Shooters, Revisited

It was back in March 2011 that I last reviewed Shooters, a bar and restaurant in Fairport, or Perinton, depending on how you look at the map, or go by postal designations. Either way, it's at the corner of Fairport Road (31F) and Baird Road. But it was overdue for a revisit.
With that in mind, I recently stopped at Shooters with my beautiful wife for lunch. She opted for a salad (ah, women, what can I say) while I got a Margherita pizza.
It was thin, as expected,  with an underside that was generally golden brown, with a light dusting of flour. There were a few charred spots along the edge, but not underneath.
It was tasty, with a thick layer of bright-tasting tomato sauce and several well-melted dollops of fresh mozzarella, and some fresh basil that had been added at the end. The pie had also been dusted with a grated hard cheese, probably Parmesan.
Although the underside wasn't shatteringly crisp, it was firm. As you can see in the photo, I was able to fold and hold a slice up, horizontally, even as the well-melted cheese stretched out.
There was a genuine wood fire in the oven; it wasn't just a gas fire, as I've seen in some places. From a brief conversation with the pizzaiolo, though, I learned that the fire typically gets cranked up, and the oven temperature is typically higher, in the evening, resulting in a shorter baking time.
That's understandable; the lunch crowd was relatively sparse, and I can see not wanting to go through a lot of fuel during low-volume hours. I suspect, then, that a pizza ordered during the dinner hour would likely come out a little more charred and/or crisp underneath.
But this pie was not underdone, even if it was a little different from what I would've gotten had I ordered the same pie that evening. It was not blistered or charred underneath, but it was firm. If your ideal pizza is "leopard spotted" underneath, try coming here for dinner rather than lunch.
Shooters offers twelve pizzas, and while I went with my default Margherita, I'd like to try their clams Casino pizza and their andouille sausage pizza. They also have an extensive burger menu, as well as sandwiches, panini, salads, wings, and other sides and appetizers. There's a full bar, and a lot of TVs around to keep sports fans happy.
I liked this pizza, and I liked the place itself. The service was attentive, and the pizzaiolo was obviously dedicated to his craft. This particular pie wasn't among the very best I've had, in my opinion, but it was good overall, and good enough to make me want to go back. So a B seems about right.

Shooters, 1226 Fairport Road
Fairport, NY 14454

Mon. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 2 a.m., Sun. noon - midnight
Pizza available till 11 p.m.

