I had some good pizza the other night at "Pitfire Artisan Pizza" in NoHo (North Hollywood).
I even peaked inside their oven and I think they were cooking things the requisite distance from the requisite type of fire, so it's probably kosher according to Spinelli and Trooper York. Our party tried six different ones. The White Pie was my favorite, NTTAWWT
So where is the absolute best pizza?
63 comments:
Racist pizza?
Chicago, deep dish.
Who was it who mentioned the other day that they knew someone who disliked pizza?
It wasn't me but I do have a friend who doesn't care for it. He'll eat it if he has to, but under protest.
Chicago pizza is not pizza.
The best pizza is at Frank Pepe on Wooster Street in New Haven, CT. I used to think that Sally's (a couple blocks from Frank Pepe) was the best, but I ate at both again last fall and Pepe was better and had less annoying service and a shorter wait. The best way to eat at Pepe's was to call for carry-out, which used to be easy as I once lived a block away.
The best pizza in New York used to be Lombardi's but it's been too long since I've eaten there so I can't say how it's held up.
I'm also a big fan of big, hot, cheap, juicy, unpretentious slices of pizza. There's a tiny hole-in-the-wall on 23rd Street near Lexington Avenue called Frank's that has great pizza of this type.
I love good pizza.
The best pizza I've had in recent memory is in Crested Butte at a place called Secret Stash.
You're Driving me Caprese.
Trooper didn't have a tag yet because he is a PED user.
Playmate Enhanced Digitization.
Like thin crust, no tomato sauce, just tomatoes, cheese, and bacon.
Yum.
I also went to a "Never Built Los Angeles" exhibit. I never appreciated Lloyd Wright's work, as distinct from his father's work.
In my present situation, the best pizza is the one that delivers.
Pizza is the food of the Gods. And though I do love expensive thin crust Italian, $5 bucks for a Little Caesar's is the best value around. It does taste good.
Prefer it to Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Domino's.
Lots of sauce, smothered with pepperoni.
Chick, I recently saw a beautiful book on FL Wright at book store. Lots of perpective drawings in muted colors and and black and white photos of public buildings, plus homes, I guess. Only $25. I considered getting it for my cousin's anniversary present, but opted for a gift card. I think I'll get it for me, if I see it again.
All of the pizza places nearby are crap.
Convenient, and fast, and helpful and gracious and fun but crap.
Poor things, wood fire oven or no, they know not what they do.
Here's the thing. A competition between two with all things equal, they never are equal, but if they were, the place with aged dough automatically wins.
You must age the dough at least overnight and even that is too short, 48 hours minimum for serious competition pizza.
Forget about Italian 00 flour, that is a way of saying, "milled to fine powder," whereas in the US most all commercial flour is finely milled and graded by protein content. Pizzas take high protein flour, and best mixed with 20% semolina, so an element of coarse texture in a cracker-thin crust.
So. A dough of hight-protein flour with 20% semolina started with a fraction of the usual yeast, 1/4 teaspoon.
Or else, what you have with Chicago-style pizzas if that is the thing that you like, the thing that you are liking is an elaborate garbage can focaccia wherein so many elements are combined they cannot be gustatorily sorted nor comprehended so not fully appreciated beyond shoveling it in one's gaping senseless grinding chomping maw.
I made one yesterday. I was going for thin crust but it turned out regular crust. It wasn't the best. Too salty. But still better than any of three pizza businesses within two blocks.
No brag, just fact.
I recently made a "meatzza" at a carb-conscious host's request. It wasn't bad at all, and you could even pick slices up, just like a real pizza.
Chip, when you say aged for 24 hrs, what is that accomplishing?
lol Pall, I really do need to go back to low carb. It works so well and is so good for you.
@Palladian: Please consider writing up your meatzza recipe as a post.
@Chip: My teenaged daughter is trying to improve and perfect her homemade pizza crust. I'll pass along your tips.
lol Pall, I really do need to go back to low carb. It works so well and is so good for you.
I know! It really does make me feel better, but I LOVE CARBS SO DAMNED MUCH.
