REDD

Even before I resumed writing blog posts, REDD had been on my to-do list.  I'd gotten more than one personal recommendation and it gets rave reviews online. After several attempts to book a table a few days out, I realized I was looking at at least a week, but I finally had the forethought to get a table for my wife and me on a Friday evening.

All that is by way of background. When I hear and read that much good about a place, part of me is thinking, "this is going to be great!," and part of me is thinking, "don't believe the hype." But I try to keep an open mind.

 We got seated and served promptly. I'd been here years ago when it was 2 Vine, and it seemed better laid out and less noisy, despite being busy. 

After sharing a beet salad, which was quite good, my wife and I shared two pizzas:  a mozzarella pizza, with tomato, basil and Parmesan, and a prosciutto pizza with fontina, arugula and Parmesan. So a red and a white pizza.

I knew that REDD uses a wood-fired oven for their pizza, and my immediate impression was that the cornicione (edge) didn't have the blackened blistering that I usually see with wood-fired pizza. A check of the underside showed it to be a little spotted but not much.

That in itself didn't raise alarm bells. I've had too many "wood-fired" pizzas where they just briefly expose the outer edge to a flame to get it blackened, but the crust still sucks. It's not all about blackening.

But wood-fired or otherwise, it starts with the crust. And this was, well ... hmm.

Quite thin, up until I reached the cornicione, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn't enough to sustain or balance the toppings. It was floppy and more significantly, it wasn't interesting.

What I mean is, with great pizza, the crust should be so good that I'd be happy to eat it with no toppings at all. This wasn't that.

Nor did it improve as I worked my way to the cornicione. Again, with top-notch pizza, that's almost the best part, as you get to enjoy the texture and flavor, unadorned. This was reminiscent of supermarket Italian bread. Not "bad," exactly, but bland and lifeless.

I don't claim to be an expert baker, but to quote one of my favorite bands, Lynyrd Skynyrd, "I know a little," and my first reaction was that it goes back to the intitial fermentation process, i.e. the rise. Use enough yeast, rise at warm temperatures, and you can have pizza or bread dough ready in no time. But it won't be particularly good. Low and slow and (somewhat) cold is the way to go, to develop more complex flavors and an interior structure in the crust, with more gluten development. But that takes time. I got the sense this was a crust made from a dough that wasn't given enough time.

I also know that the best wood-fired pizzerias I've been to get their ovens to a very high temperature, often 800 or above. A thin-crust pizza can bake in 90 seconds or so. REDD's was at 655 degrees, hotter than a typical home oven but not what you want for getting the most out of a wood-fired oven.

 I also noticed that the crust of the prosciutto pizza had separated between the top and the bottom. When properly done, that shouldn't happen. There are reasons why that might happen, but I'm not diagnosing the problem, just identifying it.

 OK. Enough about the crust. Let's move on to the toppings.

 They were good, although I must say not great.

The mozzarella pizza was well-laden with tomato sauce, but to me the sauce was over-applied. Pizza is also about balance and there was too much sauce, for my taste, on such a thin crust.

Nor was the sauce especially interesting. It tasted like sauce you'd get out of a jar. Not that you can't get good sauce from a jar, but this wasn't it. It tasted to me like generic spaghetti sauce. 

I was expecting a salty kick from the prosciutto on the prosciutto pizza, and I didn't get it. The pie was bland. I like a nice white pizza now and then, but without tomato sauce I'd like a bit of a flavor boost from the toppings, and this didn't deliver.

Not to drag my wife into this, but she agreed with me on all these points, and I can assure you she is unafraid to disagree with me, so I am pretty sure she was being honest. Toward the end of our dinner, I mentioned to her a thought that had just occurred to me:  as a bcnchmark, could I make a better pizza at home? I have had the good fortune to have pizza at various pizzerias that I couldn't possibly hope to match, due to the limitations of my home oven and my pizza-making skills. But we both agreed that I can make and have made better pizza at home, than what we had here.

Now all this sounds as if I've been trashing and bashing REDD. I suppose I have, but that was not my intent. Despite all I've said, I liked the pizza.

Not too many years ago I would've been amazed to get pizza this good anywhere around here, much less at a restaurant, where pizza is just an add-on to the menu. But the bar has been raised. That's a good thing, as the general level of quality and the range of options have both gone up. 

But if you're running a high-end restaurant, and you want to include pizza on the menu, I think it's incumbent on you to make sure it's damn good pizza. I can't honestly say that this was.

REDD Rochester

24 Winthrop St.

Rochester, NY 14607 

 https://reddrochester.com/

Mon. - Thu. 5 pm - 10 pm

Fri. 11:30 am - 2:30 pm, 5 pm - 10 pm

Sun. closed 

Strangebird Brewery

It took a while, but I finally made it to Strangebird Brewery recently.  Strangebird, which focuses on two things I love - pizza and beer - opened in 2021, but it took resuming this blog to get me over there.

 I went with my wife on a Thursday evening at about 5:30. They don't accept reservations, but I was hoping at that relatively early hour it wouldn't be too difficult to get a table.

 That was a false hope. There were a few vacant tables outside, but they were reserved. Inside, the place was pretty close to packed.

Which was fine, I get it, it was happy hour and I was glad they were doing well. But the setup was rather odd - we were told we could order food at the food counter, drinks at the bar, and grab seats when, where and if we could find them. Which presented a bit of a quandary as to what to do first. 

We ended up ordering two pizzas at the pizza/food counter, where they gave us a number. We headed back to the bar, where fortuitously two stools opened up, and got drinks. So it worked out but it was odd and a little inconvenient from my perspective. Surely there's a more orderly way to do this (in fact other restaurants and bars have various means of doing so).

At the bar, I ordered a Gouden Boom, which is described as a Belgian-style golden ale. Quite good. 

 Not too long (20 minutes?) afterwards, our pizzas showed up. In a departure from my usual rule, I didn't order the simplest pizza, which would've been the cheese pizza (from the description, basically a Margherita). Instead, we shared a "Greens" pizza (roasted garlic, kale, pickled chilis, mozzarella, ricotta and Parmesan) and a Mortadella, with its eponymous pork sausage, roasted garlic, pickled onion, salsa verde, and mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. 

