pizza

Pazzo Pizzeria another small delivery joint tucked away in a strip mall.  This one is in West L.A.  it has an impressive list of pastas, salads, and sandwiches.  I ordered a 14 inch, medium cheese pizza.  It was $10.  They also have thick crust.  They advertise on the front of the menu that they use 100% extra virgin olive oil in everything.  I have never seen this boasted before and I'm not

Pomodoro is a full-service restaurant on University Ave. serving "contemporary Italian cuisine." It's been in business for at least ten years, although I’m not sure if it’s had a wood-fired brick oven for all that time. Still, it’s not a latecomer to the wood-fired oven pizza scene, at least around here.
I shared a lunch with a friend this time, so I got to try two pizzas: the margherita and the “tradizionale,” which is basically a pepperoni pizza. We ordered the margherita with a regular crust and the tradizionale with a whole wheat crust.
The bottom of each pizza was dotted with charred spots (the one in the bottom photo is the margherita), and the edges were also somewhat charred, but the crust had a surprising lack of crispness. Pizza baked in a wood-fired oven can sometimes be too crunchy and crackly for my taste, but these were just the opposite. They were quite soft, and easily foldable, though the whole wheat flour in the tradizionale did lend it a bit of crispness.
Pomodoro’s margherita is similar to a “white” pizza, with olive oil, “regular” (a/k/a low-moisture) mozzarella, asiago, diced tomato, fresh basil, onion and garlic. Though a departure from the classic tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella, the toppings worked well together. My only complaint in that department is that it was pretty heavy on the cheese, which was just melted, soft and stringy, like the filling in a grilled-cheese sandwich. With its thin crust and relatively mild toppings, this pie didn't need quite so much cheese, and again I wished that it had spent a little longer in the oven, as I prefer my cheese a bit browned.
The tradizionale was good, not exceptional maybe, but good. The whole-wheat crust had a pleasant, slightly nutty flavor and aroma, with a bit of crunch. Here the cheese, though again generously applied, was better balanced against the tangy, slightly herbal red sauce and slightly crisp, tasty slices of pepperoni.
Overall, these were good, enjoyable pizzas, but they fell short of greatness, mainly because they just weren't sufficiently done, in my opinion. I'm not sure if that was due to the oven not being hot enough, too little baking time, or both. The charred spots suggested a pretty hot oven floor, so I had a hard time figuring out why the crust (which otherwise had a good flavor and texture) was so soft. I suspect that the thick layer of cheese didn't help, either. As a general rule, I think that pizza baked in a very hot oven should not only have a thin crust, but a thin layer of toppings, because the pizza can only stay in the oven a few minutes before the crust starts to burn from the heat of the oven floor. A thick layer of cheese and other toppings won't have time to cook properly.
Then again, maybe the customers are to blame. Though it may be starting to change as people become more familiar with the concept, a lot of local diners, I'm afraid, are apt to complain that their pizza is "burnt" if it shows much charring. I don't like burnt pizza either, but a nice char will give the pizza a crisp exterior and a toasty flavor that was lacking in Pomodoro's pizza on this visit. I liked it, but it didn't quite live up to its potential. I'll give it a B.

Big Deal Pizzeria & Grill recently opened in the old Sal’s Pizzeria location on Monroe Avenue, just up the street from Mark’s Texas Hots (and a few doors up from Acme Bar & Pizza, which I’ll get to eventually). I used to like Sal’s, which turned out a pretty decent NYC-style pizza, but the service left a lot to be desired, you never knew if they were going to be open, and I always just got kind of a weird vibe there.
According to its sign, Big Deal also claims to be a New York-style pizzeria, but it’s not. It’s another big-slice joint, not one of which, that I’ve tried, produces authentic NY pizza.
On my lunchtime visit, they had cheese, pepperoni and Buffalo chicken pizza slices available. I got a pepperoni slice, which goes for 3 bucks.
This is a heavy slice of pizza. The crust is on the thin side of medium, but not NYC thin. The cheese - all mozzarella from what I can tell - is laid on pretty thickly.
The well-browned underside showed that the pizza had been baked on a screen. It had a certain greasy crunchiness, but otherwise its appearance, flavor and texture were reminiscent of Piatza’s, which is to say, it lacked real crispness, body, or structural integrity. Despite the outer crunchiness, it could not sustain its weight, and had to be folded to prevent it from flopping over. The edge had a bit more character, a little like a breadstick, but overall the dough was not very bready in flavor or texture.
The cheese was the dominant player here. It was thick and chewy. The sauce was there, but virtually unnoticeable on the palate. The pepperoni was basic wide-and-thin.
Overall, this pizza lacked zing. The texture wasn’t there, and it lacked character. Worst of all, it was bland. Pizza shouldn’t be bland.
Big Deal does offer a lot besides pizza. There are hot and cold subs, wraps, sides, salads, wings, burgers and hot dogs. There’s some seating, and although parking can be tough, they either do, or plan to, deliver. And they’re open till 3 a.m. on Thursdays and 4 a.m on Fridays and Saturdays.
Big Deal hasn’t been open long, and I’m not sure what to make of its long-term prospects. It has some competition from Acme, as well as fellow big-slice places Mark’s and Rookies Express.
I won’t presume to give business advice, but speaking solely as a pizza lover, I hope Big Deal changes its approach while it’s young and starts to offer a more authentic NYC-style pizza than just another big, heavy greasy slice. But I guess with a name like Big Deal, they’ve kind of painted themselves into a corner in that regard, and for all I know maybe that’s just what the Monroe Avenue bar-hopping crowd wants. From me, though, Big Deal gets a D.
Pizza Guy note, 11/25/09: since this review was written, I've revisited Big Deal, and given it a B-.

