-based competitor, so it was a prudent choice for both the price and the heat units.  I’m going to continue with my goal of visiting all the restaurants on the list, and may even have some remaining time to continue sending out resumes and telling headhunters that I’m willing to take a step back.  I may even find a new job by the time I explode.

Kesté  is located at 271 Bleecker Street near Morton St, a strip that seems to have more good pizza places and ice cream/gelato shops per foot than any other area in New York City. You may also stare lovingly at the menu at kestepizzeria.com