pizza

It's back to Buffalo today, for a quick sample of Joe's, which has gotten high marks on the web for its take on New York style pizza. They also do deep-dish (they're clearly taking a broad approach), but it was the NY style that I was after.
I got a couple of cheese slices, which is the best way, generally, to sample this style - both because the lack of other toppings means you can concentrate on the essentials - crust, sauce, and cheese - and because we're talking here not just about New York style, but New York slice-joint style. Most places that strive to emulate NY style pizza are not after the fancy-schmancy "artisanal" (which too often means overhyped and overpriced) pizza that people in NYC wait two hours in line for the privilege of eating. We're talking the kind of pizza that you can get, for a reasonable price, at countless small pizzerias throughout the five boroughs: thin yet bready, crisp, typically reheated for a minute or two, with a good balance of sauce (which shouldn't be overly seasoned with herbs, sugar or anything else) and well-melted, low-moisture, whole-milk mozzarella cheese.
Joe's slices were appropriately thin, with an underside that was more brown than charred, but nice and crisp, with some light surface crackling. The crust was also foldable, meaning that it could be folded down the middle without cracking in two, but not so floppy as to have the tip drop downward.
The slices were topped by a thin layer of sauce, which had a straightforward, tomatoey flavor, and an even blanket of mozzarella. The three components were well balanced.
Lots of places claim to make New York style pizza, when all they do is make thin-crust pizza. Sorry, but it ain't the same thing. This, though, was a pretty good example of the style. I can't say that it was a truly outstanding example, primarily because the crust didn't quite have that slight charring that I would expect.
Not to digress, but I guess I should explain - what I'm looking for, specifically, with NY style pizza is a crust that's mostly fairly light in color, but with significant blackened, but not burned, areas. If it's uniformly browned, that's not quite right, for the style. The former gives you a crisp but chewy crust, with toasty overtones, while the latter gives you, well, a browned crust, kind of like the outside of a loaf of bread. Still good, perhaps, but without the subtle contrasts of flavor, aroma and texture that you'll find in a great NY style slice.
Having said all that, the bottom line is how much I like the pizza, not whether it conforms to some preconceived notions of mine. As for these, well, if I had gotten them in a slice joint in the City, I'd be happy with them, but I would only consider them average.
But even average pizza in New York City is pretty good, as far as I'm concerned. And true New York style pizza is not always easy to find in Western New York. Not that I would ever want New York style pizza to supplant our native regional styles (and Buffalo has its own style, which I think is subtly different from Rochester's pizza), but it's still nice to find good New York style pizza in these parts. This pizza was among the better, if not the best, examples that I've tried around here.
I haven't been rating the Buffalo pizzerias that I report on, because I know most readers, if they're searching for a place on this site, are looking for something in the Rochester area, and because I know that I'll never come close to covering the full Buffalo pizza scene, so it's tough for me to rate them, since my ratings are based in part on how pizzerias stack up against their area competitors. So I won't assign a grade to this pizza either. But I will say that I liked it, and that if you're looking for New York style pizza in Buffalo, this would be a good place to go.
Joe's NY Style Pizza, 345 Amherst St., Buffalo
Tel. (716) 447-0165
Hours: Mon. - Thu. 10 a.m. - 11 p.m., Fri. - Sat. 10 a.m. - midnight, Sun. 10 a.m. - 10 p.m.

I was recently sent a bottle of wine from Campo Viejo, for review purposes. Campo Viejo is a half-century-old Spanish winery that produces a full range of wines.
With a name that's a mouthful in itself, Campo Viejo Rioja Crianza is a medium-bodied red wine that's aged in oak barrels for 12 months before being bottled, after which it's aged for several more months before being sold. It's a blended wine made mostly from Tempranillo grapes,
I shared a bottle with some friends recently, over pizza. The consensus was that this wine made a good pizza partner. It had some fruitiness, balanced by tannic notes, a faint spiciness, and a background oakiness. And it was generally agreed that this was a versatile wine. It made a good companion for both the tomato sauce and the cheese on our pizza, so it would be a natural for other tomato- and cheese-based dishes, with a cheese sampler, or with both red and white meats. At about $10 a bottle, this would make a nice addition to your wine rack, or a gift for your dinner host.
Campo Viejo Riojo Crianza
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $10.00 (approx.)

Meg! After assigning each comment a number, I went to random.org, and Meg@A Dash of Nutmeg is the winner of a $25 gift certificate from Sully's Brickyard Pub.
Meg, I don't think I have your address, so please email me at rochesternypizzaguy@gmail.com, and send me your mailing address. I'll get your certificate out to you. Congratulations and thank you to all who participated. I will try to continue to make these contests a regular feature on the blog.