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 The only part of me that regrets not sticking to my keep-it-simple-rule is that it was hard to evaluate the crust on its own or to set a benchmark. But both of these were very tasty pizzas.

Let's start with the crust. It was very thin. The cornicione was well formed and chewy, but the rest of the crust, where the toppings were, was so thin as to have almost no interior chew. That was a bit of a shame as the cornicione tasted quite good, and I could tell it was good, well-made dough. I would've liked it a tad thicker.

As I said, the toppings were very good. I'm a pepperhead, and put hot sauce on just about everything but ice cream (hmm ...?). The pickled chilis added a nice kick for me, but weren't too much for my wife, who has a low tolerance for heat. The entire ensemble was very good, with a medley of flavors that worked well together.

 Same for the Mortadella. The salty, thin-sliced sausage, pickled onion (I need to keep "pickled" in mind for pizza toppings) and garlic were terrific together. I love garlic almost as much as I love hot peppers, so it doesn't take much to convince me once you put garlic on a pizza.

Complaints? Well, again I would've liked a bit thicker crust.  To nitpick, a bit more charring underneath would've been welcome. The top side on both was nicely done, but the underside was a bit pale. I know it's a tricky thing to get it just right, but the point of this blog is to record my impressions, and that's one of them. 

I got a photo of the oven, but I couldn't see the interior. I was told that it is gas-fired, not wood-fired, but is clay-lined and heated to 800 degrees, which is certainly comparable to a lot of wood-fired ovens. And though I generally love wood-fired pizza, in the end what matters to me is the product.  Electric, gas, wood, coal, whatever. 

I liked this, a lot.  A bit thicker and a bit more done underneath and I would've loved it. But it was good, and I need to go back and try the cheese pizza. I think I'll try a different night of the week and/or a different time of day, though.

Strangebird  Brewing

62 Marshall Street
Rochester, NY 14607
585-505-8700

Thu. - Mon., 12 p.m. - 11 p.m. (Kitchen closes at 9 p.m.)

Closed Tue. & Wed. 

Forno Tony

About a month ago, Rochester was named the Best Pizza City in the U.S. This happens every so often, and I'm guessing other cities are similarly so-named occasionally. Somebody somewhere runs some numbers from online reviews, and looks at pizzerias per capita and declares that "[insert name of city] is the Best Pizza City in the country.

 So while I doubt that Rochester truly deserves that distinction, I will say that we are blessed with a lot of good pizzerias, making a wide variety of styles of pizza. 

Part of that is due to a trend that's been happening nationwide for years. You can go to East Fumbuck in the middle of nowhere these days and find a place offering wood-fired, "artisanal" pizza. It might or might not be good, but at least they're trying, and you've got an option besides the local convenience store (and even they've upped their game, as a result).

But part of it locally, I think, is that
Rochester had a pizza culture before the current pizza renaissance began. Pizza took early root here, thanks to the influx of Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century, and some of the old-timers are still around. We've arguably a local style, and now we've got even more choices.

 Which gets us to Forno Tony, which opened in January 2024 on University Avenue in Rochester, and focusing on Roman-style pizza. They started serving pizza from a location on East Avenue in 2022 one or two days a week, and drawing huge crowds. 

I was aware of it, but for several reasons I just put it on my to-do list and never got around to it. It took my resuming this blog to get there. I went on a Friday around 11 a.m. 

Walking in, one finds a takeout counter with a lot of choices, mostly pizza or variations thereof, plus some pastries. There were a few seats for dining in, but it was pretty much takeout. 

The basic choice was between pizza alla pala and pizza in teglia. The names simply refer to how they're made: from a paddle or a pan. The former, also known as Roman-style pizza, is stretched thin into an oblong shape and slid into the oven with a wooden peel, while the latter is a thicker, pan-baked pizza, similar to focaccia. Or maybe it's just focaccia by a different name. If I've learned one thing over the years, it's that Italians have a lot of names for food.

 You don't get slices here exactly, at least in the way most of us are used to, where you walk in and the pizza's already sliced. You get it by the cut, or al taglio, and charged by weight. And as in Rome, they cut it with scissors.

 At this point, I will make one mild criticism of Forno Tony. They have an impressive array of choices, but they weren't labeled, and there was no visible menu. The person behind the counter ran through them for me, and perhaps that's the way it's done in Rome, but if you don't want to have to recite every variety over and over, why not put up today's menu, or small signs identifying each variety? 

I settled on four choices. Two were alla pala and two were in teglia. I asked for pretty big cuts, so it ended up being eight regular-size slices.

 One Roman slice (pizza rossa) was topped with nothing but tomato sauce, which is as basic as it gets. I'd be tempted to say it was close to what ancient Romans might've had, were it not for the fact that tomatoes weren't known in Europe until after Spanish conquistadores brought them back from the New World. (Incidentally, it also took a while for Europeans to realize that tomatoes aren't poisonous.)

It was crisp and crunchy, and despite its thinness, there were visible air pockets inside, which gave it a light but chewy texture. The underside was well browned but not charred, although there were some charred spots on the topside and along the edge, which added that extra bit of flavor. So simple yet so delicious.

 My other Roman slice was similar, but topped with sliced eggplant and mozzarella. Eggplant is one of the few foods I dislike, but my wife loves it, so I got it for her. I tried it and leaving aside my distaste for eggplant, it was good. For one thing, the eggplant was sliced so thin that I wasn't bothered by the texture, which is my primary reason for hating eggplant. The mozzarella didn't hurt either. It appeared to be processed mozzarella but it was silky smooth and creamy.

I don't know if this was just a matter of chance, but this slice was also noticeably more charred underneath and along the edge. Perhaps because of the additional toppings, the pizzaiolo left it in the oven a bit longer to give it a little more time to bake.

(Speaking of the oven, from what I could see it was an electric oven, and I assume the digital display showing "585" referred to the temperature, not the area code.)

Moving on to the pan-baked pizza, I love red pizza with fresh mozzarella, so I got that. It was not all that much different from the alla pala pizza, aside from the thickness. Unlike typical American pan-baked "sheet pizza," it wasn't oily underneath. It had a firm texture and was again airy and light, showing the beneficial effects of a long slow dough rise. The mozzarella was melted just short of browning, which is perfect. The sauce seemed the same as on the other slices, slightly sweet in a tomatoey way, but perhaps a bit more concentrated from staying in the oven longer.