585-385-9777

info@shootersny.com

Links, Perinton

This establishment is now closed.
Thanks to a reader's very thorough listing of places that I hadn't covered, I resolved to work my way through some local bars and restaurants that offer pizza. In general, these aren't places that you would go to just for the pizza, but if you do go, you may wonder whether you should order the pizza (is it going to be on an oily, brittle or spongy premade shell, or might it actually be good?), so I think it's worth it to check these places out and let readers know a little about the pizza.
And so, not long ago, I stopped at Links, a self-described "upscale" sports bar in the Perinton Square Mall at the corner of Pittsford-Palmyra Road (31F) and Moseley Road (250). Links is unique, I believe, among local establishments for offering virtual golf, with individual stations where you can play golf - virtually - in front of a video screen.
You're more apt to find me at a mini-golf park with my daughter than on anything resembling a real golf course, so the virtual golf didn't especially interest me. But I did want to try Link's grilled pizza.
Is it just me, or is grilled pizza popping up more on menus these days? I suspect that for a lot of restaurants and bars it has the appeal of being relatively easy to prepare - throw a crust on the grill, flip it and add toppings.
The problem is that, from the standpoint of ease of preparation, those benefits are best realized with a premade crust, i.e., a "shell" or parbaked crust that the restaurant buys from a wholesaler. Sure, you can make your own fresh dough, stretch it, and grill it, but if part of your motivation in adding grilled pizza to your menu is that it's easy to make, that would largely defeat the purpose.
I'm not going to say that premade crusts are necessarily bad, but I don't think they're ever exceptionally good. You're essentially talking about taking a piece of flatbread out of a package and heating both sides on a grill. Good enough? Maybe. But great?
Not in this case, at least. The crust on my pizza had grill marks on both sides, as expected, and was rather wet on the surface, I imagine from the toppings. It wasn't soaked through - the wetness was on the outside - but it was not crisp or even al dente firm.
This was a very cheesy pizza, with a heavy layer of melted mozzarella that was almost liquid. It didn't adhere too well to the crust, but that's typical of grilled pizza, since the cheese is not applied until after the top side has already been cooked on the grill.
Beneath the cheese was a thin layer of slightly chunky tomato sauce, which was dotted with some herbs, particularly, from what my palate could tell, oregano.
I was in a vegetarian mood that day, so I ordered sweet peppers and onions (which are generally an excellent, and underrated combination), and I got one more topping, so I went with black olives. The toppings I got were, well, OK. The olives were canned, which I guess is what I should've expected - not too many places slice their own "fresh" olives ("fresh" is kind of a misnomer, since all edible olives are cured) - and the diced red onions and green peppers were fresh. Not to be picky, but I prefer sauteed peppers and onions on my pizza - it seems to give them a fuller, yet mellower flavor. But these crunchy bits of onion and pepper were fine for what they were.
Links' menu has several pizza options, including a "build your own" (which is what I got) with tomato sauce, mozzarella and up to three toppings included in the basic price, a Buffalo chicken pie, Hawaiian pizza, BBQ chicken, chicken bruschetta pizza, and a white Tuscan pizza with olive oil, roasted garlic, mozzarella, tomato and kalamata olives. Actually, that last one sounds so good I'm wondering why I didn't order it. Oh well.
The rest of the menu is pretty extensive, and includes bar staples like burgers and wings, as well as steaks, seafood and pasta. The atmosphere is casual, as you would expect of a place where guys are playing virtual golf a few feet away.
To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of grilled pizza, but some are better than others. This was, well, not bad, but not especially great either. Part of it, I suppose, has to do with one's expectations - if you simply described this as a grilled flatbread, I may have taken to it better. But as a pizza, it was no better than OK. I'll give it a C.
Links Bar & Grill, 6720 Pittsford-Palmyra Road, Fairport
585-598-2663
Mon. - Thu. 11:30 am - midnight, Fri. 11:30 — 1 am, Sat. 8 am - 1 am, Sun. 8 am - 10 pm

Headliners, Fairport (CLOSED)

(This establishment has closed. - RPG)
Whenever a new pizza place opens, I'm torn between wanting to check it out immediately and giving them enough time to work the bugs out.
I recently stopped at Headliners, which debuted earlier this summer in Fairport. It hasn't been open long, but curiosity got the best of me, so off I went.
Headliners is a "big slice" place, with giant slices for three bucks. On my visit, they were offering cheese, pepperoni and Buffalo chicken. I got a pepperoni slice.
This slice was mostly very thin, but nearer the edge it was quite thick. The underside was a uniform brown, with screen marks. My fingertips could detect a bit of oil, and though it didn't have a crisp "bite," the exterior had a crackly surface, as you can see in the bottom photo.
At the outer edge, the crust ended in a wide, thick, bready, crusty cornicione with some burnt-cheese notes, giving it a flavor that was reminiscent of Cheez-It crackers.
The slice was blanketed by a heavy. solid layer of congealed mozzarella cheese. The sauce was more moderately applied, but was detectable on the palate. It had a bright, tomatoey flavor with some peppery kick, the source of which I was unable to identify (some red pepper in the sauce, perhaps?).
For a pepperoni slice, this was a bit light on the pepperoni, but what there was was pretty good, cup and char pepperoni that was a little crisp along the edges.
You can peruse Headliners' menu here, so I won't bother reciting everything they offer, but I will note a few things of interest. One, Headliners' pizza comes with your choice of sauce, which is something you don't see too often. At headliners, you can get your pizza with traditional red sauce, sweet & sour, garlic parmesan, BBQ or Buffalo sauce, the latter two of which come in hot, medium and mild versions. So basically, you can get chicken wing sauce on your pizza, but hey, why not? I've been known to dip my crusts into my chicken wing sauce from time to time myself.
Also of note is Headliners' "Famous Pizza Plate Challenge."  Finish a "Famous Pizza Plate" (which consists of mac salad, home fries, and a giant slice, covered with meat hot sauce) in under 25 minutes, and you'll receive a Headliners T-shirt, and get your picture on their wall and on their website. As of the date of my visit, one customer had managed to accomplish this feat, although I was told that he, well, shall we say, "lost it" twice during his efforts (which should've disqualified him, I say, but it's not my contest to run).
Overall, this was a reasonably good slice of pizza. The flavor was good and the crust wasn't bad. It was not, however, better than average for this area, in my opinion. For one thing, while I like cheese as much as the next guy, this slice was a little too cheese-heavy. The cheese dominated the other components, throwing the slice out of balance. And while a crackly underside is ordinarily a sign of a good crust, this crust wasn't as crisp as the photo might indicate. It was cracked, but lacked that bit of bite that makes for a truly great crust. The crust was firm, but nothing particularly special. So while this was by no means a bad slice of pizza, on balance I'd say it was about average, and I'll give it a C.
Headliners Pizza, 541 Whitney Road, Fairport, NY 14450
203-1808
Mon. – Sat. 10 a.m. – 10 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.
email: info@headlinerspizza.com

