Skippy's, Sodus

On a recent eastward trek along Rt. 104, I happened upon a pizzeria I'd never heard of, Skippy's, in Sodus.
If you haven't been out that way much, when you hear "Sodus" you may think of the cute little village on the water. That's Sodus Point. Sodus is a village that straddles 104, about two and a half miles inland. And it's a nice little place, too, even if it lacks the water views of its bayside neighbor.
Skippy's sits on West Main Street, right in the center of town. A bar and a Chinese restaurant, those other essentials of small town life, lie within a stone's throw away. If you're into food generally, El Rincon Mexicano, one of our area's best Mexican restaurants, is also nearby on Ridge Road, which is not the same as 104. Consult a map if you're unfamiliar with the area.
When I went into Skippy's, they had both regular and pan (Neapolitan and Sicilian) slices available, so I had to try one of each. The regular, pie-cut slice was on the thin to medium side. The underside was dotted with screen marks, and was firm but not crisp. It was well browned and had a faint aroma of oil mixed with that of toasted bread.
The slice was topped with a moderate layer of relatively thick tomato sauce, which had a marked though not excessively herbal flavor. The cheese was melted, not browned, but it had congealed a bit.
The pan, or Sicilian, slice was made from the same basic components, but offered a different overall experience due to its thicker crust and having risen and been baked in a pan.
Pan pizza is tricky. It can come out overly soft on the bottom, or crunchy but excessively oily. The worst pan pizzas are oily and soft, like a pancake.
Rarely if ever will pan pizza be as crackly crisp as a pizza that's been baked directly on the oven deck, nor should they be. It's a different style of pizza. But for me, the ideal pan pizza will have at least some bite to the crust, and a breadlike interior, without a noticeably oily surface on the underside.
The underside of this slice was cratered with big popped bubbles, and was nicely browned. I wouldn't call it crisp, but it had a pleasant al dente bite to it, without the excess of oil that's the bane of many a pan pizza.
Because of its relative thickness, I was able to better evaluate its interior. There was some nice, moderately chewy breadiness here, though texturally I would've liked a little more internal airiness. Certainly you don't want big bubbles popping up all over, but the dough here was a bit more compact and dense that it could've been, which for my taste is less interesting and pleasing than a slice that has a more airy interior with bubbles of varying size.
The cheese on this slice was a little browned, probably because the crust of this pizza necessitated a longer stay in the oven than the relatively thin pie. The thin slices of pepperoni were just slightly crisp.
This was decent pizza, perfectly acceptable for a quick bite while passing through Sodus, and worth a short detour off 104. If I lived in Sodus, I'd be good with this as my local, hometown pizzeria, though when ordering a pie, I might ask them if they could bake my pizza on the oven deck. All in all, it was average for this area, so I'll give it a C.
Skippy's Pizza, 14 W. Main St., Sodus, NY 14551
(315) 553-2205

Crust Pizza Kitchen, East Rochester

In August 2009, I published a post about Despatch Pizza Kitchen in East Rochester. (East Rochester, by the way, was originally named "Despatch," for railroad-related reasons.) Despatch occupied the former site of a Piatza's pizzeria.
But the door continues to revolve at this particular address, and the latest entrant on the scene is Crust Pizza Kitchen, which opened in January.
I got a single slice recently at lunchtime. The thin to medium thick crust was generally pale, with some browner areas, and displayed screen marks. It was rather soft, and very pliable. The interior had a little breadiness, but it wasn't particularly interesting.
The slice did have decent flavor and was pretty well balanced. It was toppped with a basic tomato sauce, which was very middle-of-the-road, not too salty, sweet, or herb-infused. The mozzarella was a little browned, not overly so, but enough to make it a little less stretchy than it otherwise would have been.
That probably has something to do with the abundant pepperoni, which was generously if somewhat haphazardly applied. When a pizza has a lot of toppings on it, particularly toppings like pepperoni that benefit from a longer time in the oven, exposed areas of cheese are likely to get browned. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you like your cheese a little bit browned. Me, I like it just to the edge of browning, baked enough to be stretchy but with a faint hint of caramelization on the surface.
Crust's pizzas come in 9-, 12-, and 16-inch sizes, as well as 18 x 26" sheets. There are over 30 toppings available, including several varieties of cheese (feta, ricotta, cheddar, provolone and Swiss), and one of my favorites, fresh garlic. They have an impressive list of 22 specialty pizzas, from a "Mac's Cheeseburger," which, like a certain "big" burger from a ubiquitous chain is topped with 1000 Island dressing, pickles, onions, tomatoes, and American cheese, to a "Señor Taco" pizza with ranch dressing, seasoned ground beef, tomatoes, onions, mozzarella and cheddar, plus shredded lettuce that's added at the end.
Crust also offers jumbo-size wings (four sauces), salads, a wide variety of hot and cold subs, calzones, plates, fish fries, wraps, burgers and hots, and a few sweets.
It's a good looking menu, and some of the items, including some of the pizzas, sound good. But this slice, while not exactly bad, didn't wow me. The flavor was OK, but the crust was just too soft, and didn't have enough backbone to stand up to the toppings. That was particularly disappointing given the name of this pizzeria, and the statement on their Facebook page that they “proof” their dough overnight, "which ensures that it has a 'flaky' finish without a 'cracker' quality. If you want to tell the quality of a pizza, look underneath it" The name and that statement led me to think, or at least hope, that the crust would be especially good here.
Alas, for my taste, the crust on this particular slice was not stellar. But I think that CPK's heart is in the right place, and since they've just recently opened, I'm not going to assign this one a grade. This is the kind of place I want to go back to sometime, and give another try.
Crust Pizza Kitchen, 115 W. Commercial St., East Rochester
218-0818

