Wegmans, East Avenue

Ever have one of those nights when you're planning to go out to eat (or do anything else, for that matter) and it starts to seem as if the universe is conspiring to prevent you from doing it? That happened to my wife and me recently.
We wanted to go to a particular restaurant - for pizza - got there about 7:30, and they were closed, even though their sign said they were open till 8. Went to another (non-pizza) place down the road. It was so packed I couldn't get in the parking lot. Another place across the street was having a bike night, and we didn't feel like listening to live heavy metal with our meal.
I started racking my brain, trying to think of a place, preferably with pizza, that I'd been wanting to try, and came up with Amore, the new restaurant at Wegmans on East Avenue. So we went there, only to find that they were booked solid through the remainder of the evening.
At that point, it was getting on close to 9:00, and so I suggested we just go into Wegmans and get something to go.
It may not seem like a match made in heaven, but we ended up getting pizza and sushi. The sushi looked good, and it was in fact pretty good. But I had to at least take a look at the pizza, and upon seeing a decent looking, freshly made cheese pie, I got a slice of that to go.
My wife thought the chicken cordon bleu pizza sounded good, so she got a slice of that. Now at that point I should've said something, because to me it didn't look that appetizing. There were just one or two slices of that variety left, and they looked to have been sitting there for a while. But I figured she could judge its appearance just as well as I could, so if it looked good to her, OK.
My slice turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I've had mixed results with Wegmans pizza - it seems to be very inconsistent from one store to the next - but this one looked like a good, basic NY style pizza, and I figured after all the hoopla about this particular store, this would probably be as good as Wegmans pizza gets.
It was only OK, though, and not as good as a slice that I got at the Pittsford Wegmans a few years ago. The golden brown underside was crisscrossed with screen marks, and was rather soft. The edge was a little more crisp, but not much. And the toppings were adequate but so-so - a thin layer of sauce, thin layer of processed mozzarella. Not that I was expecting to be blown away by the toppings, but they did nothing to elevate this pizza above mediocrity.
Still, this wasn't an awful slice. No, that distinction went to the chicken cordon bleu pizza.
Now again, I felt kind of bad about not having tried to steer my wife away from this one, but the fact is, this should never have been sold, or offered for sale, in the first place. It was that bad.
Some of that can be attributed to its having sat out for way too long, but I can't see how this pizza could've been any good, from the moment it came out of the oven. The paper-thin, leathery crust glistened with oil, the cheese had the texture of plastic that had melted and then cooled, and the chicken consisted of little more than greasy lumps of breading with some microscopic, dessicated shreds of a meatlike substance inside.
My wife took a bite, then gamely took one more, but that was it. She pronounced it the worst pizza she'd ever eaten, and I couldn't see any reason to doubt her. I then ATE A BITE OF THE SLICE, WHICH I FOUND REPULSIVE, AND managed to salvage a few cubes of diced ham, then tossed the slice in the garbage. Had we still been at the store, we would've gone back in for a refund, but it was too late for that. 
(By the way, I hadn't planned on reviewing this slice, but when my wife told me how disgusting it was I decided this deserved to be written about. That's why there are a couple of bites missing in the photos. But believe me, the pictures don't do it "justice.")
Oh yes, the ratings. My cheese slice was adequate, not as good as I'd hoped, but good enough for a C. The chicken cordon bleu gets an F, no question about it.
Wegmans gets a lot of things right. This wasn't one of them. Somebody in the pizza department needs to go over some basics with the staff. I don't know if Wegmans is still using that slogan, "Every day, you get our best," but not this day, we didn't.
Wegmans East Avenue, 1750 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14610
244-7950

