Best Pizza in the Country (according to Slice.com)

[Mad_Ernie]

Via Slice.com, Adam Kuban, Ed Levine (and a few others) sampled pizzas from 64 pizza restaurants in four major regions of the US to find out who had the best pizza.  Neither the final four, nor the winner will likely come as a surprise to members of this forum.    

Posted on Adam's Slice website, and on Rachael Ray's magazine website, here they are:
  
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/02/pizzeria-bianco-wins-rachael-ray-pizza-madness-bracket.html#comments
  
http://www.rachaelraymag.com/every-day-living/trip-advice/food-trip-advice/the-search-for-americas-best-pizzeria

[misscc]

How cool, I live 15 minutes from this place :)

Have been hearing about it for years. I've just started making my own pizzas at home... time to be deliciously inspired by the best!

[scott123]

Yup. More Bianco hype    Remember, though- it's a 3 hour wait, and, with his health issues, he probably won't be on the premises. Any chef worth their salt should be able to hand down their craft to someone else, but I'm not 100% certain the 'best' pizza in the nation is something that can be delegated that easily.

Besides, it's all about Neapolitan these days. We New Yorkers get no respect 

[Puzzolento]

Bet none are in Miami.

[Puzzolento]

Hmm...Food Network star compiles list of best pizzerias. Other Food Network star's bad LA pizzeria is near the top of the list.

Totally credible.

[scott123]

Was this list compiled in 30 minutes or less? 

[Mad_Ernie]

Was this list compiled in 30 minutes or less? 

I don't know, but I bet you could eat a fair amount of pizza for $40 a day. 

[JConk007]

Puzzolenta,
Not sure they made it to "wood Fired" PF Taylor goodness. Just a guess, but I think he may have  a wrap on the Florida market ?
John

[Puzzolento]

I don't know who PF Taylor is, but if he makes good pizza, he almost certainly doesn't operate here in Miami! If he does, I need to look him up. This city was built by transplanted New Yorkers, but the pizza scene is still terrible. This is the whole reason I learned to make my own.

I looked into the two Miami pizzerias that made the list. Naturally, they're not real street pizzerias. They sell what Bruce Willis referred to as "reindeer goat-cheese pizza." Frilly, lacy stuff for perfumed and pampered bro-wearing metrosexuals with waxed chests and nail gloss. I have never been to either of these places. I'm extremely turned off by the gourmet pizza craze, and I look forward to seeing it end so real pizza chefs can buy up the used equipment.

I guess some would argue that metrosexual pizza is more like the stuff they made back in Italy in the stone age, but I don't care. I'm not from Italy. I grew up in America, eating American pizza made by American-born Italian-Americans. Give me a frumpy pie baked in a Baker's Pride oven, any day. I wonder if the Food Network/Foodie Establishment crew even considered normal pizza when they compiled their initial list. Food TV isn't about good food. It's about novelty, which draws viewers.

I don't like food and beer competitions. The judges' biases kill off a lot of competitors before they walk in the door, and if you have connections, you start the contest on third base. I recall reading about a piano competition Arthur Rubinstein lost; today everyone knows who Rubinstein is, but nobody remembers the mediocre "chosen one" who beat him. The same thing happens in food and beer contests. And of course, the Nobel Peace Prize race.

Here's to food that isn't clever or chic but tastes great!

[shango]

"one man's trash is the other man's treasure.", and  "taste is subjective". 

Personally, I would have liked to see Il Pizzaiolo at the top of the bracket.

[Bill/SFNM]

IMHO, "Best of" or "Top-10" lists are just lazy journalism. I guess if you can't think of something to interest and inform your readers, you can always resort to a list. Reviews are fine. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like. But a sharp stick in the eye is more entertaining than another one of these mindless articles.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[Puzzolento]

I agree completely. If you want good pizza, find out where fat cops eat. Seriously.

[PizzaPolice]

I agree completely. If you want good pizza, find out where (RETIRED) fat cops eat. Seriously.

That's why I have to give the nod to Justin (La piazza al Forno) over in Glendale over Bianco.  Amazing stuff.

