Chester Cab Pizzeria

I was rather surprised last year by the amount of news coverage about the supposed closing of Chester Cab Pizzeria. True, it's been around since the 1970s, but I didn't think it was that much of a local institution, outside the Park Avenue area, to warrant such extensive coverage.
Then I found out that it wasn't closing, after all. It was going to continue in business, under a new owner, who had been an employee.
At that point, I thought the whole thing was a scam. There had been some fake closing, I thought, just to generate publicity for the miraculous rebirth.
I was wrong. There was no scam, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of Chester Cab's demise were greatly exaggerated.
Instead, ownership and operation were seamlessly assumed by Dessislav ("Dess") Ivanov, a native of Bulgaria who had been a long-time employee of Chester Cab.
I stopped in the other day, and got a couple of slices at lunchtime. While there, I chatted with Dess.
He started working here around 2000, so he knows the business well. When the former owner decided to get out of the business, Dess and he reached a deal for Dess to assume ownership.
Dess tells me that he was quite surprised to see the news stories about Chester Cab closing. Far from generating interest, Dess tells me that those reports have hurt, and that he is still trying to overcome the perception that Chester Cab has shut its doors.
But he's getting there, and he's clearly dedicated to making the operation better. He's made some physical changes, such as expanded outdoor seating, and he's working on expanding indoor seating as well, although as you can imagine, doing so requires jumping through a number of bureaucratic hoops.
Another thing Dess has tried to change is Chester Cab's reputation, in one respect at least. For whatever reason, the pizzeria had a certain reputation for rude service. That's not my judgment - take a look at some online reviews and you'll see for yourself.
Dess has set out to change that. As a native of Bulgaria, he frankly is quite familiar with poor customer service. And having lived here long enough to see what good customer service is all about, he's under no illusions that surly service adds to the "charm" of the place. (Again, I'm not saying that the service here was surly in the past, but I've seen complaints to that effect.)
And so it is that every day, Dess reminds his employees that customer service is the most important aspect of the business. Even if the pizza's good, if somebody gets turned off by bad service, they likely won't be back. So the message is, provide good service, and if the customer's not happy, address the problem.
At the same time, good customer service only goes so far. The pizza's got to be good too. Chester Cab still offers the meal-in-itself stuffed pizza that it's best known for, as well as its "regular" pizza and a newer, thin New York style pie.
I tried a slice of the regular (a/k/a "original") and NY style. They were similar, both thin, but the parbaked original was a little more browned underneath and slightly crisper. The NY style is a tad thinner and more foldable. I enjoyed both and found the subtle differences interesting, though on purely stylistic grounds I don't think I can say that the NY style was entirely authentic; a true NY slice should be more charred underneath, and both pliable and crisp. But semantics aside, both were tasty, with nicely melted mozzarella and a slightly sweet, tomatoey sauce. The essential difference came down to pliability vs. crispness.
While Dess continues to work to raise public awareness, he does say that he's gotten great support from the people in his neighborhood. I saw evidence of that during my visit when a customer, obviously a regular, stopped in with his dog in tow (which he got here, by the way).
I've been writing this blog for about five years, and Dess is as dedicated an owner as I've seen. He clearly wants to make his pizza as good as it can be, and to make his customers happy.
Dess told me that when his mother (who also lives here now) goes back to the old country, she doesn't hesitate to complain about the pizza, and to harangue the staff with complaints that they should go to America and try her son's pizza, to see what good pizza and good service are all about.
And I don't doubt it. Chester Cab offers good pizza, and good service.
In conjunction with this blog post, Dess graciously agreed to offer a $20 gift certificate for me to give away to a reader. If you'd like a chance to win, leave a comment at the end of the accompanying blog post. (You can leave general comments here, but they won't get you entered.) I'll pick a winner next week.
Chester Cab Pizza, 707 Park Ave
Rochester, NY 14607
(585) 244-8211

HOURS
Mon-Wed 11:00am - 10:00pm
Thurs 11:00am - 11:00pm
Fri-Sat 11:00am - Midnight
Sun Noon - 10:00pm

Giveaway: $20 Gift Certificate for Chester Cab Pizzeria

As mentioned in the accompanying blog post, I have a $20 gift certificate to give away, good for anything on the menu at Chester Cab Pizzeria on Park Avenue in Rochester. With five pizza styles to choose from, subs, and wings, you're sure to find something you'll like.
To enter to win, just leave a comment at the end of this blog post. Any comment will do. You don't have to include it now, but if you win I will need your full name and mailing address, which you can email to me at rochesternypizzaguy@gmail.com.
I'll pick a winner one week from today, Wed., March 12, a little after noon. The winner will be picked at random.

Vincenzo's, Elmira

Now and then I have occasion to travel to the Southern Tier, and on a recent trip down that way I stopped at Vincenzo's in Elmira.
Elmira's an interesting place; did you know that it's the site of Mark Twain's grave and a Civil War cemetery and prison camp? (And while we're on the subject, a modern-day state prison, although you won't see that in many guidebooks.)
And some pizzerias worth checking out. I've found that as you work your way into New York's Southern Tier, you tend to run across more pizzerias serving NY-style pizza. Some more successfully than others, to be sure, but the style itself seems to be more prevalent down that way. I'm not sure if that's a simple matter of relative proximity to NYC or just the lack of an indigenous style.
One purveyor of NY style pizza is Vincenzo's. Actually they don't claim to serve NY style, but rather Neapolitan (thin crust) and Sicilian (thick crust) pizza. But their thin pizza is broadly in the NY style.
On my visit, they had about five or six sliced pies to choose from, including one Sicilian pizza. I got a thin cheese slice.
This was quite thin, with a pale but crackly bottom. It  was a little floury underneath, but not too bad.
The slice was topped with a salty/sweet tomato sauce, in pretty good proportion to the thin crust. The mozzarella was decent enough, but nothing special, and there was a good inch and a half along the edge with no cheese. Had the crust been outstanding, that would've been perfectly acceptable, but the crust was, like the slice in general, just OK.
Vincenzo's offers 20 pizza toppings, and 11 specialty pizzas. They also do hot and cold subs ("hoagies"), wings, pasta, salads, calzones, stromboli, and a few other munchies.
I haven't always graded out-of-town pizzerias, but to me this one's an obvious "C." It was all right, not bad, but nothing special. No big flaws but it could've been better, with a crisper crust and a better coating of good cheese. So a C it is.
Vincenzo's Pizzeria & Hoagies, 303 N. Main St., Elmira
607-846-6584, 607-215-7379
Mon. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Sun. 4 - 9 p.m.