My fourth choice was a white pizza (pizza bianca), baked in the pan. I'm generally not a huge fan of white pizza, for a variety of reasons; they tend to be oily, for one thing. Plus I just prefer red sauce. But if I'm getting several varieties, I usually include at least one white pizza.

This one was topped with thinly sliced zucchini and, I believe, lemon zest. (Yes, the server explained everything. But at some point I lost track of what was what, which is why I wish they had a printed menu.)

There was some oil between the crust and the cheese, although not to an unpleasant degree or as much as with some white pizzas I've had. The yellow squash added more color than flavor, but the lemon zest and oregano sprinkles added some interest.

Forno Tony also sells a few sweets, and although I hadn't planned on getting anything other than pizza, one caught my eye. It looked a bit like a pretzel roll, split down the middle, filled with cream and topped with fresh raspberries. Turns out they are maritozzi, which is Rome's signature pastry. The counter server described it as a brioche bun filled with cream. They looked too good to pass up, so I got one maritozzo. I shared it later that night with my wife. It was a bit messy to try to cut in half, much less eat by hand after being split, but it was delicious and remarkably light (by "light," I mean texturewise, not caloriewise). Sorry I didn't get a photo, but the Democrat and Chronicle posted one here.

I will confess to a tendency to resist liking anything that everyone else is saying is great. If somebody tells me, "You've got to see this movie, you'll love it," I'm already predisposed to hate it. I can hardly say that Forno Tony has hyped itself--their web presence seems limited to an Instagram page--but I was both eager to try it and ready to say, "Overrated." It's not.

However-- 

Not long before I went, I was speaking with someone who'd been there. To paraphrase, they told me, "Yeah, it was good, but I like regular pizza, and it's not regular pizza."

I get it. By way of analogy, and to quote Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, I like beer. And I can appreciate a well-made IPA or stout or bock or whatever. But sometimes you just want a plain old beer. Fizzy and yellow and white and foamy on top.

And sometimes you just want plain old pizza, the kind you grew up with. You won't find that here. But we're blessed to have a panoply of pizza choices around Rochester, and this is a great addition to that array. 

Forno Tony, 1350 University Ave., Rochester

Thu. - Sat. 9 am - 5 pm

closed Sun. - Wed.

The Richmond

Way back when, on any given night you might've seen me had you walked into Richmond's, a bar on Richmond Street in Rochester. It was a truly great bar. The neon "SORRY WE'RE OPEN" sign in the window pretty much told you what you needed to know about Richmond's. "Dive" doesn't sound quite right, but anybody and everybody was welcome. I think someone best described it as a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood.

 Sadly, Richmond's closed in 2020, apparently a victim of the COVID restrictions imposed by New York State (don't get me started on that). 

But it re-emerged in 2022, under different ownership, as "The Richmond," with a makeover and the addition of pizza. I put it on my to-do list, but saved it for a later day, when I would start doing blog posts again.

I went back recently with my wife for dinner, on a Saturday night around 6 p.m. The layout was about the same as I remembered it -- bar up front, some booths along the back -- but a bit classier looking, which is either a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. Happily, the "SORRY WE'RE OPEN" sign remains, now in blue instead of the old red neon.

We shared an appetizer of cauliflower salad, which
was very good. I highly recommend it.

From there, we got two pizzas, a Margherita and a "Cup N' Char." Pizzas are described on the menu as "Neapolitan style," and while I will leave it to interested readers to do further research on the parameters of that style, I would say these fell within that category: thin, relatively soft, and foldable.

I'll start with the Cup N' Char, which is described as topped with cup n' char pepperoni, mozzarella and house red sauce. It was pretty good, with nearly-burnt pepperoni on top and some charring underneath.  But the crust didn't wow me. One mark of a great pizza, for me, is that when I eat through to the edge (cornicione), I keep on going, because it's that good. I didn't get that here. The crust just didn't have a lot going for it. I don't claim to be an expert but it seemed like a quickly-risen dough that didn't have time to develop the kind of complexity I would expect from a Neapolitan-style pizza. But all in all, not bad.

The Margherita was, sad to say, a disappointment.  As with most things pizza, it started with the crust.

 The underside was quite pale. I wouldn't say that the crust was raw -- given its thinness, it didn't take long to bake -- but it was underdone, for sure.

I suppose we could've sent it back, although I've never done that before with a pizza. Come to think of it, I've never done that before, with any dish, but I can see doing it with meat. Pizza? Maybe, with a slice, if you want the bottom to get crisp, but the problem here was that the top side was already well-baked. A few more minutes and it would've been overdone.

The toppings were not enough to make up the difference. My tastes in pizza differ somewhat from my wife's, but we both commented on the sauce. It was thin and tasted as if it had come out of a jar. I suggested Ragu, and she didn't disagree. I have fond memories of Ragu spaghetti sauce, but it's not what I expect on a Margherita pizza. (I am NOT saying they used Ragu. I'm saying that's what it brought to mind.)

 I took a walk back to the oven area and it appeared to me that though the oven has the appearance of a wood-burning oven, the heat came entirely from a gas flame. (I should point out that they don't claim to do wood-burning pizza; I'm not accusing them of false advertising or anything like that.) Again, I don't claim to be an expert but I wondered if the oven hadn't had long enough to come up to full temperature when we got there. I didn't see a temp on the oven, so I don't know how hot it was, but there seemed to be a disconnect between the ambient temperature, where the toppings cook, and the deck, where the bottom cooks.

It occurred to me during dinner that I and fellow pizza aficionados have gotten spoiled over the years. Some years ago, I would've been amazed to get this pizza in a bar. Today, thankfully, standards have risen and I am a little more demanding.

 I will add that the service was great. We sat  at the bar, in my old spot, and the bartender was attentive. When the pizza came out, the server explained that the chef had mistakenly added hot honey and red pepper flakes, and she offered to take it back and have it redone, but I was fine with it. 

So ... 

It was great to get back to Richmond's. Nice to see that wings are still on the menu, although I don't know if they're up to the old standards; maybe next time I'll find out. (Mike, if you're out there, you made the BEST wings anywhere, anytime.) 