[TXCraig1]

Does anyone believe they actually visited all these places? And, there are some pretty good names missing altogether - Luzzo's for one! or Patsy's.

I had to laugh when I saw Russo's NY Coal Fired Pizza on the list. A franchise place? The one time I went in there, they put spinach on my margherita thinking it was basil!

Craig

[Mad_Ernie]

I don't know who PF Taylor is, but if he makes good pizza, he almost certainly doesn't operate here in Miami! If he does, I need to look him up. This city was built by transplanted New Yorkers, but the pizza scene is still terrible. This is the whole reason I learned to make my own.

One of the great contributors to this forum. 

Check it out:

http://wood-firedpizza.com/default.aspx

[waynesize]

One thing is for certain, the "judges" did not eat pizza at the homes of the members of this forum.  I bet that list might look a little bit different if they had.  I feel confident that some of the best pizzas being made in this country are coming from the many home kitchens and backyard wood fired ovens of our forum community.  I'd bet money on it! Just my 2 cents worth 

[BurntFingers]

I second that response.  I've eaten pizza cross country-especially NYC and Trenton and in some of the best places in southern Italy.  The best pizzas I would venture to say is from either wood-fired or coal fired ovens.  Many of those wood fired ovens are backyard rigs.

[Puzzolento]

I'll bet pizza is like beer.

The best beer is made by individuals. After that, microbrews. After that, big companies that care about what they produce. Then comes Budmilcoors, and after that, horse urine.

No, horse urine comes before Budmilcoors.

[widespreadpizza]

 Give me a frumpy pie baked in a Baker's Pride oven, any day.

Puzzolento,  I appreciate opinionated people on this site,  otherwise there would not be a site,  but as a fellow craft beer lover and homebrewer who can also appreciate a macrobrew or two some of your statements just seem to contradict each other.  If you convert the above statement to beer,  it seems to me that you said just give me an American lager,  when you take into account that the majority of pizza comes out of deck ovens.  Now you say the best pizza comes from individuals,  but more of these people have wood fired ovens,  not deck ovens.  I'm sorry,  and not meaning to pick a fight here,  but it seems that you hold beer to a higher standard than pizza.  Some of the best pizza makers on this site will drink macrobrew while eating some of the best pizza around that they made themselves,  and that does not make them wrong.....  its just what they like or want at the time.  It seems to me that you discredit yourself arguing about beer,  so lets not.  -marc

[Puzzolento]

I'm not offended at all. I think you raise a good point. I like the best possible NY street pizza more than a weird yuppie pie. No doubt about it. And the NY-style pizza I make in a cheesy GE oven is better than anything I can buy around here. It's the best pizza I've ever eaten.

I'll tell you something interesting. I have friends I couldn't get interested in fancy ales and stouts, so I made up a recipe for a vastly superior version of American lager. I used corn in it, and I would never do that with my other beers. I loved this stuff. It was amazing. It didn't matter that I was working from a style which usually produces disgusting beer.

You can take the same skills you put into a barleywine or a tripel and use them to make a delicious lager out of unlikely ingredients. There is a difference between true beer lovers and smarmy beer snobs who would shoot themselves if a twist-off cap were found in their trash.

It's possible to do wonderful things with food most people would consider unsophisticated or lower-class. My mother raised me on stuff like biscuits and gravy and cornbread. A good, simple cornbread is something any cook can be proud of, and 99% of the people who bake cornbread do a poor job. Very few people can make a good biscuit. I'd rather have a good Southern or Cuban meal, prepared well, than a grotesque but creative dish prepared by a gourmet chef who has been to cooking school but doesn't know what tastes good. The real test of a dish isn't how creative it is or how trendy it is. It's whether people want seconds and thirds.

I'll eat nouvelle cuisine or fusion or whatever the new name for it is, when it's good, but it has to be better than the slop I had at Mozza and Lupo. That stuff was disgraceful. And Bobby Flay's 350-degree prime rib is so silly and so outrageous, I shouldn't even have to explain it. Not to a real cook.

I don't know if most serious pizza cooks use deck ovens or wood or what, but I'll bet the best pies of all styles are made by individuals, and I'm quite sure many of those pies come out of very ordinary ovens.