Meneze's, Chili Ave.

Menezes Pizza is on Chili Avenue in Rochester’s 19th Ward. They’ve been in business, at one location or another, since 1986, and at their current location since 1996 (there’s an extensive history of the pizzeria on their website).
I ordered a large pie, half pepperoni, half plain. It was a 16" pie, cut into square slices.
The crust was medium-to-thick, and appeared to have been baked on a screen, although the website describes Menezes pizza as stone-baked. I asked one of the owners about that afterwards and was told that the pizzas do start out on a screen and then are moved to the oven floor about halfway through baking, for reasons having to do with the high volume of orders they have to deal with. But if a customer asks for the pizza to be cooked on the oven floor throughout, Menezes will accommodate that request.
Getting back to the crust, it did have some exterior crispness. It was a relatively light shade of brown underneath, but had a darker, pretzel-like hue along the thick, slightly crunchy lip. Overall, the dough had a reasonably bready flavor and texture, which is especially important for a thicker-crust pizza.
Topside, the cheese was well browned, especially on the cheese-only half. It was fairly thick, and was baked to the point of coagulation - in other words, it wasn’t stringy, which was fine by me.
The sauce had a mild, tomatoey flavor. It wasn’t unnoticeable, but stayed very much in the background. The pepperoni was of the wide and thin variety, and had good flavor.
Menezes has a basic menu, with a modest list of pizza toppings and two specialty pizzas (Buffalo chicken and steak). They also offer wings and chicken fingers, hot and cold subs, burgers, fries, and salads. The wings, by the way, are nice and meaty, and although I ordered mild (to suit my six-year-old’s more delicate palate), they packed some heat.
Menezes is a takeout and delivery place, with a wide delivery area covering just about all of Southwest Rochester. The delivery map is on their website, which also features on online ordering service.
If you peruse Menezes’ menu and website, I think you’ll also sense a commitment by the owners both to turning out a good product, and to their neighborhood. That dedication to their craft is evident in the pizza as well, which had good flavor and texture, was well made, and, to me, typified that hard-to-describe, yet unmistakable “Rochester” style of pizza. For my taste, it would’ve benefited from just a bit of charring underneath to give the crust a nice, toasty flavor, and next time I’ll be sure to ask that it be cooked sans screen. But that one quibble aside, I enjoyed this one, and I’ll give it a B+.
Menezes Pizza, 445 Chili Ave. 328-3010
Mon. - Wed. 11 a.m. - noon, Thu. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 1 a.m., Sun. noon - midnight
Pizza Guy note:  for a profile of Menezes and discussion with the owners, go here.

Nick's Deli, Chili Center

Nick's Italian Deli is a family-run place that’s been in business now for over a quarter century. It’s on Chili Center Coldwater Road (what a mouthful) near the corner of Chili Ave. In addition to being a full-service deli, they also offer homemade pizza.
When I stopped in at lunchtime, the only single-serving pizza choices were pepperoni slices and “mini pizzas.” I think I’m going to do a review of some local mini-pizza places (it seems to be a west side phenomenon), but I wanted a more representative sample of a whole pie, so I got a slice.
Oddly, the slice was thicker toward the tip than toward the outer edge. It was very soft, with no real crispness to speak of in the crust, except at the very lip, which had a fried crunchiness.
The underside had a medium-brown, fried-dough color, though it was not particularly oily. There was some oil or grease on top, though, enough that I sopped it up with a napkin.
The crust was more doughy than bready in flavor and texture. It was not undercooked, but didn’t have the visible air holes that you typically find in a breadlike crust.
What was perhaps most noticeable about this pizza was the sauce, which had a distinctive, slightly sweet flavor. It contained small bits of crushed tomato, and what appeared to be diced onion.
This was a fairly cheesy slice, but most of the cheese was on the “inner” half of the slice, i.e., nearer the tip. That was a little odd too, since I would've expected the cheese to pool toward the thinner outer edge as the pizza baked. I suppose the cheese was probably just distributed more toward the middle of the pizza prior to going in the oven, and that’s where it stayed. Anyway, the cheese was lightly browned, and literally fell off the pizza as I was holding the slice, which had flopped straight down. As I said, it was a very soft slice of pizza.
The wide and thin pepperoni was unremarkable. It shared the surface with a dusting of dried herbs, the flavor of which was definitely noticeable, forming a counterpoint to the sweetness of the sauce.
Nick’s has a pretty basic list of pizza toppings and several specialty pizzas, including the “Four Seasons,” which is described as “New York Style dough with white garlic sauce split into four quarters: ¼ Artichoke, ¼ Prosciutto, ¼ Olive, ¼ Sausage.” Four pizzas in one? Sounds good to me.
The menu at Nick’s runs the gamut from pizza, subs and wings to pasta and seafood dinners, and a variety of Italian pastries and cookies.
Nick’s also deserves mention as the only place in Monroe County (to my knowledge) that offers gluten-free pizza, as well as gluten-free pasta, bread, meatballs (think bread crumbs), cookies and other items. I’ve tried the gluten-free pizza here, and it’s not bad. (The bottom photo here is of the underside of Nick's gluten-free pizza.) The overall flavor is very similar to the slice that I’ve described here, the only real difference being in the texture of the crust. It’s hard to describe, but it’s kind of like biscuit dough, only not as crumbly.
Nick’s also has a small grocery section, with some imported Italian foods and other items, including the aforementioned gluten-free pasta. There’s an informal dining area, as well as a covered outdoor patio.
Although, by my standards, this pizza had some flaws, I liked it nevertheless. Yes, the crust was way too soft for me, and lacked breadiness, but, as a whole the pizza tasted good. It also had a distinctive flavor, and I prize that too - I wouldn’t mistake this for anybody else’s pizza. So on balance, it comes in, for me, at about a B-.
Nick’s Italian Deli, 1098 Chili Center Coldwater Road. 247-6270
Mon. - Thu. & Sat. 10 a.m. - 9 p.m., Fri. 10 a.m. - 10 p.m., Sun. 3 - 8 p.m.

