Offbeat Eats

(Closed) We walked. We ate. We drank. We even suffered a bit. But 22.6 miles after starting our journey, we hit the end of the Death March by arriving at Great Lake Pizza. The interesting thing about “pizza” and “Chicago” is that most people instantly assume that if you are talking about both of these in the same sentence, you’re talking about deep dish pizza. And hey, while I like a good deep dish pizza (although it’s not necessarily something I mentally file with my other pizza thoughts, to me, deep dish pizza and regular neo-Neapolitan pizza are like lasagna and spaghetti; there’s a lot of similarity, but it’s really a different foodstuff…), there actually is quite a bit of excellent pizza activity going on around Chicago that doesn’t involve deep dish. For every Lou Malnati’s or Gino’s East, there’s a decent place in Chicago that’s also churning out a classic thin-crust pizza, and doing a great job at it. One of the best is Great Lake Pizza.

The last six months or so, the usually calm and stagnant Upper Valley restaurant scene has had a few changes. One of bigger segments changing is the pizza scene: since last summer, we’ve had two new pizzerias show up in town, Cantore’s Pizza in West Leb in Glen Road Plaza, and Ziggy’s Pizza in North Country Plaza further down 12A. I plan to review both of these places, but I’ll start with Cantore’s. Cantore’s opened late last summer, being run by local experienced restauranteurs John Kelley and Vinnie Cantore (by the way, if you were wondering… the owner of Cantore’s is the brother of Jim Cantore, Weather Channel meteorologist and former Upper Valley resident). And while the Upper Valley is literally chock-a-block with pizza places (most having “Village” or “Chef” in their names), Cantore’s is trying to set themselves apart by doing a New York style pizza, and trying to use a better selection of ingredients: better mozzarella, fresher toppings, etc…

The Phoenix area is one of those areas that I visit often enough that I’ve started to have a “hit list” of places that I like to visit every time I’m in town. Sure, it cuts into my exploration of new places, but since I’ve enjoyed these so much in the past, I like to go back for another visit. The list is rather varied, but includes places such as The Chuckbox, Ted’s Hot Dogs, Haji-Baba’s, and Pizzeria Bianco. Indeed, I actually visited all of those places this visit (oddly, Carol hadn’t been to the Chuckbox or Bianco yet!), and they are all still going strong. But it’s worth talking about Pizzeria Bianco a bit more, since several changes have happened since I last reviewed them…

In what’s looking to be an annual tradition, several of my online friends and I descended on San Francisco, CA for a “Death March”. The idea is to plan a really long (~20 miles) hike through an urban area, hitting a wide cross section of neighborhoods, sights (tourist and unusual), and such, and most importantly, stopping along the way to check out the food (you don’t have to feel guilty about street cart food when you are hiking 20 miles). Last year was Manhattan. This year was the much more challenging San Francisco. However, San Francisco had two reasons for me to visit aside from Death Marching. First, my college roommate Steve lives there in the Mission district. Second, San Francisco is filled will all sorts of greatly little quirky food destinations (some of which remain obscure and quirky, and others, due to services like Yelp, you can now share with tens of thousands of your best friends). So I had a short list of places I wanted to check out while in town, and Steve and his wife Emily also had several places they wanted to introduce me to. The first of these was Pi Bar.

On Memorial Day, we decided to drive up to Burlington, Vermont, and go bike riding on the Island Line bike trail. Afterward, we then headed into downtown Burlington for some dinner, ending up at American Flatbread after stops at Three Needs for some beer and Hong’s Chinese Dumplings for a quick snack. We’ve long been fans of American Flatbread. Being first introduced to them via their frozen pizzas (which have outstanding quality, unlike most frozen pizza), we then visited their main bakery in Waitsfield, VT back in 2001. That place is an experience; they’ve taken an old barn, and 4-5 days a week they produce the frozen pizzas there, and for the weekends they put away the assembly line, rolls out tables with red-checked tableclothes, and run a very informal restaurant and bar. It’s quite the experience, and one I recommend (I’d write it up here, but I still don’t have photos from there), since it is about as “Vermont” as things get around here. In 2005, American Flatbread opened up a location in downtown Burlington, which brings a good part of the Flatbread experience to town.

Well, at 7pm on May 1st we finished the “Manhattan Death March” by arriving at the south end of Battery Park. After a short break as we watched the sun starting to set, it was decided that a celebration was in order, and that beer and pizza was going to be the order of the evening. After some discussion of various pizza options, we settled on John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street in the West Village. Down the street from Joe’s Pizza that I hit up earlier in the day, John’s is a very different pizzeria from Joe’s. Coal oven instead of gas fired. Whole pies and no slices. Table service instead of counter.

Anyone knows me knows that I love pizza. I’ll further admit that I’m a pizza snob. Growing up, I was taught by my Connecticut-raised father that there is One True Pizza, and that’s the pizza (err, Apizza) from Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napolitana in New Haven, CT, with begrudging acceptance of a choice few other places on the planet (most of them near New Haven, like Sally’s, and The Modern). Over the years, I’ve learned that there are a lot of other good pizza places hiding out there, turning out pizzas whose crust, sauce, or cheese (mostly the crust) are head-and-shoulders above the rest. Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco. American Flatbread in Waitsfield, VT. Grimaldi’s in Brooklyn. Patsy’s in Harlem. Lombardi’s in New York City. The last two of these show that if there’s a home to pizza in America that’s not New Haven, it’s New York.

An unfortunate fact of life if you’re driving across New York State is that there aren’t a whole lot of good food options near the Thruway. Usually, I try to stop someplace decent in Syracuse (like Dinosaur BBQ), but this time, when we were finally hungry for dinner, we stopped in Herkimer. Let me tell you, there aren’t a lot of options at 8pm on a Sunday in Herkimer, NY. But on our drive through town, we did see one place that looked worth checking out: Yetty’s Pizza on Mohawk Street. Yetty’s is your basic NY family pizza joint, with several pizzas with different toppings, your various Italian-American pasta and sub dishes, and a small selection of cheap beers. We ended up getting a large sausage and mushroom pizza (my standard pizza at most places)…

For years people (both friends in AZ and credible bloggers) have been telling me that I have to try Pizzeria Bianco, since it’s the “best pizza ever”. Yeah, I’ve heard that many times before, for many places, and usually when someone says a place is that good? It’s usually good, but no Pepe’s, Lombardi’s, or Punch (to name three of my pizza favorites). However, Bianco has gotten a huge amount of buzz, consistently, for years. And Chris Bianco has even gotten a James Beard award…

Big Ed’s is one of the historical institutions of Oak Ridge, TN. I’m not sure when exactly Big Ed’s opened it’s doors, but it’s definitely the pizza place that’s been around longest in Oak Ridge, since when I lived there I knew several people that had been swearing by Big Ed’s pizza for at least 3 generations. There are a lot of reasons to go to Big Ed’s. The pizza is one of them, being a contender for the best pizza in Oak Ridge (however, as one coworker of mine would say, that’s “damning with faint praise”, the rest of the pizza in town is pretty marginal). The other draws are the gritty ambiance (shown here, just the right amount of “dank”, and a bunch of TV, sports, and military banners that have been hanging probably at least as long as I’ve been alive). The friendly service. The catering to the little kids watching them make pizzas while hoping for a spare piece of pepperoni to get hurled to them. The very cheap beer. The decades of multilingual intercontinental graffiti in the men’s room. In other words, Big Ed’s is the epitome of a “Pizza Joint”…