Perinton Pizza Emporium Revisited

Back in December 2009, I did a post about Perinton Pizza (a/k/a Perinton Pizza Emporium), which I gave a D based on the oily, bland crust and overbaked cheese on the slice that I tried.
As with most of my negative reviews, that didn't sit well with everybody, and some two and a half years later a revisit was clearly overdue, so I went back recently for a small cheese pie. Since my prior experience with a slice wasn't so great, I thought a pie might be a better gauge of their pizza.
This pie had a dry bottom - that was certainly better than last time - but it was soft underneath, with no exterior "bite."
The crust was medium thick, with pretty good, bready flavor and a yeasty aroma, though on top, where the crust met the sauce and cheese, it was rather gummy, almost like wet dough. The crust was much better along the thick cornicione, which had a nice exterior crunch, giving it some of the characteristics of a good loaf of bread.
My pie was topped with a tomatoey sauce, of medium-thick consistency. Some herbs were noticeable on my palate. The mozzarella had pooled a bit toward the center of the pie (this will tend to be more noticeable on small pies), and was slightly browned and very stringy. All in all, the components of this pizza were well balanced.
This was, without question, an improvement over the slice I got last time. The primary improvement was the relative dryness of the underside, without all the oil that marred my previous slice. It also had pretty good flavor, nicely melted cheese, and a pleasantly crisp outer edge.
But I like a crisp crust, and aside from the cornicione (which will account for less of the crust on a larger pizza), this was not a great crust. It was OK, but still too soft underneath for my taste, and as I mentioned, the top side was a little gummy, probably from the moisture of the toppings seeping into it. So while this was not a bad pizza, on balance, I'd say it was no better, or worse, than average for this area, and I'll give it a C.
Perinton Pizza, 11 Courtney Drive, Fairport
223-8118
Sun. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Mon. - Thu. 10 a.m. - 10 p.m., Fri. 10 a.m. - 11 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.

