Cam's, Mt. Hope

A couple of people have asked me to review the Cam's on Mt. Hope Avenue near Elmwood. I've made a couple of stops there, so here's a report.
I have found Cam's to be pretty consistently good. As regular readers know, I'm no fan of chain pizzerias, but I have been impressed with the job that Cam's does of turning out reasonably good, New York style pizza, at numerous locations. And this was, generally, no exception.
On one visit, I got a cheese slice and a stuffed slice, something I don't remember seeing before at Cam's. It may have been there all along, I just never noticed.
The cheese slice was decent, with some spotty, light charring underneath. It did seem unusually thin, so much so that the crust lacked any bready interior, except along the edge. Maybe it was just me, that day, but although there was a bit of toastiness underneath, the crust also seemed a tad bland, as if there wasn't enough salt in the dough.
A good New York style slice should strike a balance between crispness and pliability. This came close, but the needle seemed to be tilting a little more toward the "pliable" end of the scale. So while the crust was OK, it mostly served as a platform for the sauce and the cheese.
Speaking of which, the sauce and cheese were pretty good. The sauce was slightly sweet, with some herbs in the background, and the slightly browned cheese had a slight tanginess that balanced it out well. (Cam's menu says that they use Grande® mozzarella, which many pizza connoisseurs consider among the best.)
Next up was a slice topped with cheese and pepperoni, and stuffed with sausage and pepperoni. As you can see from the cross-section photo, it wasn't as heavy, or thick, as it sounds. The bottom, and top, crusts were paper-thin, almost as if they'd managed to take the thin crust from my cheese slice and slice it in half horizontally. And the stuffing, while certainly noticeable, wasn't, well, overabundant. Don't get me wrong - it was a tasty, well-balanced slice. I'm just saying, don't confuse this with a deep-dish or casserole-type pizza.
That said, this was a heavier slice than the cheese slice, since it was mostly meat. The cheese layer was also thin but solid, covering the entire slice. Neither it nor the underside were as browned as on the cheese slice. The pepperoni slices on top were hardly necessary, but added some additional flavor.
On a separate visit, I got a Buffalo chicken slice, and a white-pizza veggie slice, which made for a more nutritionally balaced duo than on my other visit. The former came with finely diced chicken, tossed in a medium-hot Buffalo sauce, along with Ken's blue cheese dressing and mozzarella. A smattering of banana pepper rings added a vinegary edge and a bit more heat, although the overall flavor profile still hovered around medium. If you're tolerant enough of spicy food to be ordering one of these, then I'm sure you'd have no problem with the heat level on this one.
At first, I thought the veggie slice was Cam's take on a Margherita, but no, that's not basil, that's spinach, and that's feta, not fresh mozzarella.
Cam's veggie pizza is described as being topped with "fresh spinach on a bed of garlic butter & Grande mozzarella with your choice of tomatoes or artichokes, finished off with feta cheese crumbled over the top" (obviously this one had tomatoes). Those made for an enjoyable combination.
When I was a kid, I loved Popeye cartoons, but they never convinced me to eat spinach. In fact, I've long thought that Popeye cartoons were pro-spinach propaganda, but now I realize that they probably did more to turn me off spinach than anything else. I knew that if ate spinach (canned spinach, no less), my biceps wouldn't really blow up like a balloon, nor would I be able to turn an alligator into a matching set of luggage with one punch from my cinderblock-size fists, but I did get the impression from those cartoons that kids were expected to hate spinach, so I refused to touch the stuff.
Of course, the spinach on my family's dinner table at that time was usually the frozen kind, which is about as appetizing as the stuff you clean out of your gutter in late fall. So it was a revelation for me to discover, as an adult, that fresh spinach leaves are actually not bad. Not on my favorite-foods list, but not bad, and they contributed a nice flavor here, which was well complemented by the sharp, salty feta, garlic butter and tomatoes. Even the tomatoes were reasonably good - they looked to be Roma tomatoes, which in the off-season especially, are often a better choice than so-called "slicing" tomatoes.
I'm not going to individually rate all these pizza slices. I will say that in general, they were typical of Cam's - reliably good, if not quite top-tier, thin-crust pizza. The crusts were decent, reasonably crisp, with some light charring, and the toppings were of good quality and tasty. I'd say these average out to about a B-plus.
Cam's Pizzeria, 1290 Mt. Hope Ave., Rochester 14620
Tel.: 256-7437 (PIES)
Hours: Mon. - Sat. 10 a.m. - 11 p.m., Sun. noon - 10 p.m.