@Palladian: Please consider writing up your meatzza recipe as a post.
I shall!
I've made pizza crust with low carb "flours", it's not as good as yeast dough, but one can go bonkers with toppings. Artichokes, sausage, onions, peppers, mushrooms, or sun dried tomatoes.
I've made one with sautéed onions and just cheese. Low carb crust. Baked it first with no toppings added sautéed onions and cheese and stuck it back in the oven for a bit to melt the cheese, mmmm.
Mrs YH's pizza really is the best I've had in the DC area. Chip is right about aging the dough at least over night. The other open secret is good ingredients, especially the mozzarella. Get your mozzarella fresh from an Italian deli, and if necessary squeeze the water out of it after slicing. The stuff under plastic at the grocery store is too salty.
A good pepperoni is required. We like Margherita brand because it's firmly packed, not greasy, and peppery. Use decent Italian anchovies, packed in glass so you can see what shape they're in.
Bake to melt the cheese, maybe with the meat in it, but put your vegetables (onion, green pepper, mushrooms, etc) on after the cheese has melted for a last blast. The vegetables will ooze water all over the pizza if they overcook. Conversely, if one likes the vegetables really cooked (I don't), you can cook them separately and then add them as toppings.
Inga: If you ever get out to Berkeley, try Zachary's -- a California version of Chicago deep dish that is thoroughly generous with all ingredients. Plenty of meat, cheese and tasty sauce on crisp crust as tall as a slice of apple pie.
Palladian: If you get to San Francisco, try the Sausage Factory on Castro St. It's my favorite conventional pizza. I thought the name was purely a double entendre but the storefront it occupies really was a sausage factory once.
Chip: What temperature do you cook pizza?
I once read a blog about the quest for perfect homemade pizza and the guy was such a maniac he overrode the temperature regulator on his kitchen oven so it could reach 800 degrees.
He believed very high temperature was necessary to cook a pizza per his ideal of a thin New York slice, so that the ingredients would just be melted and the bottom would not burn but show scorch marks.
Pizza is something that imprints on you. That first pizza you grew up on is often the one you return to.
Some people imprint on Dominos and Pizza Hut, which is beyond sad.
I agree with Chip. The crust is critical (which is also true for pie). That is the foundation. If you can pull that off then the rest of the pizza should be simplicity.
I do love Neopolitian if done right. Ripe tomatoes, some good mozzarella and anchovies. B
So much depends on what you, very subjectively, are into. One man's pizza sublime is another's pizza meh, and vice-versa.
For example, I enjoy a pizza crust with out-and-out burnt bits, black and bitter. Others, not so much.
There's so much great pizza in SF & Bay Area (IMO), too hard to pick the "best." (I imagine if I lived in NYC, I'd be lost, like junkie lost.) And I mean, I love them all (i.e. the 10 or so I've frequented)-- virtually every pizzeria experience (not counting late-night delivery pizza here) = pleasure.
I'm not hard to please when it comes to pizza. But there are some pizza experiences that are especially ecstatic.
When I lived in Berkeley, I was addicted to Cheese Board pizza. (Only one kind a day, of course I had my favorites. That thing they sometimes did with the lemon zest/ juice, OMG.) Maybe still my favorite. Lefty Berkeley insanity goes down easy (or, much easier) when you live in the Gourmet Ghetto.
In SF, I guess I'm especially fond of Tony's Pizza Napoletana, Una Pizza Napoletana (yes, it's hipster soup-nazi like, but I still love it), and (much less hyped) Cinecitta.
Mad Magazine long ago had a strip of competing pizza places, best pizza in the city, best pizza in the county, best pizza in the state, best pizza in the country, best pizza in the world, best pizza in the universe, and a crowd at best pizza on the block.
A quick "Find on this Page" search tells me that no one nominated Ray's Pizza.
Anyone know if you can make decent pizza on a gas grill? I have a good pizza stone but need higher heat. Have been thinking of trying it but haven't gotten around to it. Unfortunately our grill doesn't heat very evenly so I think that might be a problem.
The "best" pizza is the kind I want on any particular day.