Based on this one visit, I would describe the pizza as a bit of a disappointment, but showing potential. Get better sauce and make better use of that oven (and maybe do a longer, colder dough rise), and they might have something great. That may sound like damning by faint praise, but that's not my intent. Some tweaking is all it needs.

The Richmond

21 Richmond St., Rochester, NY  

Mon., Wed. 4 pm - 10 pm

Thu., Fri. 4 pm - midnight

Sat. 1 pm -  midnight

Sun. 1 pm - 10 pm

 

The Alley, Rochester

While the number of local pizzerias seems to be holding fairly steady, pizza as a menu item is popping up all the time. One recent example is The Alley, a restaurant/bar/nightclub in Rochester's East End.
The Alley, which opened in December 2015, is . It's at 1 Ryan Alley, near the corner of East and Alexander. After I spotted an ad for The Alley trumpeting its pizza, I made a mental note to get there, which I did a few weeks ago with my daughter.
We went on a Wednesday, arriving around 6 p.m. That's kind of early in the week, and early in the evening, for the East End, so unsurprisingly, things were pretty quiet when we walked in. In fact, it was empty, save for one employee behind the bar. But he assured me that they were open, and yes, they were serving food, including pizza. So we got a table near the window.
After handing us our menus, he explained that they were unexpectedly shorthanded that night, so at the moment, he constituted the entire staff -- bartender, waiter, and chef. Since we were the only customers, I didn't mind; if nothing else, this would truly be personalized service.
Pizzas at The Alley come in three sizes:  personal, regular and large. I got a regular Margherita, and my daughter ordered a personal meat lovers.
While we waited for our pizzas to arrive, we shared an appetizer of arancini. At The Alley, these fried rice balls are filled with Italian sausage and mozzarella cheese, and served with a side of marinara sauce. They were crisp on the outside, moist inside, tasty and enjoyable. So far, so good.
Our pizzas arrived in due course, and as I usually do, I first checked the underside. It was quite pale. Not a good sign.
Further inspection confirmed that the crust was rather underdone. Not raw, but flabby and a little gummy. "Lifeless" might best describe it.
I could've sent it back to bake a while longer, but the cheese was already well browned, so that didn't seem like a viable option. And I could've just sent it back, period. But I didn't, partly because I was intending to review it, so I figured I'd stick with what I had, and partly because it passed my "good enough to eat" threshold.
The overall flavor wasn't bad. This was really more of a cheese pizza than a Margherita, but as such, it was decent. The sauce had a thin consistency, but the chunks of tomato provided some acidity, sweetness and moisture. The cheese was ample, albeit rather browned, as I mentioned. My pie had also been given a sprinkling of what I'm guessing was Parmesan (the powdery kind you get from a cheese shaker, not freshly grated). Alas, the basil was of the dry variety, and didn't add much flavor, which is why I say this was more of a simple cheese pizza than a true Margherita.
The crust on my daughter's meat lover's pie was relatively thick, which is one reason I generally don't order personal-size pizza. Because of its smaller diameter, the cornicione on a personal pizza takes up a greater proportion of the overall pie than it would on a larger pie. I enjoy a good cornicione, but I like the thinner crust in the center of the pie too, and you often don't get much of that with a small pizza. This isn't a universal rule, by any means, but I've often found it to be the case, and it was here.
The crust on my daughter's pie was also on the underdone side, but that seemed less noticeable with hers, perhaps because of its more abundant toppings, which were pretty good. The pepperoni was crisp along the edges, and the meatball and sausage bits were thick and chunky. In contrast to my pizza, the mozzarella on hers was not browned, but was well melted and stretchy.
A few minutes after bringing out our pizzas, the waiter came by to check on us. I am sometimes susceptible in that situation to the American practice of smiling, nodding, and saying that everything's fine, even when it isn't, and I might've fallen prey to that this time, except that he specifically asked about the crusts on our pizza. So we did let him know that they were underdone. He seemed to have suspected as much, and after apologizing, he told us that he was taking 15% off our bill.
We didn't finish either pizza at this sitting, but I did take the leftovers home. I was able to salvage them for lunch, reheating individual slices in a toaster oven, with a layer of foil on top to prevent the cheese from getting overdone. That at least crisped up the bottoms a bit.
Obviously, something went wrong here. I'm no expert, but it seems likely to me that these were baked in an oven that was too cool on the bottom, but hot up above. I'm guessing the oven hadn't been on for very long, and was not sufficiently preheated.
So no, this was not very good pizza. But having said that, I did appreciate our waiter's concern. In hindsight, it might have been better if he had told us at the start that they weren't quite prepared to do pizza, but maybe he honestly didn't realize. I think he tried to do the best he could, under the circumstances.
Frankly, I debated with myself and a couple of other people, whose opinions I value, about whether to post this review, or whether to go back a second time, or to contact the establishment. Ultimately, I decided just to post the review, as is. In the end, this blog remains a record of my pizza experiences. If I describe those experiences accurately and objectively--and I think I have--the reader can decide what to make of it.
So I end this post with that caveat. This is a review of two pizzas, and one visit. Maybe on a different occasion--a different day of the week, or a different time of day, or with more people on staff--the pizza would have proved much better. But this was not too good. I have no complaints about our service, but I think I need to give this pizza a D.

The Alley,1 Ryan Alley, Rochester
(585) 546-1010

Tue. - Sat. 4 p.m. til ?