Thanks to a reader, I learned about the recent opening of a new pizzeria in Mendon, Pizza D's. (I try to keep up with pizza openings and closings, but I do rely a lot on readers to keep me up to date, so please let me know of recent discoveries.) Pizza D's occupies the former site of  a Pontillo's pizzeria.
I ordered an 18-inch large pie, half pepperoni, half sweet peppers and onions, along with some wings.
The crust on my pie was thin to medium, with a dry, firm bottom that I would call "nearly" charred. It had some dark brown areas that weren't quite blackened. I'm guessing Pizza D's individual slices would be good, as a reheating would give the underside a little more of a charred, toasty flavor and aroma. But it was pretty good as it was. The bottom was lightly dusted with corn meal, not much, but just enough to help slide it off the peel.
The crust was topped with a moderately flavored sauce. It was the type I call "middle of the road" - tomatoey, not too salty, not too sweet, not too "herbal". If you like an assertively flavored sauce, you might consider this on the bland side, but I liked it, and it also had a good texture, neither dried out nor watery.
The cheese was just a bit browned. Pizza D's uses whole milk mozzarella, with a pinch of Romano. I can't say that I tasted the Romano, but the mozzarella was pretty good, not stringy or gooey, but also not dried out or oily. The three parts of the pizza trinity here - crust, sauce, and cheese - were well balanced and blended well.
The extra toppings were good too, nothing remarkable, but good. The pepperoni slices were thin, with a slightly crisp texture and meaty flavor, and the veggies were fresh.
The edge of the crust was medium thick, and displayed some nice breadiness, as seen in the bottom photo. All in all, a good pie.
No photos, I'm afraid, but the wings were pretty good too, with a reasonable amount of meat on their bones and a true-to-style medium Buffalo sauce. I ordered mine regular, but Pizza D's also offers "Char-B-Q" wings, which are fried and then grilled for some extra crunch and grilled flavor. I plan to try those next time. Oh, and they serve celery sticks with their wings, which you don't always get anymore, but which I still like (and they were crisp, not bendy).
Which means I think there will be a next time. I often feel like "so many pizzerias, so little time," so I don't always get back to places as soon as I'd like, but Pizza D's will be on my go-to list. This was good pizza, a bit generic, perhaps, but well made. And considering that they'd only been open a short time when I went, that's pretty promising for the future.
If you go, you should know that Pizza D's offers a very wide range of toppings, including - and this may be a first around here - black truffle oil. By my count, there are 13 specialty pizzas available. I'll give a special mention to "The Godfather," which comes with red sauce, chopped garlic, mozzarella, and ... are you ready? pepperoni, capicola, salami, meatballs, pastrami and Italian sausage. I don't think that's for me, but it deserves note for the sheer abundance of meat on one pizza.
Pizza D's wings also come with several varieties of sauce, and they serve hot and cold subs, calzones, pasta, finger foods and salads. There is some seating, and they deliver for a $2 charge.
So - I liked this pizza. I won't give it a top rating, not because I didn't like it, but only because, as good as it was, it wasn't particularly distinctive, and so it wasn't something I would drive many miles out of my way for. If I lived on the other side of the county, I could probably find something roughly equivalent closer to home.
But, having said that, this was a well made, tasty pizza, and certainly a good option for folks in the Mendon area. That's good enough to rate a B+ from me.
Pizza D's, 1350 Pittsford Mendon Rd. (Mendon Commons), Mendon, NY 14506
Tel.: 582-6087
Hours: Mon. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - 11 p.m., Sun. noon - 9 p.m.

It's been some two and a half years since my last visit to Russo's Clubhouse Pizza on Long Pond Road. It's way up by the Parkway and I don't get up that way too often.
But it was past time to go back, so I took advantage of having to run an errand up that way and stopped in for a slice.
This was as fresh a slice as you could get, having literally just come out of the oven. So as is often the case with hot, fresh slices, it was a little sloppy looking, since the cheese hadn't had much time to set.
This slice had a thin to medium crust, which had clearly spent some time on a screen, but unlike a lot of screen-baked crusts, this one was reasonably crisp (it's always seemed odd to me that the ostensible purpose of a pizza screen is to produce a crisp crust, and yet screen-baked crusts are usually anything but crisp). There were a few small spots where the bottom had charred or blackened just a bit. The interior of the crust also showed a nice rise, with an airy texture or "crumb," in breadspeak.
There was a good amount of sauce on this slice. Again, because the slice had just come out of the oven, it may have seemed more "wet" than usual, but it was on the saucy side. The sauce had a cooked-tomato flavor that was more sweet than salty, but not overly sweet.
The cheese seemed to be straight low-moisture, or processed mozzarella (which is not a bad thing - if you're unfamiliar with the different kinds of mozzarella, go here). It was a little gooey, but good. And the slice as a whole was pretty well balanced between the crust, sauce and cheese. And the pepperoni, which was crisp along the edges but not dried out.
I liked this slice. It was pretty similar to the one I had before (which I gave a B-minus), but - maybe because it was so fresh - I do think it deserves to get bumped up one notch. It was well balanced, tasty and reasonably crisp underneath, so I'm giving it a B.
Russo's Clubhouse Pizza, 496 Long Pond Road, Greece, NY 14612
Tel.: 225-3570
Hours (call ahead to confirm): Sun. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 10:30 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - midnight

