Continuing my Southern Tier tour, I stopped a couple of weeks ago at Little Sicily's in Alfred (actually it's in Alfred Station, which is just east of Alfred). You can generally count on finding decent pizza in a college town, and Alfred is no exception.
Another thing you tend to find in college towns, at least in upstate New York, is New York (City) style pizza. I've always assumed that's because upstate schools have a fair number of downstate students.
My cheese slices (rather asymmetrically cut, but adding up to a little under a quarter of a pie) were very thin, floppy, and foldable. The underside showed screen marks, which isn't always a good sign, but it was reasonably crisp and not oily. There was a tiny bit of surface crackling, especially near the outer edge. The bottom was mostly brown, though not uniformly, and there were a few nearly charred spots.
The crust was, for my taste, good if not great. It did have some internal breadiness, and that balance between crisp and bready is what I look for, especially in a thin-crust pizza.
And it was well balanced as a whole. The sauce and cheese were added in good proportion to the crust, neither skimpy nor overdone or overwhelming. A heavy dose of dried herbs was visible, though they didn't seem to add much, flavorwise. (Dried herbs tend to accomplish more when added during "wet" cooking - a pot of spaghetti sauce or chili, for example - than when simply sprinkled onto a dish.)
Little Sicily boasts an impressive list of 30 pizza toppings, and seven specialty pizzas, including my beloved Margherita (they even got the spelling right on the menu). Pizzas come in sizes from 14" (what they call small), all the way up to 24" in diameter. They also serve wraps, wings, salads, subs, and sides.
This pizza was not far off from NY style pizza, if not quite spot-on (though in fairness, they don't seem to claim to make NY style pizza - I'm just trying to describe it). It's pretty decent college-town pizza, and well worth a stop if you're down that way.
If I ever come anywhere close to covering the Southern Tier scene in any comprehensive way, I'll go back and give ratings to these places. But for now I'm trying to keep the letter grades limited to the Rochester area. I'll call this one very good and leave it at that.
Little Sicily's, 933 State Rt. 244
Alfred Station, NY 14804
Mon. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - 3 a.m., Sun. 11 a.m. - midnight
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