So, unlike you heathens, my "best" varies from day to day.
If I've got the time and I'm in NYC, it's super thin crust from John's Pizza in the West Village. Coal fired brick oven. Super thin crust. Coal fired is grittier than wood fired.
Back in the day in Chicago, before Uno's went national with franchises, Chicago deep dish pizza was delicious. Franchising ruined everything. I think that some Mom & Pop deep dish pizza joints survive, but I haven't been in Chicago so much lately.
Ray's Pizza has its place. A Ray's on the upper east side of Manhattan, near Bloomingdale's is a cheap meal in a neighborhood in which a cheap meal is hard to find. The slices are immense, dripping with way too much cheese, and topped with an extravagant dose of pepperoni. Great when you're really hungry and going cheap.
For sheer romantic glory, and great simple pizza, it's Giorgio's in the Richmond District of SF.
I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but around here most places slice their pizzas into squares. Easier to eat as far as I'm concerned.
Chicago and NY style are both good as far as I'm concerned but they're just two different things. Apples to oranges.
The Loop in Jacksonville FL makes good Chicago style pie for a franchise. Well, it's good, but I don't know how it compares to themreal deal, having never been to Chicago.
And a third species altogether is the CA type of artisanl pizza which is great in it's own way. Arugula, pepitas, carmelized sweet onions and manchengo cheese...yum.
I'm all for diversity in pizzas.
When I was growing up, the only pizza we could afford was the generic brand knock-off of Ellio's frozen pizza.
It was pretty crappy.
That might seem unfortune but the upside was I could fix myself an after-school snack by nuking a slice of Wonder Bread with some leftover spaghetti sauce and some of that sprinkle cheese out of the cardboard tube shaker thing and it really wasn't all that bad.
When I was a kid they hadn't invented the nuking of food yet.
Another after-school snack was chocolate milk powder in the bottom of a glass and then you'd pour milk over it but you wouldn't stir it up to make chocolate milk.
Instead, you'd eat the sludge at the bottom with a spoon and call it fudge.
@Mitchell the Bat
Were you raised by Al Bundy?
I had a friend in high school who insisted that the microwave oven was invented by telecom researchers at Bell Labs who would disassemble their test equipment and stick their lunches inside.
Sounded like one of those stories but I couldn't come up with anything more plausible so I took it as true.
We had microwave ovens back then but we didn't have teh Googles.
Al Bundy had a great sense of humor so the answer is "no."
I remember our first microwave oven when I was a teenage. It came with a recipe book for making roasted chicken (putting that nasty artificial browning solution on the skin.) somewhere along the line we all figured out that the microwave was very useful for heating, not real cooking.
Another after-school treat was Drink-A-Toast. Just awful.
It still exists, sort of.
Ok, here's a question: what do you do with left over pizza in the morning? Do you nuke it, or just eat it at room temperature? I want a show of hands.
Homemade pizza sounds like a doomed endeavor. The dog walking on its hind legs thing. Do you know that with wire cutters and an acetylene torch you can make your own artisanal paper clips at home......The best thing to do with left over spaghetti is to fry it. I think the Chinese call it lo mein, but fried spaghetti is far better......No such rebirth is available to left over pizza. You know your life is on the skids when you start eating day old pizza.
Allen ... depends on how hungry I am. If in a hurry I take a fork and just rake the topping with cheese off and inhale it. By morning the crust is crap anyway.
My wife wraps leftover pizza in aluminum foil and puts it in the refrigerator.
I nuke mine on a paper plate and eat it with my hands standing over the sink.
My wife reheats her leftover pizza in the toaster oven, and she puts it on a regular plate, and she eats it sitting at the table with a knife and fork, which seems pretty classy to me, if somewhat unnecessary.
My father would make "spaghetti and eggs" which was leftover spaghetti and tomato sauce in a frying pan into which he'd scramble a few eggs.
It came out looking precisely like vomit.
It was actually kind of tasty, though.
But, William, think about the starving children all over the world. My first piece of day old pizza, is to pick it up, and say: "Here's to you, children" and eat it immediately. After that, the rest is nuked.