I had lunch yesterday at Sully's on South Avenue downtown (I didn't have pizza - sometimes it's nice to take a break - but one of my companions did, as seen in the photo), and they very graciously agreed to give me a $25 gift certificate, to give away to one lucky reader. I've always enjoyed Sully's wood-fired pizza, and if you haven't tried it yet, you'll be in for a treat if you win (even if you don't win, you should check out their pizza sometime). And of course the gift certificate is good for anything on Sully's menu, not just pizza (their burgers are really good too).
To be eligible to win, all you have to do is leave a comment at the end of this post. I will need some way of contacting you if you win, though, including a postal mailing address, so just leaving an anonymous comment will not do. If your Google profile contains contact information, that'll work. Otherwise, you can put an email address directly into your comment, or you can email me with your information, but you must leave a comment at the end of this post to be eligible. Just sending me an email is not enough. Once you win, I can get your postal address and mail it to you.
I'd like you to check out Sully's menu and include in your comment what you think you'd like to try there, or leave some other comment about Sully's, but it's not a strict requirement. Any comment will do. You can leave as many comments as you wish, but leaving more comments will not increase your chances of winning.
I will pick a winner, at random, in one week, next Friday, February 10. The deadline for entering is noon on that day, although I may not announce a winner until sometime that afternoon. But if you want to be sure to get in, do it by noon on the 10th.
Sully’s Pub, 242 South Ave.
(877) 805-3570

Hey all you business owners, check out where you can get plastic card printing for your own gift cards. Great looking gift cards make for great givaways!

There are a number of restaurants around town that offer pizza, but that aren't the kind of places you go to to get a pizza to go. Those tend to take me longer to get to, since I can't just get one at lunchtime or on the way home. But I do try to get to them when I can.
One such place is Otto Tommoto's in Victor. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was a chain restaurant. Something about the cutesy name, I guess. But it's not. It's an independent Italian restaurant, in a strip plaza on Rt. 96, a little east of Victor.
I had dinner there recently with my wife. Pizzas were listed as an appetizer, so I got one as such, although I could've easily made it my entree. With a pasta entree, another shared appetizer that my wife ordered, and a salad (which also proved to be superfluous, given the greens on my pizza), I had way too much food, and ended up taking some of the pizza home.
Otto's has five grilled pizzas on the menu - the original (basically a red-sauce pizza with four cheeses), a mushroom pizza, a "Tuscan Grill" pizza with olives, veggies, herbs and truffle oil, a clam pie, and a zucchini-crusted pie with veggie toppings.
Ordinarily I'd go for the most basic option, but the zucchini-crusted pie was the winner of Otto's 2011 Wooden Spoon Scholarship competition, submitted by Michael Piccone of the Finger Lakes Technical Career Center. Every purchase of this pizza adds another dollar to next year's scholarship fund. And it sounded pretty good, with a grilled pizza crust infused with shredded zucchini, and topped with sun-dried tomato pesto, Kalamata olives, Roma tomatoes (which are somewhat annoyingly, to me, spelled "tomottos" throughout the menu), Feta cheese and roasted peppers. So that's what I got.
The crust was soft, and reminiscent of pita bread. But it was enjoyable - I have nothing against pita bread - and had some added flavor imparted by the grilling, which was evident from the marks underneath. I didn't particularly notice any presence of the zucchini "infused" into the crust, but that's kind of how it is with zuccini. I mean, zucchini bread doesn't sound that great to me, but it's OK because it doesn't really taste like zucchini. Zucchini just seems to blend into dough without adding a lot of flavor or texture. It did leave me wondering, though, what Otto's regular, non-zucchini-infused crust is like.
With all the toppings on this pizza, it was a pretty "busy" pie, but the toppings worked well together, even if the total effect wasn't quite as flavorful as I'd expected. It was almost like a salad atop a grilled flatbread, but I enjoyed it well enough.
And I did like the restaurant in general. I should mention that our other appetizer, "Otto chips" (bottom photo) were downright addictive. These were homemade potato chips topped with roasted red peppers, scallions, Alfredo sauce, bacon, olives and Asiago cheese. As the menu says, they're essentially "Italian nachos." Not exactly diet food, but delicious.
And I must also mention that the service was good. It was good throughout our meal, but what stood out was that at the end of our meal, our server asked if my wife's entree was all right, since she left a lot of it on the plate. When my wife said that she wasn't thrilled with it, our server took it back to the kitchen, and emerged to say that it had been taken off our bill. That's good service, and I appreciated that.
This is one of those places I'd go back to, but probably not for the pizza. I am kind of curious about their regular pizza crust, but there are other things on the menu I'd like to try, and overall I was well pleased with the restaurant. This pizza was so different from conventional pizza - and it was pretty accurately described on the menu - that I don't think it would be fair to rate it. I will say that it's not a bad option, but there are other items on the menu that I'd probably opt for next time.
Otto Tomotto's, 300 Phoenix Mills Plaza, Route 96, Victor, NY
Tel.: 585-742-2070Hours:  Tue. - Thu. 11:30 - 9 p.m., Fri. 11:30 - 10 p.m., Sat. 4 - 10 p.m., Sun. noon - 8 p.m.