Dewey's Pizza

Well, Dewey's Pizza was my second choice for our sixth stop on our quest for the best pizza in Cincinnati. Dewey's is also right down the street from our house, but in the opposite direction from Mio's. I've actually been to Dewey's quite a bit since it's a favorite in the office (it's a small chain and has a location near work). On top of good pizza, Dewey's has really good salads. The salad I chose (which I didn't think to take a picture of) was the seasonal "harvest" salad: field greens and romaine lettuce with figs, toasted pumpkin seeds, boursin cheese and apple wood smoked bacon (which I got on the side), with homemade apple cider honey vinaigrette.

The pizzas included a regular pepperoni pizza (one of their specialty pizzas is an "X-Pepperoni pizza which has (can you guess?) extra pepperoni) and their "Billy Goat" pizza, as pictured below (sorry about the not-so-great lighting, but you can still see how delicious the crust looks).

So here's how Dewey's compared:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)
Appearance (overall): 4.00
Aroma (overall): 4.50
Taste (overall): 4.17
Crust - 4.08
Cheese - 4.08
Toppings - 4.17
Sauce - 3.92
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 4.00
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.33
X-factor: 4.00

Overall, we all pretty much only had positive comments. Kevin thought the salad was good (I, of course, thought it was great) and liked the fluffy edge of the crust. I also liked thought it was a great crust with a nice hint of garlic flavor. Nik thought that the crust was on the doughy side and would make a great breadstick. Kevin liked the spiceness of the pepperoni pizza and I really liked the variety of good cheese options for the pizzas. Part of the reason Dewey's Pizza scored a good "X-factor" rating is because they always offer plates and napkins when you pick your food up. Granted, disposable plates and napkins aren't very environmentally friendly, but it's the thought that counts!

Pomodori's Pizzeria

Kevin chose Pomodori's Pizzeria for our 5th stop on our quest for the best pizza in Cincinnati, a place I was really looking forward to trying since they do wood-fired oven pizzas with more "gourmet" options for those pizzas. Although you can get non-wood-fired oven pizzas, I was happy that Kevin chose to get the pepperoni pizza as a wood-fired oven pizza. The other wood-fired oven pizza Kevin chose was the fig & prosciutto. Pomodori's is also known for their apple dessert pizza, so Kevin picked up one of those for dessert too.

The lighting for these pictures don't do the pizzas justice, but they still look pretty darn good.

Here's how Pomorodi's scored:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)

Appearance (overall): 4.17
Aroma (overall): 4.00

Taste (overall): 4.33

Crust - 4.25

Cheese - 3.83

Toppings - 4.33

Sauce - 4.50

Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 4.17

Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.25

X-factor: 3.67

We all agreed that the sauce was great - garlicky & spicy. We thought that the pizzas had good flavor and that the crust was nicely cooked and crispy, but Nik and I both thought that the crust could use some salt to give it more flavor. The pepperoni pizza had the small "pepperoni grease boats" like Chi-natti's had (I prefer nice big pepperoni). Kevin doesn't like mushrooms and a lot of the specialty pizzas had mushrooms on them, so he wasn't a fan of that. But, I thought that the fig & prosciutto pizza was delicious, so I had no problem with a non-mushroom specialty pizza! It was a white pizza and had a nice balance of salty (prosciutto) and sweet (figs). Kevin thought that the apple dessert pizza (which we didn't think to take a picture of) was really good. Nik and I both thought that it was pretty good, but dry. It needed more carmelized cinnamon sugar under the apples and a cream cheese frosting or caramel drizzle on top. Overall, Pomodori's is my favorite pizza thus far while ZZ's is my favorite for desserts.

Nik noticed the front of Pomodori's pizza box said this and had to take a picture of it:



I don't know about you, but I've never encountered pizza that I couldn't eat!

