This thread is inspired by @Postmodern. I am a pizza snob married to an even snobbier pizza snob. We eat pizza many times a week (between lunch and dinner, takeout and homemade.) So here goes where was some of the best pizza you have ever eaten or your best pizza experience.
I will start by telling my daughter’s best pizza experience. She took a pizza class at Serious Pie in Seattle and got to make a pizza using their “special” dough. They even showed them how they make their dough.
My favorite pizza is John’s in Times Square. Pizza is great (thin with a nice char on the bottom), our preferred combo there is sausage and spinach, and the atmosphere is unique (a converted church).
Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Several great pizza shops in town, but Benny Tudinos has the biggest slices. The slices are so large, people take pictures of their babies next to the pizza for scale :))
^^^^ Ha! Love For Benny’s! Awesome. There have been many nights years ago where one of those giant slices “got me right” after a long night on Washington street. (Didn’t attend Stevens but grew up in Hudson County).
Brooklyn Brothers in Everett, @kiddie, is the only NY-worthy pizza in this state. I do like Serious Pie and their authentic Naples-style offerings.
We ate pizza about once a week when we lived in central NY, down to about once every two months because we are a bad-traffic 20 miles from Everett. I attempted to solve it myself. I tried and tried, had dough starter in my fridge for about 6 months, got some Polly-O cheese from back east, but my oven just does not get hot enough.
I haven’t had anything yet that beats Sally’s and Pepe’s in New Haven (with Modern close behind). I haven’t found anything in DC that’s as good, although there’s a place in Rockville, MD called Pizza CS that’s very good.
^^^ Oh yeah? @MotherOfDragons ? You wanna out snob the snobs? Someone from Naples wouldn’t be caught dead eating pizza in touristy Florence!
Thanks for the shout @kiddie . My favorite John’s pizza experience:
Many moons ago took my Mom to see “Tony and Tina’s Wedding”, one of those interactive theater deals in the West Village. You know, you sit at tables with the actors… well at our table were a couple of “guests”, who were quite nice and chatted a lot with us, especially my Mom, who ate it up. When we asked the actor what he did for a living, he said “I work in a pizza place”. I found it a bit cliche at the moment.
Turns out these were not actors at all, but just nice ticket-holders like ourselves. The young man was the son of the owner of John’s Pizza and he invited us back to the (original) Bleecker Street location where he bought us a pie and a bottle of wine (food at show was not edible, so we were happy!) Super great guy, modest and thoughtful.
I loved John’s pizza before that, but since then I have viewed it as a special place.
Ours, hands down. I make the dough and sauce and husband grills them. We’ve been doing this for over 30 years and have never in our travels found anything to match. Our friends covet an invite. We let them do whatever toppings they want, pizza-bar style, but the “secret” is in the dough-sauce-grill combo.
(This probably belongs on the bragging thread, but it IS something we know how to do.)
When we visit schools, our family tradition is to try the local pizza joint. Most are decidedly lackluster, but memorable ones include:
UChicago - Medici
Northwestern - Gigio’s Pizza
Yale - Wall Street Pizza
MIT - All Star Pizza
Indiana University - Mother Bears
Emory/Georgia Tech - Fellini’s
If you make it to Gigio’s in Evanston, make sure to stop off at Bennnisons Bakery across the street.
Learning how stupid easy it is to make dough and sauce is my fave pizza moment! And figuring out how to get the pie onto the sizzling hot stone in my oven.
The problem is…I love it so much but it really, really, blows my diet and my resolve to keep at it.
Family members rave about a pizza place just outside of Universal Studios in Orlando. We ate there a couple of years ago and it honestly comes up in conversation at least once a month. I argue that the reason that this place (Red Oven Pizza) has achieved mythical status in our house was that we had been in the park on our feet all day and were really hungry and happy to sit anywhere but the fam claims that there was something amazing about the pizza.
A scallop, bacon, asparagus thin-crust cooked on a wood-fire at Ember just down the street from us on Cape Cod. Oh, so good. Another place opened (Stone Lovin) that also serves “specialty” pizzas. The greek is heavenly: olives, feta, garlic oil, spinach, and tomatoes. I like my pizza thin with a well-done charred crust