Sinbad's "Pitza"

It's not uncommon at Greek or Near Eastern restaurants to see some variant of pizza on the menu, usually involving pita bread. Despite - in fact, because of - my love for pizza, I typically don't order those. If I want pizza, I'll go to a pizzeria. If I'm at a Greek restaurant, then I generally want more traditional fare like souvlaki or a gyro. (Now for all I know, the Greeks may have been eating pizza-like flatbreads for thousands of years, but I'm talking about traditional American-style Greek food, or what most Americans think of when they think of Greek food.)
But on a recent visit to Sinbad's on Park Avenue, I decided to break from my usual routine and try one of their "pitzas." There are eight on the menu, and several of them did sound tempting. Hot sauce or peppers are usually the clincher for me, though, so I went with the "Ganbari" pitza, which the menu described as topped with "our hot sauce as a base, with shrimp, spinach leaves, roasted pep­per, arti­choke hearts and parme­san cheese."
It was a good choice. Not terribly spicy (though I've built up quite a tolerance for spicy-hot foods over the years), but very tasty indeed. The mélange of flavors worked quite well, as the toppings complemented rather than clashed with each other. And while the toppings were laid on pretty generously, there wasn't so much going on here as to overwhelm my taste buds or to turn into a mismatched mishmash (try saying that three times fast). The savory, peppery shrimp played off the tart artichoke hearts (kudos for the absence of hard, unchewable artichoke leaves) and the sharp grated Parmesan, with the roasted red pepper slices and wilted spinach leaves adding some welcome, subtle background flavor.
And I must say that I liked the crust as well. I was afraid that it might either be brittle and crackerlike, or simply like an ordinary pita, soft and chewy. This was crisp but not brittle, and a bit bready as well. Judged purely as a pizza crust, I might not give it exceptionally high marks, but for what this was - a flatbread-like hybrid between a pita and a pizza crust - it was pretty good.
The fact remains, this wasn't a traditional pizza, so I'm not going to give it a rating. If you really want pizza, I don't think you'd go to Sinbad's to get it. But it was pretty good. And you may want to check out some of the other "pitzas," like the "Sultan's," with tahini, char­broiled beef and lamb, onions, pep­per rings, toma­toes, feta and pars­ley, or the "Ali Baba," with gar­lic sauce, toma­toes, char­broiled egg­plant, feta, olives and pars­ley. And there are plenty of other dishes to choose from - I've been going to Sinbad's for years, as I've always enjoyed their various Mediterranean dishes.
Sinbad's, 719 Park Ave, Rochester NY 14607
Tel.: 473-8270
Hours: 11 a.m. - 10 p.m. daily

Rubino's, Webster

I've long been familiar with Rubino's, going back to when they had a location at the Midtown Plaza food court. I always thought they made pretty good subs, but Midtown's only a memory, and in recent years I kind of stopped paying attention to Rubino's. I think they also had a small place on State Street across from Kodak for a while, but that's gone too, and since I started this blog my sub consumption has declined precipitously.
So I owe some thanks to the reader who recently informed me that Rubino's has a place in Webster that serves pizza. Come to find out, their other locations do too, according to the menu on their website, but Webster's the one that I checked out.
I ordered a medium pepperoni pizza to go (the photos were taken immediately after I got it, so it was still fresh and hot). It had a thin to medium crust, with a soft pale bottom. It was a little doughy, and just a bit crisp along the edge. As is often the case with soft-crusted pizzas, I liked the crisp edge better than the soft middle.
The crust was topped by a thin layer of sauce, which had some herbal flavor, but was nonetheless on the bland side. The melted mozzarella was a little chewy and easily separated from the crust.
I haven't been to any of the other Rubino's, but the one in Webster is, I believe, unique among them in that it includes a sports bar. The atmosphere, at lunch anyway, was more deli than bar, and they close at 8 p.m., so it's not a place to go hang out all night, but the bar and numerous HDTVs make it a good option for watching a daytime or late-afternoon game over a cold pint and a pizza.
Or more likely, a sub. Rubino's is still primarily a deli, not a pizzeria, as one look at their menu confirms. It's dominated by the subs, which are far too numerous to list here, but they've got as wide a variety of hot and cold subs as you'll find in the area. And prices include up to seven toppings of your choice. I'm particularly intrigued by the "garlic subs" - which I guess means on a toasted, garlic-bread style roll. They also offer panini, pasta and salads.
The pizza? Well, it was OK. Not great, but good enough. But the subs are a better option here, and for pizza I'd probably go elsewhere. I'll give the pizza a C-minus.
Rubino's Italian Submarines and Sports Pub, 44 E. Main St., Webster
Tel.: 265-0870
Mon. - Sat. 10 a.m. -8 p.m.
Other locations at 343 East Ave. and 1659 Mt. Hope Ave. in Rochester, and 349 W. Commercial St. in East Rochester