Scotch House Pub Report and Giveaway

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Paul Smith, one owner of The Scotch House Pub on Goodman Street in Rochester.
Over the years, this location has housed several establishments, but the Scotch House just passed its two-year anniversary, which I think puts it over the hump in the bar and restaurant business, where most businesses fail 
But The Scotch House also had just passed what for me was a more significant anniversary:  two weeks of serving pizza.
The drink side of things seems pretty well established at this point. When I arrived at around 5 p.m., shortly after they opened, the place was quiet, but I was told that the Thursday crowd would begin to arrive soon for the "Mug Night" special ($1 beers, $2 wells).
But Paul, who's something of a foodie, would like to get more into the food side of things. And that's where the pizza comes in.
When I got there, Paul had just put a pepperoni pizza in the oven. After we chatted for a few minutes, he brought out the pie, which I was happy to sample.
The first thing I noticed, aside from its general appearance, was the fresh-bread aroma of the crust. The crust was on the thin side of medium in thickness, and a little browned underneath with some screen marks.
The underside was browned in spots, but a little pale. To his credit, though, before I could offer an opinion, Paul opined that he should've left the pie in the oven a minute or two later. As an avid home baker who's my own worst critic, this told me that he's striving never to be simply satisfied.
And truth be told, the crust was pretty good. When I folded my slice, it cracked on the surface, underneath, but did not break clean through, which to me is a good sign. Surface crackling, chewy interior - that, to me, is a hallmark of good pizza.
I could also tell from our conversation that Paul has, and continues to, put a lot of effort into the business. Prior to opening The Scotch House, Paul worked in the computer field, but eventually decided to get into business for himself. That led to The Scotch House, which he owns with a silent partner.
Having become pretty well established, Paul wanted to expand his scope and he settled on pizza as a focus of the menu. Local pizza lovers should be glad he did.
Again, I could see that he was not one to plunge into something casually or without putting in the time and effort.  I got a look at the kitchen, which houses a stainless steel-topped prep table and a Blodgett pizza oven.
They also make their own dough at The Scotch House, unlike a lot of bars and restaurants that buy their dough elsewhere or use premade pizza shells. Not that you can't make good pizza that way, but making it in-house shows a certain dedication to the craft of making pizza. And this is good dough.
After settling on pizza as a major addition to the menu, Paul went through a bunch of dough recipes before settling on what he uses now. The dough goes through cold-temperature retardation to bring out its flavor, before going into the oven. And Paul, who's very much a hands-on owner, is learning all about his oven, including how to deal with "hot spots." That's why our conversation was interrupted a couple of times, as he excused himself to go check on and rotate the pizza.
I asked Paul if he'd considered doing wood-fired pizza. I know, certainly, that wood-fired pizza is not inherently better than pizza made in a gas or electric oven. But wood-fired ovens are "hot" right now - pun intended - so I wondered if he'd given it any thought.
He had, but decided he wasn't ready to go that route, at least not yet. I was happy to hear that. It's all too tempting for an owner to jump on the wood-fired bandwagon without doing one's homework. And frankly, I think the local market for wood-fired pizza is pretty close to the saturation point. 
It had been a long time since I was inside this building - I think I came in once for lunch when it was an Asian noodle restaurant, and years before that, when it was a bar - but it was obvious that there'd been a lot of work done inside. Dark wood paneling, a well-appointed bar and dining area, and plenty of TVs make for an attractive, comfortable setting. Again, I got there shortly after they opened, but it seemed to me that the bar area was well set off from the tables, providing some separation between diners and the bar crowd.
Now back to that pizza ... it was well balanced, and topped with a straightforward red sauce, nicely melted mozzarella, and just-crisp slices of pepperoni. The sauce is not made in-house, although they do tweak the sauce a bit to customize it.
The Scotch House's pizza menu includes ten toppings, two sauces (red or white), and seven specialty pizzas, including Buffalo chicken, a "Scotch House Plate" pie, Philly cheesesteak, and mac 'n' cheese pizza. They also serve slices, as any bar/pizzeria should. Other menu items include wings, sandwiches, wraps, quesadillas, salads and sides.
If you'd like to check out The Scotch House for yourself, what better way to do it than with $25 to spend, on the house? I have a $25 gift certificate to give away to one lucky reader, courtesy of The Scotch House. This is good for anything they offer, food or drinks.
Because of the upcoming holidays, I'll run this a little longer than usual.  Email me your name and mailing address at ROCPizzaGuy@gmail.com by noon on Monday, January 4, and I'll pick a winner at random. Just make sure to include "Scotch House giveaway" in the subject line. As always, rest assured that I will not use your personal information for any other purposes, or give it to anyone else.

The Scotch House Pub, 373 S. Goodman St., Rochester 14607

Mon - Wed: 5 PM - 2 AM
Thurs & Fri: 4 PM - 2 AM
Sat & Sun: Noon - 2 AM

Little Park Ave - CLOSED

(This establishment is now closed)
Park Avenue in Rochester is home to several pizzerias. One of the more recent entrants is Little Park Ave Pizzeria, near the corner of Park and Oxford. It is in fact a little place, and the diminutive name has a certain symbiosis with the Half Pint Pub a couple of doors down. And since the Half Pint doesn't serve food, that symbiosis might extend beyond the names.
On a recent lunchtime visit to LPA, I got a cheese slice and a Buffalo chicken slice. (The other option was pepperoni.)
Both were thin, with a dark brown underside, criss-crossed by screen marks. The bottom was not crisp, but firm, and the slices were foldable, i.e., not floppy. The crust wasn't great, but it was serviceable, in other words, it was not bad and was a good-enough base for the toppings.
I usually love a basic cheese slice, but in this instance I preferred the Buffalo chicken slice. The cheese slice was OK at best. The cheese was a little browned, and sprinkled with dried herbs, among which the oregano stood out.
Some oil had exuded from the cheese. The sauce was thinly applied, which was reasonable given the thinness of the crust, but I found the sauce rather bland. This slice just seemed to be missing something. I would've liked a little more flavor or complexity from the crust, or cheese, or sauce. Aside from the dried herbs, there just wasn't much going on here.
Not surprisingly, the Buffalo chicken slice was more flavorful. It was topped with wing sauce, which was mild but had a little kick, and a distinctive flavor. A little less vinegary than your typical wing sauce, with the herbs playing a role too. Intriguing, and not bad.
Atop the sauce was scattered mozzarella and bits of breaded chicken. A spiral of blue cheese dressing added the right accent. The slice wasn't heavily laden with toppings, but the toppings were in balance with the thin crust. 
Little Park Ave offers pizza in 10- and 16-inch sizes, with two dozen available toppings and ten specialty pizzas, including a mac-and-cheese pie and a signature house pie with red sauce, capicola, ham, mozzarella, Asiago, and fresh spinach. They also do an Italian-bread pizza, which is a foot-long sliced loaf of Italian bread topped with red sauce and cheese, and a flatbread Mexican pizza. Subs, soups and salads are also on the menu.
I've never graded Buffalo chicken slices, because it comes in so many ways that there is no benchmark for the style. I couldn't give this cheese slice a very good grade, but I don't want to just average the two slices out and slap a bad grade on Little Park Ave., because that might dissuade people from trying it. I liked the Buffalo chicken slice, and I'd like to try some of their other pizzas. So I'll just say that, for my taste, the cheese slice was not the greatest, but the Buffalo chicken slice was good enough to make me want to come back for more of LPA's other offerings. I'd encourage you to try it for yourself and let me and other readers know what you think.

