Pizza Expectations

There’s a pizzeria in a neighboring town that I’ve ridden/driven by countless times but never visited; we have two good pizza joints in our own town. But a couple of years ago, that dude from Barstool Sports visited that pizzeria in the neighboring town and decreed that it was the best pizza he’d ever had. Nowadays, a line forms a half hour before they open for lunch and they’re usually sold out within 90 minutes. People come from all over. And over the past year, we’ve tried a couple of times to go but go there too late. On Thursday, we rode over and finally got in.

Like most of the good pizza joints that I’ve been to over the years, the dining room shows where their priorities are, and it’s not being photographed for Architectural Digest. Wood paneling? Check. Old photos and framed clippings of old newspaper stories? Check. Odd illustrations of anthropomorphized broccoli? Also check.

It was, in the words of my partner, “fine.” Not bad, and a good New Jersey pie (which is already at a high level thanks to the large Italian American population in the state), but certainly not the best pizza in the land. The Barstool guy raved about the crust having “no flop”. Yes, it’s stiff as a piece of cardboard and has a nice, crispy texture, but it’s not very flavorful, adding little to the overall taste. The sauce is understated as well.

Don’t get me wrong, this would be the best pizza in Pennsylvania and 40 other states, but this is the New Jersey/New York region, where pizza is religion. I can name a half dozen places off the top of my head that makes better pies. And the top of my Mount Rushmore of pizzas is still Di Fara in Brooklyn.