Zagat Survey has prepared a list of fifty pizzas that are (Zagat believes) worthy of our attention. The list includes one pizza from each of the fifty states. Whether your state has 800,000 or 80,000,000 citizens, it is represented in the Zagat Survey by only one pizza.
I know what you're thinking. "That has to be a reeeeeealy goooood pizza!!" Maybe. Or maybe not. Let's go to the list and find the one in your state.
Nice photos. I can smell the pizzas. Hmmmm....the one identified for Wisconsin, where I live, is a restaurant I've never heard of located in a touristy area. Ack. It has a green and gold Green Bay Packers motif. And it has cheese curds. How trite. I don't think I'd drive there for this pizza. No way, not going to do it.
Who are these Zagats, and how did they choose these restaurants?
The Zagat score is basically a rating system for restaurants by diners. It was created by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979. A restaurant registers with Zagat, then promotes Zagat's website to customers in hopes that the customers will go to the Zagat website and rate the restaurant. This is not very scientifical. No wonder some of the pizzas look not-so-good.
My favorite pizza comes from this place. Pizza of the gods. Baked in a wood-heated oven. A crust so thin it crunches like a cracker. No cheese curds. No team colors. Just crust, sauce, fresh mozz, fresh tomatoes and fresh basil. A moment of silence while I give thanks.
Do you recognize the place listed for the state where you live? Have you eaten there?
38 comments:
I don't recognize the place for Florida, as I've never been to Fort Myers. They have an ... interesting ... idea for a pizza.
Florida: The Everglades Pie at Evan’s Neighborhood Pizza in Fort Myers
A little over a year ago, the owners of Evan’s Neighborhood Pizza had an idea: Why not put python on a pizza? Thus, their Everglades pizza was born. But it’s not just snake on a pie. Owner Evan Daniell adds whole frog legs and alligator sausage for extra flair. He gets the python from Vietnam for roughly $66 per pound. The frog legs come from China, and the gator from the local fish market. “It’s $45 for a 14-in. pie,” says Daniell, "so I didn’t know if it would last. But people come across the coast to get it now, and we’ll get guys on dares and people coming out to order one for their birthday.” What does python taste like? “Like a snake,” jokes Daniell. “We marinate it in Italian dressing to take away some of the gamey flavor.”
The best pizza I've ever eaten is @ Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, which is on this list. I love the north end of Boston pizza, New Haven, NYC and Jersey pizza, But, the guy who started this restaurant is from Brooklyn. He is a purist. All he cares about is making PERFECT pizza. He bought a couple of old houses in the historic district of Phoenix. There are lines every day. The menu is simple. He has a nice wine menu. If you're in Phoenix I urge you to go. It's simple, so if you like pineapple Canadian bacon BBQ chicken pizza, DON'T GO. If you like Chicago pizza, don't go. If you like real pizza like the pizza's I mentioned, then please go.
Frank Pepe's white clam pizza is a unique and superb pie. When we go we'll get that and a plain pizza. In Ct., you can get plain pizza w/o mozzarella. It's what I grew up on. Just sauce and Romano cheese.
Great post. Too bad I live in pizza hell.
I have been to the place in Sheboygan. The best pizza I have had in Wisconsin is at Paisans. I like some Wisconsin "bar pizzas".
I have been to all thos joints in New England. New Haven pizza is fucking awesome.
Pizzeria Regina in Boston is very good but my fave is Santarpios' in East Boston.
I don't want any garbage on my pizza.
Thin and crispy crust and a perfect ratio of sauce to cheese, nothing else.
tits and go Pats.
There is a place by Hilldale that has good margarita pizza....in a strip mall...natch.
When the moon hits you eye like a big pizza pie that's amoray.
I dunno, pizza is pizza, either it's good, or it's trash - and whether it's good or not has more to do with the pizza maker, and they only last so long with a particular place. Used to be a really good place down on Water Street in the town I live, but the original maker has left, and it's no better than average now.
The Pennsylvania exemplar in that article isn't pizza at all, but a rather nasty-sounding calzone-ish mess out of some joint in godforsaken Greensburg. Mashed potatoes on a "pizza"? Abomination!
Pizzaria Bianco Phoenix Facebook photos taken by people
Beau Jo's Denver It's the fold the crust over and roll it like regular pie dough except thicker. Heavy pizza and thick crust. I can tell by looking demasiado, no me gusta.
Nick, we need to met at Il Ritrovo in Sheboygan some day for a good pie.
The manufacture and sale of deep dish pizza should be a Class B felony. It's not much more than a loaf of Wonder Bread covered with ketchup. Only rubes tourists and drunk kids eat it.
Are there any out of the supermarket freezer pizzas that are satisfactory?
I'm waiting for Trooper to show up and tell us about Lombardi's in Brooklyn.
Haz, We would love to meet you folks there sometime,
California is 800 miles long. You need at least one for So Cal and another for the state of Jefferson.
I absolutely must have pizza tonight after seeing those photos. Actually it became mandatory as soon as I read the word "pizza" - the ultimate food.
It is BS and I hate it.
I despise the people who did this compilation.
In college we had a huge pizza in the shape of a pair of tits with red peppers hanging down as nipples.
