We couldn’t go to New York city without having some pizza and since there are so many options we turned to the experts with Scott’s Pizza Tours. This tour started outside the first pizzeria in North America. It is now just another bar that contains patrons that have a puzzled look why a large group is forming outside and taking pictures of the building.
Pizza stop number one was at Lombardi’s pizza in the No Lita neighborhood. All the pizzas tastes were margarita to taste the most important parts of the pizza: bread, sauce and cheese. Lombardi’s has a coal oven that runs all day and all night. It takes two weeks to cool down and two weeks to start back up again because it is so large.
The sauce was crushed tomatoes that was heated, but not cooked down.
Here’s the final product. Good char on the outer edge, nice distribution of cheese and the fresh basil is a nice touch.
It’s a little floppy and doesn’t hold itself up with folded.
Great bread taste, but the cheese slides a bit and a little too much sauce. Would give it a 4.5/5.
Then we began our walk to the next place. Here’s a tiny shop that was between two buildings and where pizza ovens are made.
Here’s a finished oven. We didn’t actually end up having any pizza cooked in this style oven. The closest was the next stop which did use gas, but it was a different design.
On the way we walked past this pizza truck. It seemed like a decent deal, but we had more important places to eat first.
Welcome to Fiore’s Pizza. This is a “by the slice” kind of shop.
They had samples of their mozzarella to try, and well we were hungry and dug into everything.
Here’s their oven in action. It is actually a rotating gas oven. There were a number of platforms that rotate around and require less work then at Lombardi’s.
Here’s the finished product. It looked amazing.
However the crust was very crunchy and wouldn’t fold, leading to awkward eating. After getting a taste it was definitely my least favorite. The sauce is baked in the oven which led to a very sweet thick sauce. The cheese was great, but the bread had no taste at all. Their reasoning is so you can enjoy the cheese and sauce, but I think that all three parts are important and you can’t ignore one, 2/5.
Now we were still hungry and had a little ways to go for the next stop so we grabbed some garlic knots. Their dough was rescued with butter and garlic. The fresh tomato sauce was a great touch too. The knots were far better than the pizza.
And here were are at our final stop: John’s Pizza in SoHo.
As you can tell from their signage they don’t do pizza by the slice.
But they still have great looking pizza. It looks like a tonne of cheese, but it actually has the least amount of cheese compared to the previous two. They also sauce on top of the cheese to reduce the amount of cheese browning.
There we go. Perfect fold and surprisingly chewy, and no sliding cheese.
And look at that delicious char. This was another 4.5/5.
And here we are at our final stop (not part of the tour, but rather a recommendation from one of the bus tour guides). This is from Gromaldi’s Pizza at 6th and West 21st. Here we’ve got another coal fire pizza with cheese everywhere and sauce over the cheese. The basil was cooked along with the pizza. The cheese wasn’t quite as good as the other places, but the bread and sauce were amazing. This was Kerri’s number 1 place (so far) in NYC. I would give it a 4/5. I miss the pizza of NYC and now have to find some places in Toronto. Until next time, this has been a pizza update.