Bocaccini's, Perinton

As I've mentioned in the past, restaurant pizzas generally take me longer to getting around to, but I do get around to them eventually. My most recent was from Bocaccini's, near the corner of Rts. 31 and 250 in Perinton. (The "official" address says Fairport, but it's not in the village of Fairport, it's in the town of Perinton.)
For some reason I had been under the impression that this was a chain restaurant, but it's not. Must be something about the name and the suburban location, but it just sounds like a chain place.
At any rate - the food here includes some traditional items like veal, chicken, or eggplant parm, more inventive dishes such as herb-crusted pork tenderloin with butternut squash ravioli in a maple-Dijon glaze, as well as basic, simpler fare, including panini, wraps, and, yes, pizza.
Unlike some comparable places, Bocaccini's doesn't have a wood-fired oven, but advertises its pizza as "thin crust brick oven pizza." The pizza oven was visible from our table, thanks to Bocaccini's open kitchen.
From the nine pizzas listed, I had to go with the Margherita (spelled "Margarita" on the menu). In addition to the standard tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, I requested fresh garlic, which wasn't listed as a topping on the menu, but which is generally available.
My plate-sized pizza had a very thin crust; in fact, the crust was thinner than the cheese layer. It was good cheese, smooth and stringy, and definitely needed to be consumed while the pizza was still hot.
The underside of the crust was well browned toward the center of the pie, much lighter toward the edge. While it was reasonably crisp, however, there was way too much corn meal underneath. I don't mind a little corn meal, I know it serves a purpose (primarily to keep the dough from sticking to the peel), but this was really coated with it. Some places do use it to give the crust extra crispness (though I don't generally care for that), but this was just gritty.
The crust itself was all right, with a chewy texture, but it wasn't so bready or flavorful that I could really enjoy eating it all by itself. So the wide "naked" ring of crust along the edge wasn't a plus here either. Not a big problem, but again this crust benefited from the toppings, which could have been spread a little closer to the edge.
The sauce was more apparent to the eye than to the tongue. I think it was simply applied thinly - not much moisture could have evaporated, under that layer of cheese, and the crust wasn't soggy, so I don't think much soaked into the dough either. But it was hard to taste, and aside from the cheese, I didn't pick up much moisture here. The bits of shredded basil were OK, if a little dry. If you like basil, I think it's best to add some fresh basil at or very near the end of the baking process; dry basil has relatively little flavor, unless it cooks in a liquid, such as tomato sauce, for some time. This basil looked fresh, but it also looked as if it had dried out in the oven, which sapped it of much of its flavor and aroma.
The garlic was a good choice, and I'd recommend it, unless of course, you don't like garlic. It had a mild yet pronounced flavor that added an extra dimension to this pie.One of my companions also got pizza, a white, four-cheese pie. We agreed that it was good, but the four cheeses (ricotta, mozzarella, Asiago and Romano) tended to blend together into one mass, and we couldn't pick up their distinctive flavors or tell what each contributed to the whole. I'm frankly inexperienced with "quattro formaggio" pizza, so maybe that's just how they are, and I don't fault Bocaccini's for that. Maybe the whole point of the style is to blend four different cheeses. But for me, if I'm getting a pizza with four distinctive cheeses, I want to be able to taste them each and get a sense of how they play off each other.
This was a pleasant enough lunch - the setting was comfortable, with an open, airy feel, and faux-industrial decor accented by some splashes of color. Service was fine. Oh, and my third companion very much liked his panini, and he can be a tough critic.
The pizza? No huge complaints here, but several little flaws. The excessive corn meal underneath, the wide, barren strip along the edge of the relatively bland crust, the absence of any noticeable sauce layer - none of these were enough to make me dislike this pizza, which all in all wasn't bad, but collectively they knock it down to a no-better-than-average C.
Bocaccini's, 6720 Pittsford Palmyra Road (Rt. 31), Fairport, NY 14450

Sun. 4 - 9 p.m., Mon. - Fri. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Sat. noon - 10 p.m.

Eastside Cafe, Fairport

Here’s another one that I just realized I never got around to posting. It dates from last summer, but I’ve no reason to think that anything significant has changed since then at Eastside, so here it is.
Eastside Café is on 31F, across from a VFW post, just east of the village of Fairport. I believe that it was formerly a Mr. Shoes location, but I’m not sure if there remains any connection between it and Mr. Shoes.
I got a cheese slice at lunchtime. This is one of those places where you place your order at the counter and they bring it out to you, so although I asked for it to go, I had a chance to look around a little. There were several tables and a couple of TVs tuned to sports. This is a breakfast/lunch/dinner place, something of a cross between a diner and a pizzeria, and the pleasant aroma of frying sausage was in the air, perhaps left over from the breakfast hours.
When my pizza arrived, it turned out that my slice was in fact two slices. I was glad I hadn’t ordered two, or I’d have ended up with half a pizza, as I did here.
The underside was quite dark brown, but not charred. This was the kind of brown you get when dough cooks in the presence of oil, though it wasn’t particularly greasy. It had been baked on a screen. The crust was medium thick, with a soft texture.
The pizza was heavy on the cheese, with a thick layer of pale melted mozzarella, lightly dusted with dried herbs. It seemed also to have been sprinkled with parmesan (I think), which added some complexity and a bit of tanginess to the flavor.
The sauce was moderately applied and was similar in consistency and flavor to a thick canned spaghetti sauce. I’m not saying it came straight from a can or jar, just that that’s what it reminded me of pretty thick, and had a crackly, fried crunch.
Eastside has a fairly standard lineup of pizza toppings, and nine specialty pizzas, including a potato pie. Eastside’s take on potato pizza is not a traditional Roman pizza di patate, but an Americanized version with Idaho spuds, bacon bits, and cheddar, with sour cream on the side. All their pizzas may be ordered “red” or “white,” with regular or “N.Y. style thin” crust.
Aside from pizza, Eastside serves calzones, wings, and hot and cold “grinders” (a term you don’t see used much around here), which come with such colorful names as the “Big Bad Joan” and the “Scooby Doo.”
As I mentioned, Eastside is open all day, and has a full menu, from breakfast through dinner. The breakfast menu, which is available Friday through Sunday, has all the standards, as well as breakfast pizza (which is definitely not my thing). The rest of the menu includes “Monsta Plates,” salads, wraps, pasta, seafood, chicken and rib dinners, and a few desserts. Eastside delivers, for a charge, as far as Macedon and Walworth.
Although this didn’t really fit my profile of great pizza, it wasn’t bad. A lot of its attributes - screen baked, soft crust, heavy cheese - are, for me, strikes against a pizza. But flavor counts too, and this tasted pretty good; the components seemed to work together, and maybe that dusting of herbs and parmesan helped as well. For whatever reason, I found myself liking this one almost in spite of myself, or at least in spite of my usual preferences. I’ll give it a B-.
Eastside Cafe, 303 Macedon Center Road (Rt. 31F), Fairport 223-7463
Breakfast: Fri. 6:30 - 10:30 a.m., Sat. & Sun. 7 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Lunch & dinner: Mon. - Thu. and Sun. 9 a.m. - 9 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 9 a.m. - 10 p.m.

