Saturday, January 1, 2011

Bay Area Pizza Taste Off

Pizza taste off

The cooking club decided to do a little series of pizza tastings, one in the East Bay and another in SF. In order to taste pizzas from a variety of places we had to do take out pizza only. Each of us were assigned to pick up pizzas with no specification on toppings. In other words, this was not intended to be a scientific comparison, but rather a fun exercise in overindulging on pizza. Each taste off had more than 14 eaters.

Summary of Results
East Bay overall winner was Pizzaiolo.  It won the thin crust division and then went on to beat Zachary's, the winner of the deep dish division. Eaters had a set number of votes they could cast. We were all a bit surprised by how much we enjoyed Zachary's. Some folks were disappointed by the pie we got from Little Star in Albany, feeling that it wasn't as well executed as pies from the Mission location.

San Francisco's overall winner was Little Star with Pizzeria Delfina's Margherita coming in a close second. We decided not to divide between deep dish and thin crust and Joe conducted very scientific computerized rank choice voting. This seemed like a very close contestant views were fairly divergent except for the top two. Because we had a variety of pizza styles, Chicago, Neapolitan, NY Neapolitan, NY Street, it was difficult to compare as most felt that they had a preference based upon style though thought that all of the pizzas were good representatives of their particular style.


East Bay - hosted by C & J

Thin Crust Division
Pizzaiolo - Monterey squid, tomato sauce and aioli - 21
Cheeseboard - jalapeno and something I've forgotten - 20
Arizmendi Lakeshore - forgot - 19
pizza sample

Deep Dish Division
Zachary's on College - Special, sausage, green pepper, onion and mushroom - 29.94
Little Star Albany - forgot - 29.06

Overall favorite between the winners of each division.
Pizzaiolo 7
Zachary's 5

SF - hosted by E & P

Overall Rank
1. Little Star (deep)
2. Pizzeria Delfina Margherita
3. Zero Zero & Pizzeria Delfina Clam
4. Patxi's (deep)
5. Tony's Pizza Napoletana
6. Arinell's & Amici's

There were a few well known places we would've included, but we discovered that not all places offer take out and some were closed on the particular evening of our gatherings.

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