Mon - Thu: 11:00 am - 9:00 pm, Fri & Sat: 11:00 am - 10:00 pm, Sun: 11:00 am - 9:00 pm

Fairfield's, Fairport/Penfield

As I've mentioned before, it takes me a little longer to get around to bars and restaurants that serve pizza, but I do generally get to them, eventually. Recently I crossed another such place off my list, Fairfield's. The name comes from its location near the border of Fairport and Penfield.
Fairfield's is a casual restaurant with a small bar. The menu is split roughly between Italian American mainstays (e.g. chicken french, linguine with clam sauce) and bar food staples like burgers and wings.
And pizza, which straddles both those culinary worlds. So I stopped by recently to check it out.
While you can "build your own" pizza from Fairfield's list of 25 available toppings, they also have 11 specialty pizzas available, and I went with my usual Margherita (which was correctly spelled on the menu, I might add). Margherita pizza was named for an Italian queen, and the pizza created in her honor displays the red, white and green colors of the Italian flag. So Margheritas typically involve some combination of tomatoes, cheese and basil.
Fairfield's Margherita is described on the menu as topped with fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella, Romano, basil and olive oil. And that proved to be an accurate description, particularly where the oil is concerned.
In short, I have never seen such an oily pizza. Even before I took a slice, I could see a pool of oil surrounding the pizza on the plate. Oil on top, oil on the bottom - it was amazing.
I briefly considered sending it back, but I figured my job is to review what I'm given, so I forged ahead and started eating.
Now here's the thing. Yes, it was kind of gross seeing so much oil on one pizza, but it actually tasted pretty good. Maybe I was just hungry, but I don't think that completely explains it.
The fact is, oil can make food taste better, especially when it's picked up some of the flavor of other ingredients during the cooking process. Fat conveys flavor to your taste buds, or so I've read. That's why vegetables taste better with butter, and why a fried onion tastes better than a boiled onion. Food memories are strong, and I also remember as a kid sopping up the oily sauce from my dad's chicken stew with a hunk of Italian bread. If I made that dish today I'd probably skim off most of the oil, and then wonder why mine didn't taste as good as dad's. And it's not unusual for a pizzaiolo to give a pizza a quick swirl of olive oil, either before or after going in the oven.
So yeah, this tasted good, in a guilty-pleasure kind of way. Problem was, the crust had all the texture of a maple-syrup-soaked pancake. The bottom was nicely browned, but I couldn't properly assess the texture of the crust, because it was so coated and infused with oil. Only along some parts of the edge, which displayed some nice blistering from the oven, did I get a sense of its underlying bready qualities.
Aside from that, the pizza was topped with a smooth, even layer of melted mozzarella cheese. It seemed to be good cheese, in the sense that it had taken on an almost liquid quality, and was not overly chewy or rubbery. The red sauce and bits of chopped basil stayed very much in the background, but added some subtle counterpoints to the richness of the cheese and the oily but tasty crust.
Fairfield's does offer some tempting specialty pizzas, and gluten-free pizza as well. There's a lot on the menu that I like, and rather than me go through it, you can take a look at it here.
Now we get to the hard part. How to grade this pizza? Subtract that oil, and it could easily rate a B, at least. With all the oil, I've been leaning toward a D. I know people have different likes and dislikes in pizza, but I don't think anybody would like this much oil on, in and under their pizza.
Not to duck the issue, but I'm not going to grade this pizza. A single letter grade would oversimplify matters. If I had separate grades for the crust, cheese, overall flavor, etc., it would be different. But from the start I've been giving pizzas one overall grade, and I plan to stick with that. And even if I were to rate the crust separately, I'm not sure what I'd do, because I think it was fundamentally good - it just got doused with oil.
I don't know if this was typical of Fairfield's pizza. Maybe the chef accidentally gave this a way-too-heavy dousing of olive oil. But if so, I would think some of it could've been poured off the plate before it was served to me. If this was typical of their pizza, then I'd recommend cutting way back on the oil. Oil has its place, but more is not always better, and this is a perfect example of that.
Fairfield's Bar & Grill, 2600 Baird Road, Penfield 14526
(585) 383-0767
Monday and Tuesday 11:00 am to 10:00 pm
Wednesday 11:00 am to 11:00 pm
Thursday 11:00 am to 10:00 pm
Friday and Saturday 11:00 am to 11:00 pm
Sunday 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm.