Jean Paul's Paradiso

I love me some Jean Paul's Paradiso. So it was a no brainer for me to pick when I was up for pizza tonight. Jean Paul's is a bakery/pizza place. I've only had things from the pizza side, so I can't comment on the bakery side except that I know of folks that love buying their goods at the Hyde Park Farmer's Market.

Let's start by taking a look at the pizzas, because as Dan commented, these are "beautiful pizzas". Dan's the blog photographer, so I'll defer to his judgement.

Sausage and Cheese Pizza

Sicilian, don't let the picture mislead you, there is a LOT of meat on this pizza!

Blackened Chicken & Alfredo Pizza, it's hard to see, but
there is a large slice of chicken breast on every slice.

Grecian Pizza (sans red union)

The pizza's to me tasted as good or better than they looked. The helpings of cheese on each pizza is VERY generous. I'm personally a big fan of lots of cheese on my pizzas. So this was ideal for me. You can also see that each pizza comes with a generous edge of crust, but do note that these are thin crust pizzas otherwise. It makes for a very nice combination and good crust was the second most commented item on everyone's survey forms.

That brings us to the most commented item about the pizza.  It is VERY VERY GREASY! I think this is a result of the very generous helpings of cheese. No one complained that it was a 'gross' greasy, but it definitely caused us all to use more than one napkin. As the pizza aged, the grease soaked into the crust making it even floppier. This made it difficult to eat some of the later slices. That being said, please don't let this stop you from trying the pizza. It's worth the grease!

The last thing I want to mention about the Jean Paul's is that Jani, who was making the pizzas, said that she had a surprise for me when I walked in. At first I was worried. I thought that perhaps one of the pizzas was done wrong. I couldn't have been any further from the truth. It turns out that Jani made us a free dessert pizza! See the picture below, which does not do it justice.

What's this??? A free dessert pizza??? Mmmmm...

What was on this pizza? Well, why don't I let Jani tell you. Just read the top of the pizza box it came in:

The free dessert pizza even came with a nice note!

The dessert pizza was served warm and was delectable. There was some debate about the crust though. It was the same crust as on the pizza. A few folks said they wished that it was more of a traditional pie crust rather than a pizza crust. To me though, that would have changed this from being a dessert pizza to a fruit pie of some sort. I'm in the camp that it was great the way it was. I should note that even the folks that wanted a different crust said that they still really liked the dessert pizza. If I were you, I'd put an order in for it when you visit Jean Paul's.

We'll wrap this up with the numeric rankings.

Average	3.866
Appearance	3.833
Aroma	3.410
Taste (Overall)	4.130
Crust	4.083
Cheese	4.142
Toppings	3.925
Sauce	3.683
Sausage Pizza (Overall)	3.483
Specialty Pizza	4.108
X-Factor	4.620
Menu	4.013

Now go enjoy yourself a Jean Paul Paradiso's pizza! You won't be disappointed!

Average of Averages Update

Since we've reconstituted with eight of us (November 2012), we've hit up 12 different pizza joints. Without Melissa around, we have not been nearly as diligent about getting up posts (but Dan is spearheading the cause!). Hopefully you'll see something a bit more regular (famous last words...).

I picked up Jean Paul Paradiso's tonight and will get a post up soon. However, before we get to that, I wanted to at least put up a post showing the Average of Averages as a way to give folks an idea of what we like.  So check out the plot below (bonus points to you if you can pick out the color scheme). Note that the y-axis crossing is at 3 to help show the differences between the top and bottom pizza joints. As a reminder, this is an unweighted average of the following categories: Appearance, Aroma, Overall Taste, Crust, Cheese, Toppings, Sauce, Pepperoni/Sausage Pizza (Overall), Specialty Pizza (Overall), X-Factor, and Menu. Ratings are on a 1 to 5 scale with 5 being the best.

M, Strong's Brick Oven, and Palomino are all what I'd term artisanal pizzas. So you can see that we clearly like that style. Jean Paul's Paradiso comes in tops right after the artisanal pizzas. It is also interesting to note that there does not seem to be any trend (i.e. we aren't getting easier or harder on the pizza joints).  For comparison, we'll follow the Average of Average's plot with the average across everyone's Overall Taste rating. Unsurprisingly, it tracks the Average of Averages well. Interestingly, the overall numbers are just a touch higher.

As a final set of data, below is the average X-Factor rating for each location. You can see that Jean Paul's did very well, mostly because of the free dessert pizza they gave us (without knowing we were rating the pizzas). What interests me the most about the plot below is the large spread in scores relative to the earlier plots.  There also does seem to be a trend toward higher x-factors. I wonder if that will continue...

Review of Palomino Pizza

Palomino's is a chain Italian restaurant. It's mainly known for its pasta and other Italian dishes. They also have pizza that I've never tried, so this week I ordered pizza from there.

Bacon and Artichoke

Sausage, Peppers, and Olives

Roasted Chicken with Veggies

Calamari (yep, they forgot to add the calamari)

Sausage and Onions

First impression was that the pizzas were really really thin - maybe a little thicker than a tortilla. But, these pizzas might have the best toppings that I've had in a while. The roasted chicken was juicy. The veggies and the sausage was good too. If it were up to me, I'd give it a solid 5 for toppings. There wasn't a huge selection (I basically bought one of each one on the menu), but the limited selections were thoughtful and tasty. Keep in mind, this isn't a pizza joint. It's mainly a pasta restaurant that happens to have pizza.

