Let's talk Pizza

Let’s talk about PIZZA!

All pizza is pretty good, let’s be honest. Pizza, after all, is nearly everyone’s favorite food, or at least is was when you were a kid. Good pizza is always preferred and you remember the places where you had good pizza. Great pizza stands on its own. Great pizza is a step above all other pizza. It transcends “pizza” and becomes “a meal you remember”.

To me, the measure of any pizza has to start with the crust. All the sauces and toppings can be debated for hours, but we can all pretty much agree on a good crust. So let’s rank crusts for a second by comparing them to their basic form: bread.

Frozen pizza crusts are your plain sliced white bread. Everyone has had a frozen pizza. You probably have your favorite brand. Maybe you think your brand is better than all others. Maybe it’s the Nature’s Own honey wheat bread of the packaged, pre-sliced sandwich making bread family. That’s fine. But we’re still talking low tier. No one is ever going to say that a frozen pizza beats out a restaurant pizza, unless you’re at a crappy restaurant.

So restaurant pizzas are like your restaurant sandwiches. Maybe the restaurant’s bread is baked fresh that morning or they get all their bread from a bakery every day. 90% of your pizza crusts fall into this category. Now, whether they are a Subway sandwich or the artisanal bakery sandwich, that all depends on where you go. There are good pizzas in this category. Some really good ones. But are they great?

Great pizzas are the best bread. The really great bread you serve with a little olive oil. The bread that can stand on its own. The bread you got from the farmer’s market and then ate it all in one day even though you didn’t mean to. You’re not going to make sandwiches with this bread because all it need is to be warmed up or paired with simple and fresh ingredients to get something really enjoyable to eat. Which is exactly what makes a great pizza.

For more about pizza crusts than I will ever care to know, go here: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm

For a list of great pizza places from this same guy, go here: http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm#GreatPizzerias

And we’re going to start showing off some great pizzas with Jeff Varasano:

I have had the pleasure of eating this pizza 3 times! All at the Atlanta airport. There is no flight delay that cannot be made better by this pizza and a bottle of wine. It’s a delicious crust with simple toppings and very good.

And here we have what I’m going to go ahead and call the best pizza that I have ever had. The restaurant was #2 on Varasano’s recommended pizzas list. , Luzzo’s Coal Oven Pizza. It was fantastic. I was completely full and I wanted us to order another one just because it was so good. If I had been there by myself, I would have ordered another one and slipped into a food coma because of my gluttony. Our pizza at Luzzo’s: We got the “Funghi” – tomato sauce, mozzarella, mushrooms, basil. They had a terrific red pepper infused olive oil on the table that was great on the pizza. This is the best pizza I have ever had.

Some Good Pizzas: These are fantastic and I would eat them at any opportunity. 1^st place is any good, greasy NY slice. Oversized, foldable, soft crust but with enough structure to hold up to onslaught of cheese and grease….. oh man, I’m hungry now.

In Pensacola the only place that comes close is Sky’s Pizza. I’ll give a 2^nd place in the area to Papas Pizza out on the beach.

Now enjoy your weekend, and eat some pizza.