Little Park Ave Pizzeria
371 Park Ave.
585-271-7377

Mon. - Fri. noon - 11 p.m.
Sat. & Sun. 10 a.m. - 11 p.m.

http://littleparkave.com/index.html

Baker Street Bakery, Park Ave.

Anybody who loves pizza almost certainly likes bread, and I'm exhibit A, there. I've been to most of the bread bakeries around town - in fact, I've toyed with the idea of expanding this blog's scope to include bread - but it was only very recently that I finally made it to Baker Street Bakery on Park Avenue.
Baker Street opened, I believe, in 2007. There's a combination of reasons why it's taken me this long to get there, but I did stop in recently.
BSB doesn't offer pizza as such (which is one reason it's taken me this long), but they do offer focaccia, which to most of us would be indistinguishable from thick-crust, pan-baked pizza.The difference is more semantic than real.
I got a veggie slice, topped with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, sliced tomatoes, black olives, caramelized onions, and jalapenos.
At first glance, this would seem not to be something I'd go for. If I could only eat one kind of pizza for the rest of my life, it would probably be a thin-crust, foldable, New York style cheese slice.
This was the diametric opposite of that. It was enormous, and heavy. I ended up cutting it in half, for lunch, and saving the rest for the next day.
But despite my general preferences, I've always taken a catholic approach to pizza. Thick, thin, cheese-only or multiple toppings, any pizza can be good, if it's well made.
And this was good, whether you call it pizza or foccacia. The underside was evenly browned and dry to the touch. The interior was bubbly and nicely risen, and the crust was flavorful.
It was also well balanced. Despite its heft, this was not simply an overloaded slice of pizza. The toppings were added in proportion to the thick crust. I don't think I'll ever get over my distaste for mushrooms, but they blended in with the other toppings, which made for a flavorful medley. Slightly sweet, salty and savory, with a bit of kick in the background.
I will nitpick a bit, for the use of what seemed to be canned black olives. I'm OK with canned olives, but they don't quite match up with the non-canned, cured variety. The dusting of grated cheese also added little if any flavor or aroma; it had a powdery texture similar to ground bread crumbs.
Those quibbles aside, this made for an enjoyable lunch. A good base of bread dough, and a well-chosen blend of toppings.
Beyond foccacia, Baker Street offers a wide range of breads, including sourdough and whole-grain breads, as well as delectable pastries. In a perfect world, every town and neighborhood would have its own bakery, and in the central Park Avenue neighborhood, Baker Street fills that niche very nicely.

Baker Street Bakery
745 Park Ave.
Sun. - Mon. 6 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Tue. - Sat. 6 a.m. - 6 p.m.

City Grill, Rochester

With a couple of friends, I recently had lunch at City Grill, which opened some months ago at the corner of East Avenue and Alexander Street. I've lost count of how many restaurants have been in and out of this location in recent years, but this one might stick for a while.
What drew me there, of course, was pizza, in this case wood-fired pizza. I don't want to go into a long digression here, but before I go further, I should say a word or two about wood-fired pizza.
I have mixed feelings about the recent proliferation of local restaurants offering wood-fired pizza. Wood-fired pizza is not inherently better than pizza baked in other types of ovens. There are many factors going into any given pizza, from the ingredients to the preparation, to the attention paid to it while it's in the oven. The type of oven will certainly affect the end result, but a wood-fired oven does not by any means guarantee a better end result than a standard gas-fired pizza oven. In fact, if the pizzaiolo doesn't utilize it to its best advantage, a wood-fired oven can very easily yield a worse pizza than a more conventional oven.
But: the wood-fired trend has led to a lot more places around here offering pizza, and that's not a bad thing, from my perspective. So if I seem to be focusing recently on wood-fired pizza, it's mostly because I'm always looking for new places, and that's where most of the growth seems to be coming from lately.
OK. Back to City Grill. I don't think I'd ever been there before, under any of the restaurant's previous incarnations, because I was surprised to discover how large a space the restaurant occupies. There are two dining rooms (and an outdoor patio), and my friends were waiting for me in the back room. It's an attractive space, with a fireplace (not in use on this warm sunny day) and an open kitchen.
I ordered my usual Margherita (correctly spelled on the menu), while my two companions ordered a five-cheese pie and a "classic" pepperoni.
All three were nicely done, with some char spots underneath and a pliable crust that had some surface crispness.  There was some noticeable corn meal on mine, which was a bit unusual for a wood-fired pizza, in my experience. Some of the corn meal had carbonized, in other words, blackened, which I find a little off-putting, but it wasn't too bad.
To quibble a bit more, the crusts were a tad unevenly done, with some areas along the edge quite blackened, while others were only browned. But I know that's tricky with a wood-fired oven, and none of them were over- or underdone overall. So again, not a big deal, but I bring a critical eye to my pizza, and in the interests of giving a complete description I thought it worth mentioning.
Aside from those minor issues, I liked the crust, which had a bready aroma and a chewy but not tough texture. It was thin and pliable but not floppy, and was dry underneath.
We all enjoyed our toppings. The sauce seemed to be the same on all three, and had a basic tomatoey flavor with some herbs in the background. The toppings on my pie were  a little unevenly distributed, with the cheese and sauce coming close to the edge in some spots and other areas where there was a wide swath of naked crust, but this was no major cause for complaint. I would, however, have liked a bit more basil than just the few sprinkles that I got. What basil there was, though, was good, and had been added at the end, so it wasn't burnt, browned or dried out.
Pepperoni pizza is about as basic as American pizza gets, but this was a good one. The toppings were well balanced, and the pepperoni was especially tasty, with a good, meaty/spicy flavor, and just the right combination of crispness and chewiness.
The five-cheese pie was topped with mozzarella, aged provolone, Asiago, Fontina and Gruyere cheeses. While it wasn't overloaded with cheese, they combined to give it a sharp, pungent flavor and aroma. I liked it, but you've definitely got to be a cheese lover to appreciate this one.
In addition to these three pies, City Grill offers an "Italian," topped with crumbled meatballs, onions, tomatoes, cheese and parsley, a chicken-and-pesto pie with ricotta cheese and cherry tomatoes, a Greek pizza with shredded eggplant, kalamata olives, goat cheese, spinach, artichokes & roasted peppers, and the only one I would take a pass on, a wild mushroom pizza with shitake, portobello, crimini & porcinni, topped with a truffle sauce. All pies come in two sizes, which are priced at $11 and $15. The menu also features a variety of other dishes, including a wood-fired s'mores pizza with Belgian chocolate and marshmallows on a graham cracker crust. There's a full bar to boot.
So will City Grill succeed where so many others have tried and failed? I suspect that it might. I can't say what went wrong with the other establishments, but on this visit the food and service were good, business was brisk, and the atmosphere was comfortable yet - to use a word that I dislike, but that seems apt - sophisticated.
I'm not prepared to give City Grill's pizza an "A," at least not yet. (Maybe with the proliferation of wood-fired pizzas, I'm becoming more demanding, and I should probably revisit and re-rate some of the places I reviewed months or years ago.) But it's well worth a stop. For now, I'll give it a B, and I look forward to my next visit.

