Having recently reported on a couple of places in Geneseo, and with a new school year approaching, I figured it was a good time to check out another college town closer to home.Brockport has several pizzerias, three of which I recently visited. I'll start with the oldest and best of the bunch, Main Street Pizzeria.
If you're ordering a full pie, Main Street offers "NYC" or "Traditional" style, as well as white pizza, but the emphasis here is clearly on NYC, as evidenced by the black-and-white photos on the wall of Joe DiMaggio and other icons of Gotham.
And if you're ordering by the slice, NYC style is your only option. But not to worry. These are some good NY style slices.
Full size but not "mega," my cheese slice very thin, with a crisp, moderately charred underside. It was foldable, but when folded, the tip stood straight out - no flopping - showing that it had that combination of pliability and backbone that is the hallmark of NY pizza.
The crust had a bit of crunch to it, with some interior breadiness. The sauce was applied lightly, also true to style, and had a straightforward tomatoey flavor.
The cheese was a tad on the thick side for a NY slice, but not enough to throw the pizza out of balance or to overwhelm the other components. It had a pleasant chewiness and a slightly lactic tanginess.
While munching on the edge, it occur
red to me that a good pizza - especially a NY pizza - should have an edge just wide and thick enough to allow you to savor its bready qualities, but no wider or thicker than that; if I wanted to eat plain bread, I would've gotten a loaf of bread. This met that test, with a nice, crunchy/chewy edge that was about the size and texture of a good breadstick.Main Street doesn't do specialty pizzas as such, but they have a reasonably wide variety of toppings to choose from. The rest of the menu is pretty extensive, with wings, grilled items, "plates," hot and cold subs, wraps, various sides, and several pasta dinners. There's some seating, including a couple of tables outside in nice weather. They also deliver.
With school still a month away, Main Street was cranking out the pies on my dinnertime visit, and come September I imagine things will only pick up even more. The well-preserved eponymous street out front is more small-town America than Big Apple, but the City has a culinary outpost at #82. I'm giving Main Street Pizza an A-.
Main Street Pizza, 13 Main St., Brockport. 637-8760. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m. daily.
This may not be relevant to this specific blog entry, but I feel the overall concept here is great, just kind of off track. I feel that to accurately assess pizzas, you need to order a large pizza and judge it that way. I feel the lunch slice can really give an inaccurate portrayal of the pizza quality.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I see your point, but I have a few thoughts in response.
ReplyDelete1. I don't claim this to be a scientific study. Sometimes I get a slice, sometimes a whole pie, but I always say which it is, so the reader can take it for what it's worth.
2. I can cover more places in less time by buying slices. As a practical matter I can't generally get more than one large pizza a week. It would take several years to cover all the pizzerias around here if I did it that way. I know I'm not under a time limit but I really don't want it to take that long.
3. Some readers may like to know what to expect if they stop in for a slice or two. So there's some value in that.
4. The slices should be fairly representative of the pizza. They are presumably cut from the same kind of pizza you would get if you ordered a whole pie. If a slice is cold and dried out because it's been sitting on a rack for an hour, that's the pizzeria's fault. They should throw it out, eat it themselves, or give it away, and put out a fresh pizza.
5. Finally, some of the pizza I've tried has really not been very good. I frankly wouldn't like to have bought an entire large pizza just to find out that it sucks. I'd much rather find out after buying just one slice. But if I get a slice from a particular pizzeria and it was decent, I would consider ordering a whole pie from them sometime, and if and when I do, I'll do an update.
Again, I appreciate the comments.