Napa, Fairport

Napa is a restaurant featuring wood-fired pizza (actually I suppose it’s the oven that’s wood-fired, not the pizza, but you get the idea). It’s near the corner of Rt. 31, a/k/a Pittsford-Palmyra Road, and Rt. 250 (Moseley Road) in Fairport, about two miles south of the village center.
For a time, Napa had a second location in Victor, but that’s now Lucca, which I reviewed recently. Since there is, or was, some connection between them, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two.
As I did at Lucca, I ordered a Margherita pizza from Napa. Lucca’s comes with fresh garlic - though it wasn’t particularly noticeable - but Napa’s menu made no mention of garlic on the margherita, so I requested it.
As expected, the crust on my pizza was very thin. It had a well-charred underside, with a dry, crackly texture. In fact, for my taste, this crust was too thin and crackly. It seemed to be all dry, crunchy exterior and no bready, chewy interior.
The pizza was topped with a thick, sweet, herbal sauce. That’s a bit unusual, I think, for a Margherita, which in my experience is more typically made with fresh tomatoes, or perhaps crushed, uncooked canned plum tomatoes. As I’ve mentioned before, I find it preferable to use a cooked sauce rather than flavorless, out-of-season fresh tomatoes, but this full-flavored sauce was a bit overwhelming for the thin crust on this pizza. In that respect, this pizza was similar to the one I had at Lucca, although Napa’s sauce seemed to me to be a bit sweeter and more flavored with herbs.
Unlike Lucca’s Margherita, which used whole basil leaves, Napa’s was generously sprinkled with shredded basil. I like fresh basil, but in some spots it was so heavily applied here as to give the pizza a pesto-like flavor.
The sauce was dotted with a dozen or so islets of fresh mozzarella. It was nicely melted, but its mild flavor tended to get swallowed up in that of the sauce and the basil. Nor was the fresh garlic - which is ordinarily pretty hard to miss - particularly noticeable, again a trait shared with the pizza I got from Lucca. The pizza in general left an aftertaste of that herbal sauce and the fresh basil.
The outer edge of the crust was formed into a medium-size lip. It had a toasty flavor and, like the rest of the crust, was very crunchy. In several spots it contained large air pockets, making it literally all exterior and no interior.
Napa offers an impressive fifty pizzas, which are divided on the menu into “Neapolitan” and “Gourmet” categories (though the line between those two seems a bit fuzzy - I’m not sure I’d agree that the “Maui,” with ham, pineapple, banana peppers and pineapple bbq sauce, belongs under the Neapolitan heading). They run the gamut from simple and understated, like the cheeseless marinara with shaved garlic, fresh basil and oregano, to the innovative, like the Thai chicken curry pizza, to the over-the-top, like the Superdome, with shrimp, onions, banana peppers, hot chicken sausage, Buffalo sauce and red sauce. One oddity I noticed is that the quattro formaggi (four cheese) pizza lists only three cheeses: fresh mozzarella, parmesan and gorgonzola. Maybe it’s implied that those are in addition to the processed mozzarella that’s standard on most American pizza.
Napa does more than just pizza. The rest of the menu includes salads, “wrapini,” which are described as sandwiches made using a grilled pizza crust and finished off in the oven, and various small plates (crab cakes, Tuscan bean stew, and sesame-crusted Ahi tuna, to name a few). There’s a good-sized bar along one side, serving wine and beer, and ample booth seating on the other, in an atmosphere that straddles the line between casual and formal.
This is one of those reviews where I look back at what I’ve written and think, gee, this sounds way more negative and critical than I meant it to be. This wasn’t bad pizza, by any means, and I appreciate the fact that Napa hasn’t dumbed down their pizzas. What I mean is, some places make a big deal about using a wood-fired oven, but then they turn out pizza with a soft, pale crust that’s not as crisp as what I can get using my home oven. Napa hasn't done that, and for that, I give them credit.
But to me, it’s possible to go too far in the other direction, too. Some wood-fired pizzerias, Napa included, seem to strive for ultra-thin, cracker-like crusts. That’s just not my preference. I like at least some interior breadiness - or “crumb,” in breadspeak - and that was missing here.
My other complaint is that this pizza seemed a bit out of balance. Part of that stems from the thinness and crackly texture of the crust, which was easily overpowered by the sauce and basil. I think I might better have enjoyed this pizza with a more delicately flavored and lightly applied sauce, and a bit lighter hand with the basil as well.
Admittedly, though, some of that is just a matter of personal preference. If I thought that Napa had simply screwed this one up, I’d give them a poor grade, but my impression is that this is exactly the pizza they set out to make. I’m not going to fault them much simply because it may not have been the pizza that I would’ve preferred, but it still seemed a bit out of balance to me. So trying to give some weight to both those competing considerations, I’ll peg this one at a B-.
Napa Wood Fired Pizzeria, 687 Moseley Rd. (Perinton Hills Plaza), Fairport 223-5250
Mon. - Thu. 11 a.m. - 9 p.m., Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.

