Chapel Hill, NC

[pizzoid]

www.salsristorante.com

Sal's makes a good NY style pie. Haven't tried anything else on the menu!

I was just thinking of going there when visiting, and it occurred to me I should mention it here.

For Good New England style directions, "it's located across the parking lot from where A Southern Season used to be".   

- Al

[pizzoid]

I hereby revoke my recommendation. We were visiting Chapel Hill over the holidays. Sal's location in Eastgate closed down due to rent increases, and their remaining location over near the airport on Homestead & MLK drive was where we went. It was merely edible, nothing special. The place smelled like bleach, not pizza (yeah, so they got 100.5 on their sanitation scorecard, big deal). I have not tried Carmina's or whatever the place is that moved into the old Sal's location.

The sauce was pretty poor, more like a marinara than a pizza sauce. There are several canned sauces we've talked about in other threads that taste better than the sauce on my pie. Could be the two latinos in the kitchen and the college gal at the counter were not as enthused about doing things properly, though they were efficient, pleasant and polite. No sign of the older Italian guy that had been making pies at the old location.

Also, we tried Brooklyn Boys over in Cary. Crust was very nice, both crunch and chew, but the rest of the pie was pretty plain and unremarkable. Some might be annoyed by a slight gum line, but I didn't find it objectionable.

I guess Vinny's in Hillsborough is the last place I know of for good pizza down there, but it's been 2 years since I had theirs....

- Al

[lazysean]

Have you had Randy's?  There are 3 or 4 locations around I think, but we always went to the one on Hope Valley in Durham.  Great pizza, garlic knots that they slather garlic butter onto with a 4-inch brush, and even cheesesteaks.  Probably everything I ever ate there ranked among the best I'd had since moving from NJ.

[mikedks]

This is my first post here and just wanted to let everyone know where to get a real NY pizza while in Chapel Hill. As someone who grew up on Long Island, I guess you could say I am a pizza snob. No other pizza compares. I lived in Buffalo and in Chicago, sorry Buffalo, nice town but your pizza stinks. Chicago, not bad, not really a fan of the deep dish, but its OK. Well, I move down here and find a little Italian restaurant down the street from my house that has its own brick oven pizza. We gave it a try and were floored at how good it was, every time we try it, we are drooling idiots. Classic thin, chewy, salty, NY brick oven pizza, absolutely to die for.The restaurant is called "Tarantini's", and its located on Mt Carmel Church Rd in the Food Lion parking lot, right across from the Governor's Club. Its about 3 miles from downtown Chapel Hill heading toward Jordan Lake. If and when you come back to town, I highly, highly recommend you go there.

[ninapizza23]

Pizzoid,
personally I know one owner of Sal's restaurant that moved from Brooklyn, no experience in pizzamaking at all. My cousin used to work there because they were related but the owner is very mean to relatives. I heard sometime ago that somebody was opening a pizzeria like Bianco but I don't remember the name. 

[Tourmie]

I'm from Jersey and prefer Alfredo's Pizza in University Mall to Lombardi's or John's Pizzeria in Manhattan, and most of the Jersey places I've been to (except for Federici's in Freehold).