Shalom and good evening to you worthy friends.  Next stop on Pico Blvd. was a kosher pizza place.  There are quite a few of these places along this strip. I had low expectation for this based on my last experience with kosher pizza, Pizza Mayven.  Since I was making multiple stops on Pico, I tried to get slices where I could.  This place had slices, though they were closing at 3 ?  It was 2:50

Phil's Pizza is on the north side of Chili Ave., right across from the plaza where Good Guys is located. I got a lunchtime slice here, just after my Good Guys slice.
Eating one after the other like that accentuated the differences between the two pizzas. For one thing, Phil's was thicker. Not thick, exactly, but definitely not thin either. This was a medium-thick slice.
Phil's was also cooked on a screen. It had a little exterior crispness, but overall it had a pretty soft texture. Since I like a crisp exterior, this lent further support for my belief that pizza screens are not conducive to a good crust.
The edge, in contrast to the underside, was actually kind of hard and dry, although that might partly have been due to the pizza having sat out for a while, whick I'll get into later.
Biting into it, the first thing I noticed was the sauce, which is unusual, since the sauce at most places tends to take a back seat to the crust and cheese. The sauce here was applied a little thickly, and had a fairly thick consistency, but it also had a very distinctive flavor - heavy on the herbs, and a little on the sweet side.
The pepperoni was thin sliced, but had a nice crunch around the edges. It was a little greasy, as pepperoni will be.
Slices seemed limited to plain or pepperoni, but if you're ordering a pie, Phil's has a pretty ample list of toppings. They also have several specialty pizzas, including a diet-busting bacon cheeseburger pizza.
Besides pizzas, there are wings, subs and wraps, salads, quesadillas, grilled and fried stuff, and some pasta and seafood entrees. It's pickup and delivery only, and they open daily at 11 a.m.
So who wins this battle of cross-street rivals? Well on this visit, I have to give the edge to Good Guys. Part of that, I suppose, is due to my predisposition to thin-crust pizza.
Part of it, too, was also the relative freshness of my Good Guys' slice, which was so fresh out of the oven that I had to be careful not to burn my mouth. In contrast, when I got to Phil's, all the slices were sitting on unheated racks, and they looked as if they'd been there for some time. My slice was lukewarm at best, and the cheese had pretty well hardened. (The counter guy didn't offer to reheat it, by the way, not that reheating is any substitute for fresh, mind you.)
I hate to say it, but while eating my Phil's slice, "frozen pizza" popped into my head. I'm not saying that this was frozen pizza, just that it reminded me of a frozen pizza. It lacked the - how to put it? - vibrancy of a fresh-out-of-the-oven, baked-from-scratch pizza.
So in a way, this was not a fair comparison. If my Phil's slice had been as fresh as Good Guys', this might've been a tougher call. I still think I would've preferred Good Guys, but maybe not by as much.
But if a pizzeria is going to serve slices, it only seems it fair to judge it by what you happen to get when you walk in the door and order a slice. Especially if, like Phil's, it advertises on the menu that its slices are "fresh, hot and ready to go!" And especially at lunchtime, when slices ought to be fresh.
I don't mean to come down too hard on Phil's. It was OK and all. But as I said at the beginning of this two-part post, when two pizzerias are within a stone's throw of each other, it's hard not to make comparative judgments, especially if you try them back-to-back. Based on this one-time experience, Good Guys gets the nod over Phil's, which I'll give a C.