City Grill, 384 East Ave.
222-2489

Mon. - Wed. 11 a.m. - midnight
Thu. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 2 a.m.
Sun. 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.

Voula's Greek Sweets Review and Giveaway

Pizza shows up on menus in unexpected places, so when a new restaurant opens, I always try to check the menu to see if it might include pizza.
Greek, or more broadly, "Mediterranean" restaurants often have pizza on their menus, and so it is that I found myself recently at Voula's Greek Sweets on Monroe Avenue.
Despite the name, Voula's offers more than just sweets. Yes, you'll find those, from the expected baklava to less familiar, but equally enticing cakes and pastries. But Voula's also has a substantial menu of more savory dishes, including pizza.
As an aside, this touches upon the subject of so-called Greek pizza. The term can mean a couple of different things, as explained here, and there is some debate about whether the Greeks should get credit for inventing pizza.
Those are topics for another day. But whether "authentic" or not, a fair number of Greek restaurants around here offer pizza, or some variation thereof.
Voula's take on pizza consists of house-made lagana bread, a yeast-risen, focaccia-like Greek bread, which includes olive oil in the ingredients. After the crust is parbaked, toppings are added and then the pizza is finished in the oven.
Pizzas are offered as a daily special, with the toppings varying from one day to the next, although certain pies show up with some regularity. On my visit, the pizza du jour was topped with skordalia (a garlic-based sauce), onion, vine-ripened tomatoes, flat-leaf parsley, and mozzarella, feta and Kaseri cheeses. One stray Kalamata olive also sneaked in, which was fine with me.
The crust had a light golden brown underside, a crunchy exterior, and some chewiness inside. The edge was crunchier still, with a slight oiliness that was just detectable on my fingertips.
I found this, on the whole, a well balanced and flavorful pie. The crust had a pleasing, bready aroma, and was nicely complemented by the toppings. The melted mozzarella provided a textural contrast to both the crust and the feta and Kaseri cheeses, which also imparted some salty, lactic tanginess. With hints of garlic and the addition of fresh parsley (obviously added after the pie came out of the oven), this made for a tasty and enjoyable lunch.
I'm not going to rate this pizza, for a couple of reasons. One, it falls outside the mainstream of pizza that you typically find around here. It's hard to compare this to an ordinary pepperoni pie. So to some extent, it's an apples-and-oranges situation.
Second, I've spoken to Voula herself, who graciously agreed to provide a $15 gift certificate for me to give away to one lucky reader. And to avoid creating the impression that I'm trading good grades for gift certificates or other favors, I'll not assign any letter rating to this pizza. But I think I've accurately described it and I can honestly say that I enjoyed it.
Now, about that gift certificate: regular readers know the routine by now. Just leave a comment after this blog post. You don't have to provide your full name at this point, but purely anonymous comments will not be eligible to win.
I will pick a winner, at random, in one week, Friday, May 29, shortly after noon. The winner will be announced here, on Facebook, and via Twitter. If you win, you'll need to send me your mailing address at rocpizzaguy@gmail.com.

Voula's Greek Sweets, 439 Monroe Ave.

Mon - Fri: 11:00 am - 7:00 pm
Sat: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

