Ciao Readers!

I have talked about a pizza-review post for a while, but have failed to deliver.  I think the reason is, there are some things that they just do right here (like gelato, olive oil, wine, pasta….), making it really hard to pick the “best.”   What it really comes down to is that there are several places that do things very well, and you end up picking the one where the folks are the nicest.  Such is the case in our pizza quest. (But in case you’re wondering, we both prefer thin-crust pizzas, more crispy than not.)

Now don’t get me wrong – not everyone does pizza well.  There are tons of pre-made pizza places in town where you just pick the kind you want from the display case and they heat it up for you (barely).  In my humble opinion, these pizzas are really inferior (not only due to being tepid in temperature, but also in flavor), and with so much good pizza in town, why eat this stuff?!  (Okay, one answer is real pizza places don’t open till 7:30 at night, while these heat-and-eat places may be open all day, but still…)  “Fast-food” pizza:

“Real” pizza is made on-the-spot in a super-hot brick oven – it only takes about 90 seconds for one to cook, so it’s worth the “wait” for the real deal.   We’ve only tried places in our neighborhood so far, as ya want the pizza hot when you get it home.  The two runners-up in our neighborhood are La Luna (pictured first) and Le Stagioni (pictured next).  La Luna actually makes pretty yummy pizza, but they are the most expensive and least friendly (not unfriendly, just comparatively less so), so lose for subjective, non-taste-related reasons.  The folks at Le Stagioni are very friendly and their pizza is good, but just a little undercooked for my taste (notice the crust color), so they come in a close second (sorry for the pics – sorta like apples and oranges as the first was a specialty pizza and the second was a plain margherita):

Our “winner” is…… Fuori Piazza Restaurant (nope, not a type-o, piazza, not pizza).  Their pizza tastes great (and is nice and crispy) and they are super friendly.  The restaurant itself looks like a cozy local joint and next time (if we can wait that late), we’ll probably actually sit down instead of ordering pizza to go (they also have pasta and risotto dishes).  Here are both their margherita pizza as well as one with ham and zucchini:

Thanks for coming along for our pizza-taste-testing!  Bon appetit!