Perinton Pizza

Perinton Pizza is a family-owned and operated pizzeria that’s been in business since 1985. Technically the address is Courtney Drive, but for practical purposes it’s in a small plaza on Pittsford Palmyra Road (Rt. 31), between Turk Hill Road and Rt. 250.
I picked up a couple of cheese slices at lunchtime. While waiting for them to come up, I noticed that the pizza here is baked in a conveyor-belt oven, which you don’t often see around here.
The results, in this case at least, were not impressive. My slices had a faint scent of frying oil, and the underside was soft, browned, and oily. The crust was pretty thin, except at the thick outer lip. It had a soft, spongy texture, except again for the lip, which was crunchy. The lip - which was probably the best part - displayed some air holes inside, but the rest of the dough didn’t seem to have risen much, and even the lip didn’t have much in the way of breadiness, with a bland, white-bread flavor and texture.
The sauce, which was modestly applied, had a mild tomatoey flavor. The cheese was rather thick, and was well browned and congealed into a solid mass.
Perinton Pizza has a fairly extensive list of pizza toppings, and quite a few specialty pizzas, which cholesterolically speaking run the gamut from a veggie pizza to the potato skin pizza, with potato skins, chives, bacon, mozzarella, cheddar, and sour cream.
There’s also a long list of specialty subs, as well as wings, wraps, calzones, salads, appetizers, “landfill plates,” Italian dinners, fried fish or shrimp, and a few desserts too. All items are available for pickup, delivery, or eating on the premises.
According to the menu, Perinton Pizza has won the “Perinton Pizza Poll” five of the past six years. I don’t know who the other candidates were, but Perinton Pizza must have its fans. Based on this visit, I can’t count myself among them. As always, it all starts with the crust, and this one was too soft, spongy and greasy, and the cheese was overcooked. I also got the impression that the yeast hadn’t been given enough of a chance to do their thing before the pizza went in the oven.
Speaking of which, I don’t know to what extent the oven itself is to blame, but to my way of thinking, a conveyor belt system really takes away any ability of the pizza maker to control the final product once the pizza has gone into the oven. In effect, it renders the pizza maker little more than a machine operator, rather than a chef or true pizzaiolo. That may be convenient, if you’re staffed with inexperienced help, but it doesn’t bode well for the pizza.
But again, just my opinion. Presumably these folks haven’t stayed in business for nearly 25 years by making pizza that nobody likes. But based on my idea of good pizza, I’ll give it a D.
Perinton Pizza, Courtney Commons Plaza, Fairport 223-8118
Mon. - Thu. 9 a.m. - 10 p.m., Fri. 9 a.m. - 11 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m. - 11 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.