Valero, Rt. 104, Wayne County

What!?! Gas station pizza? You're reviewing gas station pizza?
Well, yes. No, I have not so completely run out of pizza places to review that I have been reduced to this. But on my recent excursion along Rt. 104 in Wayne County, I was passing by a Valero station when a sign in front proclaiming "NY Style Pizza" caught my eye. My expectations were low, but my curiosity was piqued, and my hopes were high.
My expectations were fully justified. This was some of the worst pizza I've eaten. In fact, I didn't eat it, at least not more than the few nibbles needed to evaluate it.
The self-serve slices were sitting in a warmer on the counter. And I think they had been sitting there for a long time. Now it's true that a slice that's been sitting for a while is probably not representative of what a fresh pizza would be like, but that's why vendors shouldn't let their slices sit for a long time.
The crust on this slice was very thin, which I guess accounts for the "NY Style" claim. But in no other respect did it resemble New York style pizza. The crust was lifeless, with a disagreeably chewy texture, and a browned bottom that was slightly oily to the touch. The corncione along the edge - the saving grace on many an otherwise forgettable pizza - was no less awful, resembling nothing so much as stale fried dough.
Topside, the orangey, oily cheese had been cooked into a solid mass of what can best be described as burnt plastic. What remained of the mostly evaporated sauce was little more than a painted layer between the cheese and the crust.
I kind of like burnt pepperoni, especially of the cup and char variety, so that was the closest thing here to anything enjoyable about this pizza, but there wasn't enough of it to help, and what there was, was welded to the hardened cheese.
Sadly, the two employees with whom I spoke were friendly and helpful. I say "sadly" because I hate to give a bad review to a place where the people seem nice. Please, if you're going to serve bad pizza, then be rude, because it'll make my job that much easier.
But all I can do here is emphasize that I am grading this slice of pizza, nothing more. This may be a fine place to fill up your tank or pick up a cup of coffee or whatever else you need. But as I attempted to eat this slice of pizza, the word that came to mind - it's right there in my notes - was "horrid." It rates an F.
I'm afraid I don't have an address for this establishment. All I can tell you is that it's a Valero station on the south side of Rt. 104 in Wayne County. The Valero website shows a station in that area, but the address given appears to be incorrect. But I doubt that you're going to want to seek this place out, so no matter.

Hong Kong House, S. Clinton Ave.

Yes, you read that right. The Hong Kong House. A Chinese restaurant. On a pizza blog.
Over the years, this location has housed "Little Saigon," "Fast Chinese Restaurant" (love that name), and the Imperial Chinese restaurant. Given the building's facade, it will probably always house something along those lines, barring a major facelift.
So it was with some surprise that I noticed one day that word on the sign: "pizza." And after checking the menu on their MySpace page and seeing that they offer "Green Olivers" on their pizza, well, sheer curiosity took over.
Then again, who knows?, I thought. You don't have to be Italian to make good pizza, and even discounting a bit their claim to make the "best pizza in town," the menu does say that it's "bakeo in real brick oven," so it might be pretty good, I figured.
(I'm not trying to make fun of the owners themselves for the misspellings, by the way. I don't know Mandarin Chinese from a mandarin orange, and my knowledge of their language is pretty much limited to those words on the back of fortune cookie slips. But some of the menu entries I find hilarious.)
I went for the lunchtime pizza special - two slices, french fries, and a soft drink for $5. By the time my food came out, I had forgotten about the drink, and the lady at the counter said nothing, so I ended up with just the pizza and fries, but that still is a pretty good deal.
Or at least it would be if the pizza were any good. It wasn't.
The crust was very dark brown underneath, but not at all crisp. In fact, it was downright soggy, like a wet sponge. Had I kept it in its styrofoam container for very long, I might've attributed that to condensation from the steam, but it wasn't in there more than a couple of minutes.
For all its soft wetness, though, one edge of one of the slices was actually hard - so hard that it was difficult to chew through it. I began to suspect that this pizza might've been baked the night before, rescued from god knows where when a customer unexpectedly asked for pizza at lunchtime, and thrown into the microwave. Maybe not, but that might just as well be what happened, considering what I was given.
The cheese was melted and bland. The sauce was barely noticeable save for some faint herbalness. I didn't pick up any tomato flavor at all.
The fries, at least, weren't too bad. Not great, and they smelled a bit of stale cooking oil, but good enough to eat, which is more than I can say for the pizza, most of which I ended up throwing out.
Now it might seem all too easy to pick on a Chinese restaurant for its bad pizza - I mean, I wouldn't expect to get great Kung Pao chicken at an Italian restaurant. But an Italian restaurant wouldn't serve that in the first place, nor, for that matter, does your average Chinese restaurant offer pizza. So I can't cut them any slack in that regard. They chose to offer pizza, even going so far as to claim it to be the best in town. Was I surprised that it wasn't very good? Not really. But I'll hold it to the same standards as any other pizza.
I should mention, by the way, that HKH's culinary diversity goes well beyond pizza. Besides Chinese food, they also offer spaghetti, tacos, subs, souvlaki, clam chowder ... well, you get the idea.
If it were up to me, I'd say concentrate on the Chinese food and forget the other stuff. But maybe this works for them. They are open till 3 a.m. every night, and maybe if you're drunk and hungry in the wee hours this stuff tastes just fine. But stone sober in the early afternoon, I found this pizza inedible. I give it an F.
Hong Kong House, 985-B S. Clinton Ave. 244-5569, 244-6103
Mon. - Wed., Sat. & Sun. 3 p.m. - 3 a.m. Thu. & Fri. 11 a.m. - 3 a.m.