Cobbs Hill Pizza, Park Ave.

Quick, what do the following places around Rochester have in common?
Park Avenue Bike Shop
Park Avenue Bakery
Pittsford Seafood Market
Midtown Athletic Club
Irondequoit Country Club
Bay Goodman Pizza
Cobbs Hill Pizza
Answer: none of them are in the places they're named after. I don’t know what it is around here, but if you go looking for a business in the area it’s named for, you’re apt to end up miles away from its actual location.
In the case of Cobbs Hill Pizza, the explanation lies in the fact that it started in Cobbs Hill, and at some point moved to Park Avenue, but kept the same name. It’s currently on Park Avenue, in the plaza next to the laundromat near Berkeley St., in the epicenter of the Park Ave. neighborhood.
I have a vague recollection of eating Cobbs Hill pizza when it really was in Cobbs Hill, and I remember it being kind of thick, but it’s been too long to be sure. If it was thick, then it’s changed a great deal since then, because it’s quite thin now.
I got one cheese and one pepperoni slice. I’ll get to the details in a second, but the best short way to describe them is that they were like very greasy New York style slices. I mean, your average NY slice will have some grease on top, but these were particularly greasy.
The crust was thin, as I said, and the slices were quite foldable. The underside was a uniform dark brown, though not at all charred. It was a little bit crisp, at least until the grease soaked in completely. There was a definite bready flavor in there somewhere, but it was effectively camouflaged behind the dominant flavor of grease. (I don’t want to get into the debate again over whether it’s “grease” or “oil.” Grease. Oil. Whatever.)
Likewise, I detected a slightly sweet, herbal flavor of the sauce, but it, too, was difficult to pick out. I thought I might’ve noticed a slight garlicky aftertaste, but if I did, I’m not sure where it originated.
The slices were topped with a thin, even layer of browned cheese. The pepperoni slice was very generously loaded with wide, thin slices of pepperoni, more than you would probably get at a lot of places even if you ordered extra pepperoni. The pepperoni was a little crisp, and seemed a bit spicy, although maybe that’s just because there was so much of it that the spices in the pepperoni collectively made more of an impression on my palate. The edge was thin, crunchy and toasty.
Cobbs Hill’s menu describes it as an “Italian Bistro” and “not just a pizza stop,” and it does have a pretty extensive menu. There’s a long list of hot subs, including “egg subs” (which sounds sort of like an omelet on a roll), panini sandwiches, pasta and other Italian entrees, plus more typical pizzeria-type items like wings (advertised as jumbo “roaster” wings), burgers, stromboli, wraps, salads and sides.
With a few artificial plants about, the atmosphere is a little more, well, “bistrolike,” perhaps, than your typical pizzeria, although it’s hardly what you’d call chic or hip, especially in this neighborhood. I was a little surprised to see that they’re not open very late, even on weekends. There aren’t too many bars on Park Avenue, but I imagine a lot of people in the neighborhood might want a pizza when they head home from Alexander Street or Monroe Avenue. Maybe the owner(s) figured that late-night drunk customers are more trouble than they’re worth.
This is another tough call. In some ways, I liked this pizza. As I said, it’s roughly like NY-style pizza, and that’s my favorite. And at $4 for my two slices, it was a pretty good deal.
It was just so damn greasy, and I couldn’t figure out why. If I’d just gotten the pepperoni slice - which was loaded with toppings - I would’ve said that it was from all the fat melting out of the pepperoni. But the cheese slice was greasy too, so I don’t know. The menu claims that the pizza is baked on a stone hearth, and if so, that makes it even harder to figure, since you really shouldn’t need much, if any oil; dough is not going to stick to a stone oven floor the way that it might stick to an ungreased metal pizza pan.
[10-01-09: I've since been informed by an emailer that the likely reason for the oil is the use of whole-milk mozzarella, which has a higher fat content than the part-skim stuff that most places use. I probably should have known that; some months ago, after I complained that another local pizzeria's product was greasy, a reader posted a comment essentially calling me an idiot for not realizing that what I called grease was actually oil from the "high quality" cheese they used.
My emailer states that there are steps the pizzeria can take to reduce the amount of oil/grease on the pizza after baking, like sopping it up with a paper towel, though I don't think I've ever seen that done other than by the consumer. At any rate, while I can appreciate the use of "better" cheese, and I can certainly tolerate some oil on top of the pizza, I do have a problem when the oil from the cheese ends up seeping into the crust. When I bite into the crust, I want my palate to be met by the flavor and texture of good bread, not of grease. If they can't find a way to avoid that, then I for one would prefer that they use the part-skim cheese. Just my opinion.]
If they could make this without all the grease, I think I'd really like it. As it was, I still liked it, but I couldn’t help thinking how much better it could’ve been. I’ll give it a B-.
Cobbs Hill Pizza & Pasta, 630 Park Ave., 442-6730
Mon. - Sat. 11 a.m. - 10 p.m., Sun. 11:30 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Rochester Pizza Guy note:  see my June 2010 review of a Cobbs Hill pie here.