ZZ's Pizza Company

Well, the rotation is back to Nik and his second choice and our fourth stop in our quest for the best pizza in Cincinnati is ZZ's Pizza Company. ZZ's Pizza Company originally opened in 1986, but then closed for some time and has recently re-opened again. They have a specialty pizza of the day as well as daily homemade desserts. They also have different crust choices, so Nik went with the sourdough for the pepperoni pizza and whole wheat for the Mediterranean pizza he chose as the specialty pizza. In our increasing state of hunger, we forgot to take pictures again, but promise to remember during the second round! So here's how ZZ's stacked up:


(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)
Appearance (overall): 4.00
Aroma (overall): 4.25
Taste (overall): 4.08
Crust - 3.83
Cheese - 3.33
Toppings - 4.00
Sauce - 4.17
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 4.00
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 3.83
X-factor: 4.5


ZZ's Pizza Company quickly won over the heart of Nik. Nik walked out of the restaurant with his 2 pizzas and with a bag that he thought contained the 2 pieces of homemade pie he was looking forward to just as much as the pizza. Once in his car and in the process of pulling out of the parking lot, one of the employees came running out of the restaurant with an identical looking bag and caught Nik just in time to let him know that he accidentally grabbed someones salad instead of the desserts.


Not only did ZZ's have great customer service, they also had great pizza. Kevin thought that the specialty pizza looked great and that the sauce was the highlight for ZZ's pizzas. Kevin thought, however, that the crust wasn't quite as crisp as it could be and that the menu didn't offer too many choices other than pizza (but there are lots of good pizza choices though). I also agreed with Kevin that the sauce was the highlight - it was very flavorful, with lots of herbs, and that there wasn't many exciting menu options besides the pizzas and desserts.


For dessert, Nik chose the banana cream pie and the butterscotch pie. Both were excellent and I really look forward to the second, quality checking round for some more delicious, homemade desserts!

Mio's

I'm finally getting back to catching up on the blog now that I've remembered while at home (since the pictures are on the home laptop). Mio's was the third pizza stop on our quest for the best pizza in Cincinnati. I'm third on the pizza rotation, so I chose Mio's because 1) we're starting with the better pizza places (as opposed to the chains, which we'll do towards the end), and 2) it's about a 2 minute walk from our place and at the moment, Thursday is a running day for me.

I, of course, got a pepperoni pizza, on their traditional crust. For the second pizza, I opted for a vegetarian selection - the GBT (which I think stands for Garlic, Basil, Tomato). The GBT is a white pizza with an alfredo sauce, on their sesame seed crust.

The overall, average ratings ended up being:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)

Appearance (overall): 4.00

Aroma (overall): 4.00
Taste (overall): 3.83
Crust - 3.17
Cheese - 3.83
Toppings - 3.83
Sauce - 3.33
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.67
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 3.83
X-factor: 3.17

Kevin thought that Mio's pizza was solid, but not spectacular (which I think we all probably shared the same sentiment). We all preferred the sesame crust over the original crust. The original crust on the pepperoni pizza seemed chewy or rubbery. Nik thought the salad was good, which I agree with, but I thought it was pretty basic (iceberg, onions, tomato, cucumber, cheddar, croutons). Don't get me wrong, I love a good basic salad like this (with some ranch dressing!), but places that have "gourmet" salads with some sort of fruit and fun cheese win me over and will always score more points from me.

Jumping Ahead a Bit

For those more graphically inclined, we've now got charts! Spoiler alert though, I'm getting up some places that haven't been blogged yet.

Error bars are the standard deviation of our individual ratings, so you'll have a better idea on which topics there was more disagreement.

Chi-nnati's

Kevin was in charge of the pizza selection for our second week of our quest for the best pizza in Cincinnati. Kevin chose Chi-natti's since they do the "classic, thin crust" as well as a Chicago-style deep dish. The pepperoni was in the classic, thin crust style to make for fair judging. For the specialty pizza, Kevin opted for the Chicago style "meat freak" pizza. This time around, we began judging the pepperoni pizza overall and actually remembered to take pictures (the pepperoni pizza should look familiar...)

The overall, average ratings ended up being:

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)
Appearance (overall): 4.17
Aroma (overall): 3.75

Taste (overall): 3.67

Crust - 3.5

Cheese - 3.83

Toppings - 3.5

Sauce - 4

Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.33

Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.33

X-factor: 4

As you'll notice in the picture, the pepperoni we small, making "pepperoni grease boats" (a phrase coined by Nik). We all noticed that the crust on the deep dish was better than the thin crust - it had more flavor and was buttery and flaky whereas the thin crust wasn't anything special.