I was staring at a wooden leg. It was on display. Next to it, a placard read:

"The prosthesis endured longer than our love. It was made of sturdier material."

I was in Zagreb at the Museum of Broken Relationships. I didn't know what to really expect when I had heard about this small three-room museum in the center of the Croatian capital.

I wasn't sure if looking at objects that broken-hearted people had donated to the museum would have any redeeming value. After all, when I first heard about the museum, visiting it sounded about as joyful and exciting as a funeral procession.

But I was in Zagreb, a town I didn't like very much (at least the last time I was there) and decided I had a choice: I could go to this museum or watch drunkards fall down in the main square. I went with the former.

The island of Pantelleria sits 58 miles southwest of Sicily, which doesn't seem very significant until you realize it also sits 45 miles from Tunisia, making this Italian island closer to North Africa than to Italy.

The island has been shaped by many occupiers and visitors; the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Normans, Bourbons, and Genovese have all stopped here and somehow left their mark. But it's the Arabs who really engraved, "We were here" the deepest into the island's ubiquitous dark-hued volcanic rock. They brought with them dishes like couscous and shakshouka. They also planted olive and citrus trees, as well as something that has given the island its main reputation: capers.

Whenever I told someone I was headed to Pantelleria, they'd either give me a blank stare, which told me they had no idea what I was talking about, or they'd say, "Oh, capers!" Yes, capers from Pantelleria are the capers to consume, apparently.

Capers are everywhere on the island, particularly, of course, in restaurant dishes. There were capers in pasta, in pesto, on spreads over crostini, topped on fish, in caponata. It was starting to seem like a caper version of Monty Python's famous skit about Spam.

Despite a small handful of attempts, I've never had any luck hitchhiking. But when I recently found myself on a desolate stretch of road on an Italian island in the middle of the Mediterranean, I decided to give it a go again. On the second attempt, a clunky greenish-blue Fiat Panda slowed to a crawl. I never did get the driver's name – a bald, gold-chain-clad guy in his 30s, wearing, of course, wrap-around sunglasses – but the first question he asked, in English, was: where are you from?

"New York," I said.

"New York?" he asked, the tone of his voice incredulous and amazed at the same time, as if I'd said I went on a stroll from my West Village apartment, and somehow randomly ended up here on a one-lane road where sharp, black volcanic rock met the rough post-storm Mediterranean.

I nodded, affirming again where I live. His follow up: "Then what the hell are you doing here?"

There was a crash and a boom from the kitchen. I was just a teenager but from my bedroom, my friend Jay and I immediately knew what had happened. "Your dad dropped the pizza," he said to me, seconds after the noise reverberated through the suburban Los Angeles house. Yep. That's exactly what happened. My dad, likely liquored up after an afternoon of football watching (and inspired to imbibe more by the prospect another work week was looming around the temporal corner), was cooking his "special" pizzas. And while removing it from the oven, he dropped it. We'd have to get pizza delivered instead.

Which was a good thing. Because my dad's pizza was the worst I've ever eaten in my life. About one Sunday every month, I'd stroll out into the kitchen and see stacked-up containers of flour and jars of tomato paste and I knew it was one of those dreaded Sunday pizza nights. The thin crust of dad's pizza, set nonna style in a rectangular pan, would cook wildly uneven: the edges were brick hard and the center doughy; the sauce was so thin it was hard to see on the finished product that there were even tomatoes involved in this near-inedible orgy; and the toppings always consisted of ground beef and bell peppers.

In a way, it seems hard to screw up something so simple. Pizza is just flour and egg for the dough, tomatoes for the sauce and whatever else you want to top it with. Put it in a scalding oven for 10 or so minute and ecco la! Your pizza is done and delicious.

I've recently found my dad's match for the worst pizza I've ever tasted. And it's right where I live in New York City. In the last few years a recent phenomenon has emerged on the city's dining landscape: $1 pizza slices.

"I want you to take me to lunch."

These were the first words I said to the driver after getting in his cab outside my apartment on W. 10th Street in New York City. His eyes went from looking at me in the rearview mirror to whipping his head around to look at me face to face.

"Huh?" he said.

I repeated it and then mentioned the reputation cab drivers have: that, in addition to being oft-eratic drivers, they supposedly hold the secrets to a city's best cheap eats. He let his head fall back, his face staring up at the ceiling of his car, and let out a huge laugh.

"You see," said Joseph, "I mostly eat junk food."

I pressed him, fearing I was going to end up at McDonalds or Taco Bell, asking where he usually eats when he's taking a break from cab. I know it was cheating but I verbally cajoled him a bit. "Something good," I said.

And then a lightbulb went on above his head: "Ah," he said. "I have it." He stepped on the gas and we whipped eastward down W. 10th St.