There is an old parable, attributed to a 14th-century French priest, that goes as follows:
"Imagine a donkey equidistant between two barrels of hay. Now imagine that this donkey is a rationalist, someone who will do nothing if it is not in accord with the dictates of reason. He cannot reason why one mound of hay is superior to the other. He stays in the middle trying to decide which should be his supper. Since there is no reason to move to one or the other, in time, the donkey starves to death."
Now what, you may be wondering, does this have to do with pizza? Well, this. My intent here is to judge each pizzeria I try independently, without judging one against the other. But when two pizzerias are across the street from each other, it's hard not to compare them, as I did recently with Carbone's and Caraglio's on Dewey Avenue in Greece. I mean, if you were halfway between them, which one would you choose? Hopefully my experience will help you make that decision, should you ever find yourself in that predicament, so you don't end up like the donkey.
So now we come to two more such pizzerias, on Buffalo Road in Chili: Good Guys and Phil's. First up is Good Guys. It's in a strip plaza on the south side of Chili Avenue, about half a mile west of Paul Road.
By the pie, Good Guys offers thin or thick pizza, but like most places, its to-go slices are all thin. Very thin, to the point that they almost have to be eaten folded. My slice had literally just come out of the oven, which probably made it a little sloppier to eat, but this was clearly "folding" pizza.
The underside was browned here and there, with an odd, almost tortoiseshell-like surface, with crackly islands of raised brown spots separated by pale areas where the dough hadn't come into contact with the cooking surface.
The cheese was applied to a medium thickness, but when the slice was folded, it naturally made the cheese thicker and more of a dominating presence. It wasn't greasy, had a bit of crispness to it, and the edge was crunchy in texture and toasty in flavor.
The cheese seemed to be straight mozzarella. It was applied to a medium thickness, although when the slice was folded the cheese naturally doubled in thickness and took on a more dominant presence. It was pretty well browned and was fairly chewy and a little stringy (of course it was still hot, as I mentioned).
The sauce was a little on the thin side, enough to lend some lubrication and moisture, but definitely a back-seat player here.
The pepperoni was basic wide-and-thin stuff, and made the surface pretty greasy; you could hold this pizza by the edge and let a good amount of grease drip off.
Good Guys advertises a "large New York style cheese pizza" for pickup every day for $7.25, so I assume that is the same as the thin. Judged as a NY style pizza, it's not bad. It's not charred at all, but the overall flavor and texture weren't far off from your typical City slice.
If you're ordering a pie, Good Guys has a respectable range of toppings available (including "newly added cup-n-curl pepperoni"), and a handful of specialty pizzas, nothing too exotic. They also do wings, subs, wraps, quesadillas, salads, various sides/appetizers, and even a little seafood. Delivery or pickup only, open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., 11 p.m. on weekends.
All in all, not a bad slice, though I was just a bit put off by the texture of the crust. Let's call it a B-.
Good Guys Pizza, 3313 Chili Ave. 889-2940
Sun. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.

Next up: Phil's Pizza.

Surace's is in East Rochester on West Commericial St., which is actually more of the "main drag" than Main St. I had a couple of pepperoni slices at lunchtime. (These are not "mega" slices.)
The crust was pretty thin, and didn't seem to have risen much, except along the edges, which were fairly thick, and where some big blisters had developed. One slice also nearly had a hole in the middle, and I'm guessing there had been a CO2 blister there that had been stretched nearly to the breaking point.
Obviously, no thin crust can have risen very much, but even a thin crust can have a nice, chewy/bready texture. This crust seemed a little gummy to me, especially on top. Maybe it sat too long with the sauce on it before going into the oven. The underside, which had just some faint charring, was a little greasy, although that seemed to be from sitting on a greasy pan after it came out of the oven rather than during the baking process, which would have made it crunchy. Where it wasn't greasy, the underside had a nice, slightly crisp surface.
The sauce was pretty good, a little herbal, about what I would expect on a typical New York style pizza. The cheese, which seemed to be 100% mozzarella, was laid on pretty thickly, a little too much for a thin pizza, in my opinion. As a consumer I hate to complain about being given too much for my money, but I could've done with a little less cheese.
The pepperoni was OK, pretty basic.
Surace's also offers hot and cold subs, wings, pasta dinners, and a Friday fish fry. They have a few specialty pizzas, but nothing too exotic. (The menu has something called an "Italian style pizza," but I have no idea what that is.) They're open 7 days a week till 10 p.m. and 11 on weekends.
This is going to sound more negative than I mean it to, but my impression of Surace's pizza was of a NY-style slice, only not quite as good as what you'd likely get in NYC. It had the thinness, and the overall flavor was good, but the crust was a little too gummy and not quite crisp/charred enough underneath, and to me the heavy layer of cheese threw it a bit out of balance. Don't get me wrong - put a Surace's pie in front of me and I would easily down several slices without complaint - but for me, this was pretty good, not great. I'll give it a B-.