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

Edibles, University Avenue

Though by now I've covered nearly all the independent (i.e., non-chain) pizzerias around Rochester, there are always a few more to get to, and so I keep a to-do list. Right now, I've got fifteen places on my list. Many of them are not traditional pizzerias, but bars, restaurants, and even a winery that serve pizza. But in time, I'll get to them all.
One places that's been on my list for some time is Edibles on University Avenue. I stopped in for lunch recently and got a pizza.
It looks as if Edibles may have recently changed their menu, because when I went, my choices were a fig & feta, chicken pancetta, and steak & onion pizza. Now their website lists a Margherita in place of the fig & feta. On this page, though, they still list the fig & feta pizza. So I don't know.
If they no longer offer it, that's unfortunate, because that's what I ordered. So that would mean that this review is, to some extent, obsolete even before I've written it. Plus, if I'd had the option at the time, I would've ordered a Margherita instead. Oh well. I did like this well enough, so I can't complain too much.
And regardless of whether it's still on the menu, at least I can still tell you about the crust. Lots of adjectives came to mind as I was eating this one - thin, crisp, crackly, dry, and flaky. Oh, and floury (on the bottom), as well as sweet and wheaty. I don't know if wheaty is an adjective, but it is now.
So yeah, this was one of those crackerlike crusts, which is fine as long as you know what to expect. It was well browned on the bottom, and, in its simplicity, both rustic and nouveau (or should I say "nuovo") as the same time.
But I may as well describe the toppings, too. Who knows, maybe if people ask about it, Edibles will decide to bring back the fig & feta pizza.
And that would be a good thing, because this was a pretty good pizza.
In addition to the eponymous ingredients, it was topped with cherry tomatoes, fresh greens, and lemon dressing. Figs on pizza may seem strange, but I've seen it before, and in fact I've even used figs on homemade pizza. They have a certain depth and complexity of flavor that's almost meaty, and that makes them a natural companion to a sharp cheese like feta.
And that's what I got here. The figs - which were not as "seedy" as I'd expected, or feared - were caramelized and subtly sweet. They contrasted well with the salty feta, which in turn was not as pungent as I'd expected.
The tomatoes were flavorful and sweet - the menu described them as "cured," though I can't say I noticed anything particularly unusual about them, other than their good flavor - and the greens were a nice touch, even if I'm always a bit puzzled on those rare occasions when I get fresh greens on a pizza. Do I eat them first, with a fork, and then eat the rest of the pizza? They don't adhere to the crust, so it's a little awkward trying to eat them with the pizza, either with a knife and fork or by picking up the pieces by hand. I did a little of both, treating the greens as both a topping and a first-course salad. The lemony dressing was another unusual pizza topping that worked well here, giving the entire pie a tangy acidic bite that cut through the sticky sweetness of the figs and added some zing to the proceedings.
I could've, but didn't finish the pie in one sitting, but opted to take home a couple of pieces. My server was kind enough to give me some helpful tips on how best to reheat them, which she recommended be done in a hot frying pan on the stove.
Edibles is a pleasant spot for lunch or dinner, and straddles the line between casual and upscale. The prices are likewise somewhere in the middle, with most entrees in the teens and twenties (pizzas are priced in the low teens). The eclectic menu offers plenty to choose from, but don't overlook the pizza. Though not baked in a wood-fired oven, it falls within that amorphous category known as "artisanal," and while that's not one of my favorite adjectives, it conveys the general idea here. This pizza won't be to everybody's liking, but it was flavorful and well made, and I'll give it a B.
Edibles Restaurant, 704 University Ave., Rochester 14607
271-4910

Mon. - Thu. 11 am - 2:30 pm, 5 pm - 9 pm, Fri. 11 am - 2:30 pm, 5 pm - 10 pm, Sat. 11:30 am - 3 pm, 5 pm - 10 pm

Chester Cab: Poor Man's Tomato Pie

It's taken a while, but the tomato pie seems to be catching on in the Rochester area. This style either comes from Trenton, New Jersey, or Utica, New York, or, aa I suspect, in different places at different times. I mean, the basic concept - a thick, pan-risen crust, tomato sauce, and grated Romano cheese - is not that much of a stretch from traditional Sicilian-style pizza, and it seems likely to me that Italian Americans were creating this type of pizza in different cities at roughly the same time.
In fact, Rochester has had its own variant of this style for quite some time, such as Amico's "#1," Gallo's "Old World" pizza, and Guida's "Sauce Pie." It's a throwback to the days before processed mozzarella became the standard topping for American pizza. But as I  understand it, a true tomato pie is typically pan risen and baked, fairly thick, and cut into squares - again, much like a traditional Sicilian style pizza. 
Wherever it started, the tomato pie is here now. You'll find them at Wegmans, and I've even seen some rather unappetizing, saran-wrapped tomato pie slices at a local convenience store.
And at local pizzerias. I've been to Chester Cab on Park Avenue several times, and I noticed that their menu includes a "Poor Man's Tomato Pie." I assume that "poor man's" is a reference to the price, not an indication that this is somehow a poor man's version of a tomato pie. With no toppings but sauce, Romano and dried herbs, these pizzas are naturally more affordable than the cheese- and meat-laden pies that Americans are used to.
This pizza was, in more ways than one, not what I expected. Not only was this not the kind of pan-risen pie that I've described, but it was also much different from pizzas that I've gotten from Chester Cab in the past. I've had their stuffed pizza, their "thin cracker crust," and a regular slice, and none of them were much like this, even accounting for the absence of mozzarella on this pie. Check those posts to see what those pizzas were like. All I can say for now is that Chester Cab makes a remarkable variety of pizza styles.
This one had a dry bottom that was a bit floury, and a medium thick, bready crust. Though it had clearly risen, it was not terribly airy - the air holes were small - but it had good flavor, a crisp exterior, and a soft but chewy interior, as well as a sweet, bready aroma that was of course most pronounced while the pizza was still warm.
What was odd, or unexpected, about this pizza, though, was its relative lack of sauce. I expect a sauce pie to have a fairly generous layer of sauce. This didn't have much sauce. The dominant component was the finely grated cheese, followed by the dusting of dried herbs. I was also a little put off by the weird orangey color of the cheese, although that might've been a result of the yellow grated cheese mixing with the red tomatoes. But as nuch as I like the color orange, it's rarely a color you want to see on pizza.
I'm not one to hang too much significance on labels, but if you use a term with an established meaning, like "sauce pie," I think you should deliver - you should stick to the style. Again, I'm no expert on sauce pies, but I don't think this did that. And even aside from that, although I liked the crust on this pizza, it was, overall, rather dry. It needed more sauce.
I've decided not to rate this pizza. I just don't think my ratings translate to this pie. "C" means average, and other grades mean above or below average. This pizza had a very nice crust, albeit not the kind of crust that I would expect from a traditional, pan-risen sauce pie, but the toppings were out of balance and the whole thing was not true to the named style. In fact I took my leftovers home, added sauce and mozzarella, and reheated them in the oven, which resulted in a much better pie.
That is not because I dislike tomato pies. I don't. Though I've yet to try one in Utica or the Trenton area, I like the style. This was simply not a well executed pizza, in my opinion. I really did like the crust, though, and the fact that I could so easily improve this pizza means that it had something going for it. So even though all of that might mathematically add up to a "C," it would be misleading to call this an average pizza for this area. It was just too different from anything else you'd find around here.
I'd consider ordering this again, but I'd ask for extra sauce. This was fundamentally good pizza, but it needed a better balance among the crust, sauce and cheese. And I must say again that the sheer variety of styles that I've found at Chester Cab makes me want to go back for more.
Chester Cab Pizza, 707 Park Ave., Rochester 14607
Tel.: 244-8211
Hours: Mon. - Tue. 11 a.m. - 9:30 p.m., Wed. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - 11:30 p.m., Sun. noon - 9 p.m.