The Pizza Thread

NY pizza is still overrated.

 

A relocated friend from Chicago was raving because his city finally got an Uno's pizza joint. Have been to the one where my sister lives and was not impressed. I'm sure the original is good stuff, but the expansion has not been all that great.

 

I've always had good pizza at Uno's. In fact, I like it better than more highly regarded Chicago places like Giordano's and Suparossa.

 

Deep dish is too much for me. If I wanted lasagna, I'd order lasagna.

 

Agreed. I go to Chicago half a dozen times a year and I've just about given up finding great pizza.

 

If you're looking for deep dish, you'll be hard-pressed to find it. Deep dish is what gets pawned off on tourists. The best pizza is at the local taverns, restaurants and such that serve almost exclusively thin crust.

 

Checking in from Southern California. My wife calls me a pepperoni purist. That's what I like, pepperoni. Don't laugh, Costco pizza is great. The best pizza I've ever had was at LaBarbera's on Wilshire in West L.A. It's been closed for probably 25 years (land too valuable for a single-story building with street-level parking) but locals still rave about it and go on Facebook to plead with the family to re-open. Virtually every kid growing up on the Westside of L.A. took their first dates to LaBarbera's. Oh yeah, the pepperoni (thinly sliced and stacked) is under the cheese. One of the sons made the effort to go to culinary school in Paris to learn the business, but the restaurant closed before he came back. So his dad funded him a restaurant in Paso Robles (200 miles from L.A.). He enjoyed it because he could surf every morning before going to work, but it finally closed. We went once and they still had the napkins and matchbooks with "LaBarbera's on Wilshire" on them.

 

Best pizzas I ever had were in Paris and Luxembourg.
Not so heavy on sauce and cheese, and flash-baked in wood-fired ovens. Great stuff.

 

Thick crust, pepperoni and red onions for me.

 

I'm just going to assume that this thread is as disappointing as I imagined it would be.

Thanks, Sunshine!

 

One man's opinion ...

* Best Chicagoland Pizza: Papa Passero's, western 'burbs. Go with the sausage and onion, it's awesome. Website: Papa Passero's Family Restaurant. - HOME
Home Run Inn is good, too, for the thin crust. Don't judge it by the frozen version they sell at Jewel and other Chi-town grocery stores.

* Recently returned from the Phoenix area, and after visiting there more than a dozen times the past 20 years, was shocked to finally find a good pizza chain: Barro's. Website: Barro's Pizza & Wings With 35 Valley Locations
There is some absolutely awful pizza in the "Valley of the Sun," with Peter Piper's perhaps the worst in the country. But Barro's hit the spot — good crust and sauce, generous with the toppings. And the ultimate test: tastes great cold for breakfast the next day.