When we were teens, my sisters liked it cold the next morning, I did not.
Cold pizza when there's not enough time to reheat it in the oven. Nuking it makes it unsuitable except for the kids, and actually the three year old has sense enough to ask for it cold.
Apparently the best pizza is in San Diego. Who knew?
Surpisingly, putting a cold piece of pizza in the toaster works.
If someone doesn't eat their pizza crusts, and then they go to throw them out, someone has to say, "Hey, you should save those to make soup!"
Everyone likes a good soup-bone joke.
Well, at least I know I do.
Pizza is the food of the Gods.
Ha ha ha. Pizza is the very definition of peasant food. Can it be good? Of course. But to confuse it with filet mignon is a bit much.
My favorite kind of pizza is that which someone else makes.
I will eat and enjoy anything but Papa John's, Little Caesar's and cheap frozen pizza. The more expensive frozen brands are edible.
I don't have time for hobby cooking, i.e. aging dough for 48 hours, etc. Good for you guys who have the lifestyle that allows for that (I'm sure it's fun) but for those of us who have a few minutes to put something in bellies between coming home from work and getting the 7 year old to ballet and the 11 year old to piano, Papa Murphy's does the trick.
Asking what is the best pizza is like asking what is the best wine. There are several different styles with their own unique tastes and textures. There are coal fired, wood burning, industrial pizza oven style and even barbequed. Also the style of pie. Neapolitan, Sicilian, deep dish or thin crust.
The other point is that you will never have a frame of reference that will let you know what is the best pizza in the whole country. You can know your area. Trust me I have made a complete and thorough investigation into the best pizza in New York and can give you some pointers.
So with the caveat that this is for the New York Area.
Best traditional pie in a commercial gas oven baked on the metal: Sams Restaurant on Court St.
Best Sicilian Slice: L&B Spumoni gardens in Bensonhurst.
Best wood burning oven thin crust pizza: Enoteca on Court St. Grimaldi's in Dumbo is extremely overrated.
Best coal fired slice: Lombardi's on Spring St in Downtown Manhattan. I have to disagree with Palladian. The pizza here has maintained a high quality and is worth a visit if only for the fact that this is where pizza was invented.
Best revolving oven gas fired with second place Sicilian slices: J&V Pizzeria in Bensonhurst.
Best all around slice and in my opinion the best pizza in NYC: Totonno's at Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. Just five blocks from Nathans and the Boardwalk it is a must stop for pizza lovers. It is in my opinion the best pizza I have ever had.
And I have had a lot of freaking pizza.
I have no opinion on the best deep dish pizza because I think that sucks. Just sayn'
With commercial fast food and frozen pizza you might as well eat the box.
Recently I have had to stay away from gluten so I have been making portabella pizzas.
What you do is get a large portabella mushroom and break off the stem and clean out the inside getting rid of all the ribbons inside the shell. Broil for five minutes in your broiler with the back end up. Then take it out and fill the inside with fresh mozzarella and some sliced cherry tomatoes and a lot of oregano.
Put it back under the broiler for another five minutes or until the cheese starts to get brown and crispy.
A delicious alternative to people who want to watch their weight or have problems with gluten and such.
Palladian, Wooster St. in New Haven is the pizza of my youth. Unlike those who believe it's either Frank Pepe's or Sally's, I think they're both superb.
We just got back home from Chicago, a great city but they don't know jackshit about hot dogs or pizza. We had a great Greek meal last night, finished off w/ lots of ouzo. "Oooopa!"
Palladian, Wooster St. in New Haven is the pizza of my youth. Unlike those who believe it's either Frank Pepe's or Sally's, I think they're both superb.
We just got back home from Chicago, a great city but they don't know jackshit about hot dogs or pizza. We had a great Greek meal last night, finished off w/ lots of ouzo. "Oooopa!"
The BEST pizza I have ever eaten, anywhere on earth, is from this place, oddly enough in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Read all the details on their website.
Cold pizza? Breakfast of champions. And always cold, never nuked.
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