Last evening I attended Rochester Pizza Palooza 2025 at Comedy @ The Carlson with my family. We had a fine time, until ... well, I'll get to that later.
The doors opened at 5:00 for Happy Hour in the bar area, and the pizza tasting started at six in the adjacent room where the comedians perform. We arrived around 5:45 to find the barroom pretty crowded; attendance was certainly good.
The doors to the tasting room opened a few minutes after six. Although there were supposed to be nine pizzerias represented, I think there were eight. I could be mistaken, but I don't recall seeing one of the listed participants, Mac's Pizza Shack.
Each of us was given a ballot where we could vote for Best Traditional Pizza, Best Specialty Pizza, and Best Booth. At each booth (table, really), they had at least two and in some cases several pizzas to choose from. Some places opted to do very narrow slices, others did a square cut, but naturally these were just small sample size pieces.
I will confess, I did not try every pizza from every pizzeria. As much as I love pizza, I can only eat so much. And the fuller I got, the more discriminating I became, so I would forgo trying a pizza that didn't look particularly tempting or intriguing to me.
I won't try here to describe or rank all the pizzas I tried, but I will say that my overall favorite was the waaay too-longed-named
Tuscan Wood Fired Pizza ~ Tony Tomatoes Italian Take Out & Food Truck Catering (which I
reviewed in 2011). They had several varieties of both thin- and thick-crust pizza, all of which that I tried were very good.
They had one advantage over the other pizzerias, in that they use a food truck, with a pizza oven inside. It was parked right out front, so they were able to bring hot pizza in as needed, fresh out of the oven. The other pizzerias, I assume, were bringing in pies from their various locations, and they had no means of reheating or crisping them. But even taking that into consideration, I really liked "Tuscan." The crust was very good, not just in the baking, but in the rising. Chewy, airy, flavorful. They know their stuff.
My wife particularly liked Gia's Pizza Kitchen from East Rochester. I wish I had tried more than the one bite-size sample I got, which didn't thrill me, but it was too small a sample size to go by.
And my wife's instincts were borne out by the results of the voting. Gia's won for best traditional. I will move Gia's to near the top of my list to try, for a full (and fairer) review.
Tuscan (Tony) won for best specialty. They had several on offer, which was a smart move because voters didn't have to specify a particular specialty pizza. But I especially liked what I believe was their Roman-style Margherita. It had a thick but airy crust, charred underneath, heavily topped with lightly seasoned tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil. Kudos to them also for putting out labels in front of each pizza, so you knew what you were looking at.
Best booth went to Rhino's, which featured their dill pickle pizza. I should've tried it, but the line was long and I was pretty full by the time I thought about it, which meant I couldn't have given it my fairest consideration, as food always tastes better when you're hungry. It's another one for the to-do list. But their booth was nicely decorated and they did a good job in presenting their wares.
So it was a fun event. Really good. And now we get to the until I mentioned earlier.
I have an unfortunate tendency to be a fast eater, so I got done pretty quickly. It was only a little after seven, but I had no particular desire to stick around for the announcement of the winners. My family were done too. So we left.
I had parked in an open-air lot across the street, among a bunch of other cars. But when we got there, something was amiss. I didn't see my car.
The car was gone. I knew exactly where it had been; it wasn't there. I started questioning myself: did I lock it? Yes, I did. I'm positive. Called 911, RPD showed up, they had found some inexpensive personal items that had been inside my car a few blocks away near where another stolen car was found. Fortunately one of those items was the registration document with my name on it, so the police officer was able to determine that all that stuff was mine.
I'm told these cars typically show up in a few days, once they've run out of gas. But who knows?
The staff at Comedy @ The Carlson were very nice to us when we told them what happened. I don't want to come down on them. The primary responsibility lies with the scumbags who stole my car. I wish there were some way to make them understand that if they put half that effort into doing something productive with their lives, their lives might turn out better.
Nevertheless, I would like to advise anyone out there that this particular lot is, from what I was told, hit often by the "Kia Boys." I don't want to discourage anyone from attending events at Comedy @ The Carlson, but you should know that the parking lot across the street is not monitored. Park there at your own risk.
I'll post updates as they become available.
Update, May 22: My car was found, and taken to the RPD impound lot on Colfax St. I had to go sign some papers to get it released to be towed to a garage. I also was able to retrieve any personal items from inside the car. Aside from my umbrella and a couple books, everything was gone. It was sunny when they stole the car, so they had no need for an umbrella, and I guess the thieves aren't much for reading. Perhaps if they had spent more of their formative years reading, they wouldn't be wasting their lives stealing cars now.
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