And you could get the tit pizza's in different age categories.
30, 40, 50, 60, etc.
tits.
Meh. I've eaten that wood-fired, old world, crust-cheese-jutaspoonofsauce fancy pizza straight from the source in Milan, but I'm gonna stand up and say Americans do it better in our turned up to 11 toppings style. Gimme some place like Glass Nickel in Madison where you feel like you've had a meal when you've eaten a couple slices.
Calypso, Too each their own. I learned a long time ago the best pizza for most folks is whatever they grew up eating. My son did delivery for Glass Nickel. They do a pretty good biz.
I worked my way through college by doing a lot of different jobs. One was making pizza at two different Shakey's restaurants. To this day, I cannot walk into a Shakey's, and take satisfaction knowing that most of them have gone out of business.
But I still like pizza.
A high school classmate started working at a small pizza place in our hometown when he was 14. he didn't go to college and kept making pizza there. The owner grew elderly and sold him the place, really just a run-down old house.
Fast forward forty years and he has expanded the place multiple times, added a lot of good food tot he menu, added a couple of beautiful dining rooms and the place is packed every weekend and most week nights.
I still get a take-out there once a month. Great pizza, and its nice to have the owner know my name from way back when. Before we were bald.
It fascinates me when these "50 State" things always seem to feature something from Cleveland as the representative of Ohio. I'm not bashing Cleveland, but there a lot of us in Ohio who would find it amusing that Cleveland is supposed to stand for us. They'd mostly say the same about Cincinnati--where I am--by the way.
As much as I hate to say it, Columbus is probably more representative of Ohio. Or, maybe it's just a matter of recognizing there are different Ohios.
And I'm guessing, the same is true of a lot of states.
@Fr Martin Fox - Skyline or Gold Star?
No doubt true, Spinelli. Salute!
Michael:
I like them both, but I prefer Skyline!
@Fr: Thanks. I'll be travelling through Cincinnati later this month. If it's on a Sunday I'll drop in for Mass.
Fighting about pizza is like fighting about music.
Think about it.
Pudgy's in Hegewisch
(Far Southeast Chicago)
Super thin crust. Get "Bob's Mistake" pie. Sausage and fresh garlic with fresh tomatoes.
Fr: Pennsylvania is really not representable by either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, and the same goes for New Jersey, whose two components weren't even settled as the same colony, originally. Although from what I've heard, Cincinnati is less representative of Ohio than Cleveland, although my rural Western-Reserve relatives wouldn't identify with either city unless pressed. My grandfather used to say nasty things about *Youngstown*, and that was in the same county as his farm. There are very few states which are cultural unities, and they tend to be very, very small, in more ways than one.
Secret stash - crested butte Colorado. U have not lived
Most of those dishes I would not refer to as "pizza."
Columbus is probably more representative of Ohio.
True, but as a native of C-Bus, they have terrible pizza.
A few outliers are Tommy's, Flying Pizza, and Adriatico's.
Youngstown is probably where I would start my pizza search in Ohio.
Youngstown has to be the consummate Ohio, that's where James Trafficant hails from.
His hair is from Cleveland.
Lombardi's pizza is actually on Spring St in Manhattan and it is where pizza was invented in the 1800's.
There was always a Neapolitan dish that featured baked dough with onions and garlic on it but this is where they started putting on the red sauce and mozzarella for your first Neapolitan pies.
The best pizza in New York can be found on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. Totonno's has without a doubt the best pizza to be found anywhere in the tri-state area.
The best Scilian (square) pie is to be found at L&B Spumoni Gardens on 86th St.
Michael:
I hope you do stop in for Mass! Please say hello!
Mitch:
About how Ohio sorts out...
You're correct that Cincinnati is probably more of an outlier than Cleveland. Basically, you've got Cincinnati, which holds sway over about 12 counties, of which four-five are in Kentucky and Indiana. Dayton is kind of under Cincinnati's sway, but folks up there hate to acknowledge that. The Dayton TV stations, when they show a weather map, won't even show Cincinnati, even though it's 50 miles to the south, and some of their viewers probably work in Cincinnati and the northern suburbs thereof.
The northern tier of Ohio--from Toledo to Cleveland and then the state line--you have a whole different state, classic "rust belt" and with lots of ethnic variation. This whole swath of counties could be its own state.
Cincinnati and Dayton are basically two or three ethnic groups: African-Americans, Applalachians, and highly assimilated Germans. All the other ethnic groups are pretty small.
Then you have Columbus, which is a lot like Cincinnati in that regard, but without some of the southern influence and culinary peculiarities. Columbus is all Ohio State, and this cultural mixture dominates the middle swath of the state, from Indiana to close to the eastern line. When people say Ohio is boring, it's probably because they drove through this section along I-70.
Then you have Ohio Appalachia, which begins somewhere around Ironton, along the Ohio, and wraps up to Wheeling, W.V. It runs inland a good ways--this is the wildest, poorest, and most sparsely populated part of the state, and very pretty. This is where longtime Gov. Jim Rhodes was from. He, like many folks down here, talk very differently from anyone else in Ohio. This is coal country, and Rhodes was born in "Coalton." Lots of "bitter clingers" down there, thank God.
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