Good Fellow's, Culver Rd.

A helpful reader recently alerted me to new place, Good Fellow's on Culver Road, near Parsells. I stopped in for a couple of cheese slices last month.
They looked pretty good, with a thin crust, narrow lip and a thin but proportional layer of sauce and cheese.
From their outward appearance, I would've thought that these were New York style slices. A peek underneath, though, showed otherwise. The underside was docked, i.e., pockmarked with holes (not a problem in itself), and ranged from deep to very dark brown. It was soft, and smelled of cooking oil.
Nor did things get much better when I took a bite. The crust was lifeless, with little evidence of rising, and chewy but uninteresting. The sauce was OK but basic, like an average canned sauce. The cheese was likewise serviceable, but covered in spots with a thin layer of orange-colored oil that had exuded during the baking process. Like the sauce, it wasn't bad, but it didn't do anything to elevate this slice or compensate for the poor crust.
This is a short review, but that's about all there is to say about this pizza. It wasn't that good, and it wasn't as good as it looked. I had the feeling that there was a good pizza lurking in there somewhere, if it had been prepared a little differently, but as it was, this was just a thinner version of the pizza that you tend to find at a lot of quick, inexpensive places. The crust needs work.
I'll refrain from grading this one, since this is a pretty new place. Maybe things will get better. But this was a below-average slice of pizza.
Good Fellows Pizza & Deli, Culver Road, Rochester
1157 Culver Road
Rochester, New York 14609
(585) 482-1977
Hours unknown at this time

Amore (Wegmans East Avenue)

When I first read about Wegmans opening an Italian restaurant, offering pizza, adjoining their revamped East Avenue store, I was both intrigued and skeptical. Wegmans gets a lot of things right, but I'm not sold on them where full-fledged restaurants - or pizza - are concerned.
But I did want to check out Amore, the Italian restaurant attached to the remodeled East Avenue store. You can read about the details of the pizza, and the oven it's baked in, here. As I said, I took a wait-and-see attitude.
I went for lunch with two friends, which gave me the opportunity to try three pizzas. I went with my usual Margherita. One of my companions got a diavolo, and the other ordered a butternut squash pizza topped with shaved Brussels sprouts and roasted leeks.
Each pizza measures eleven inches across, making it about right for one hungry person, or just enough to take a slice or two home with you. The crust on all three was quite thin; not paper-thin, but thin. Think of several sheets of paper.

My Margherita was generally good The underside of the crust had a few char spots, and was reasonably crisp. I'll get to the toppings in a moment.
My friend with the butternut squash pie complained that her crust was not good, and at first I assumed it was just a matter of personal taste. Then I tried a slice. It was heavily coated underneath with flour, giving the underside a pasty texture and a flavor of raw flour. It's common to find some flour on the underside of a pizza, as it helps keep the raw dough from sticking to the pizza peel. But this was too much.The crust was also very blackened - burnt, in fact - along part of the edge.
The diavolo, topped with sopressata and roasted peppers, had a decent crust, similar to the Margherita's, and we all agreed that it was the best pie overall of the bunch. The combination of peppery sopressata, sweet roasted peppers and melted mozzarella made a very nice combination. Despite the name, it wasn't especially spicy, but it did have a little bit of kick. It also came with a small cup of hot oil for dipping, something I hadn't seen before. I tried it, but it didn't seem to me to add a whole lot to the experience.
As for the other pies' toppings, the Margherita wasn't bad. It was topped with a basic tomato sauce, scattered dollops of melted, fresh mozzarella, and torn basil, which were added after cooking. It was rather salty but tasty, and I liked it, even if the components didn't quite come together like the best Margheritas I've had.
The butternut squash pie was likewise not bad, but not quite as good as I'd hoped. It's usually unwise to have preconceptions, but I was expecting something along the lines of the butternut squash pizza that I had at Fiamma. That pie was topped with a squash puree, which made for a nice sauce.
This pie, on the other hand, was topped which chunks and bits of roasted vegetables, including diced butternut squash. They tasted good enough, but overall I found the pie rather dry.
The opinions expressed here are mine alone, of course, but one nice thing about sharing pizza with people is getting their input. And on this occasion all three of us agreed that if we were to rank these pies from best to worst, it would be:  (1) diavolo; (2) Margherita; and (3) butternut squash. I'm not going to grade them individually, because part of the issue with these pies was the crust, which can vary from one pizza to another. In other words, just because the crust on the butternut squash pizza wasn't so good doesn't mean that Amore's butternut squash pizza has a particular problem with the crust; the problem is not with that variety, it's a problem with consistency.
I'm giving these a C. There were some issues, as I've described. Overall this was pizza worth trying, and there were things I liked about it, but it wasn't great, and at $12 for an 11-inch pie, I expect a little better. A C just seems right to me.
Amore, 1750 East Ave., 14610
(585) 452-8780
Lunch:
11:30AM - 2:30PM, Sunday - Saturday
Dinner:
5:30PM - 9PM, Sunday - Thursday
5:30PM - 10PM, Friday & Saturday

Papa Roni's, Pavilion

During the course of my travels, I recently ran across a pizzeria in Pavilion, which is on Rt. 19 a few miles south of Le Roy.
Papa Roni's is at the corner of Routes 19 and 63.
I'd link to the website, but my computer is warning me that it "may harm [my] computer," so if you want to risk it, just do a web search. Here's a link to their Facebook page.
From the looks of it, I thought it might be one of these convenience-store operations, with just some prefab pizza sitting on a warming tray, but no, it is a "real" pizzeria, with hand-stretched dough and handmade pies.
Alas, my pepperoni slice wasn't so great. The crust was thin, with a medium-brown underside that was crisscrossed by screen marks. It had a rather soft surface and a chewy, uninteresting texture.
The pie from which it came seemed reasonably fresh, but a tad overdone on top. The cheese was rather browned, and not very smooth; a bit too chewy for my taste. Underneath it lay a moderate layer of basic tomatoey sauce, and up top, the thin-sliced pepperoni was nicely distributed and a little crisp. The toppings weren't bad, then, but didn't really do much to improve on the crust.
On the plus side, the pie was well made, in the sense that it was evenly thin, with a thin lip and, as mentioned, evenly distributed toppings. It just didn't add up to a particularly good slice of pizza.
Papa Roni's also does wings, subs, and ice cream.  There are a few specialty pizzas as well.
I like independent pizzerias, and every small town should have one. But I have to be honest. This pizza was OK, but below average, and so it gets a D from me.

Papa Roni's, 11090 Lake St., Pavilion, NY 14525
Phone:(585) 584-3170
10 a.m. - 10 p.m. daily, till 11 p.m. on Fri. and Sat.