I'm mixed about the crust. On one hand, the crust was crispy and thin enough that even after the pizza cooled for a little bit, the crust didn't get tough or soggy. On the other, I've probably got to eat a whole pizza (maybe more) to feel full. I'm saying like, a Chipotle burrito probably weighs more than a pizza from here. If you can get past the thinness of Palomino's crust, you'll enjoy some really nice toppings. Not everyone was as bothered by the crust as I was, which you can see in the ratings below. I'm not sure I'll be back there again for pizza, but it was nice to have some premium toppings, which some places seem to skimp on.

Average	3.959
Appearance	4.03
Aroma	3.538
Taste (Overall)	4.138
Crust	4.06
Cheese	3.52
Toppings	4.54
Sauce	3.79
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)	3.7
Specialty Pizza	4.32
X-Factor	4.32
Menu	4.188

Strong's Brick Oven Pizza

We all gathered one last time in 2012, sans a few lost to the dark abyss of lab experiments. Pizza was delivered to our downtown apartment from Strong's Brick Oven Pizza, who boasts a pizza voted #1 in America during the early years of 1994-1995.

Curious, we decided to give it a shot and check out this seemingly tasty creation called the Pizza Alla Vodka, along with the pepperoni control (which, by the way will transform to sausage starting in 2013) and a traditional meat pizza.

While not many commented on the more prevalent pepperoni and meat pizza combo, the vodka sauce on the pizza was highly rated, along with the crust that seemed to be the perfect blend between thickness, texture, and taste. Besides the vodka sauce pizza, the other sauces and combinations seemed lackluster, although the crust managed to carry each overall pizza taste.

To top off the meal, we elected to indulge in their pumpkin desert pizza special, which was incredibly tasty and received a multitude of praises from a few of the clubbers as well. Together with delectable holiday Ghirardelli chocolate squares Maud brought along, suffice to say, it was an enjoyable pizza experience -- 2013 pizza here we come!

Appearance	3.975
Aroma	3.475
Taste (Overall)	4.113
Crust	4.313
Cheese	3.4
Toppings	3.813
Sauce	4.063
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)	3.263
Specialty Pizza	4.348
X-factor	3.7
Menu	2.775

Village Tavern Pizza (aka Village Pizza)

Last Tuesday, Tricia and I took the day off to do some Christmas shopping.  Since I was due to host pizza night, we decided to see wherever our Christmas shopping took us in the afternoon and pick up pizza from around there.  It ended up that we were out by Eastgate Mall around 5 in the evening and decided to fire up the Google Maps App (thank goodness we don't have to rely on the Apple Map app anymore!).  Unfortunately, it didn't seem like there were very many good choices beyond Domino's, Pizza Hut and the like (leave a comment if you have recommendations from out that way!).  So we decided to see if there was anything between Eastgate and our place in Mt. Lookout.  Tricia remembered seeing a place with a sign of Village Pizza on our way out to Eastgate.  So we googled and found Village Pizza (I'm also seeing it listed as Village Tavern Pizza) in Newtown.

Unfortunately we couldn't find a website, but we were able to find a menu that someone posted on Urban Spoon. So we looked it over and called in to place our order.  Unfortunately as soon as I started to place my order I ran into problems.  Most of the things listed on the menu weren't served any more (yes I realize I'm using 'unfortunate' a lot!).  They no longer had their largest size pizzas.  The guy on the phone (who sounded like he may have been in high school), wasn't particularly helpful when I asked if he could provide me with what they did have.  Eventually we did get an order placed though (One Pepperoni, one Hawaiian, one Meat Lover's, and one Sausage and Banana Peppers).

Fortunately, there were no snafus in picking up the pizza.  Village Pizza is a carry out (or delivery) only place.  There is no place to sit inside the pizza joint. However, it is in a building attached to the Newtown Village Tavern.  It looked like the pub food for the tavern was made by Village Pizza and then carried over. I didn't actually go into the Tavern, but it's there if you wanted to try a dine-in experience. After paying, we drove the rest of the way home and stuck the pizzas in the oven at 200F to keep them warm (we are a perpetually late group of people.  Folks arrived about 20 minutes after  I put the pizzas in the oven.  We pulled them out, Dan snapped some photos and we ate!

Hawaiian

Meat Lovers

Pepperoni (with the pepperoni under the cheese)

Sausage and Banana Pepper

Overall, Village Pizza went down well.  Everyone talked about enjoying the pizza, and in particular the toppings.  I think for a place that serves as a kitchen for a bar, they did a great job on the toppings.  As you can see from the pictures, the pizzas were cooked very well - cheese is well melted with just a bit of caramelization.  In an interesting move, the Hawaiian was prepared as pineapple and bacon instead of pineapple and ham.  This struck me because the Meat Lovers has both bacon and ham.  I think it was a good move though as the bacon was my favorite topping.  It's bacon how I remember it growing up, cut small, cooked so that it is crispy and recognizes that it is bacon and doesn't try to be pretentious about it.  Guillaume pointed out that he was also a fan of the bacon being cooked to the point of being a little crunch.

Several folks pointed out that the pizza sauce was quite good.  It was in the 'sweet' variety of pizza sauces (as opposed to the spicy).  This really came through on the pepperoni pizza, which was good but really had a minimal amount of spice to it because the pepperoni itself was not overwhelming and nor was the sauce.  In some ways, the pepperoni probably didn't taste too differently from what a cheese pizza might have tasted like,

Since the crust was thin, it suffered from a common problem of most thin crust pizzas in that it's quality degraded as the pizza cooled.  Tricia noted that while she liked the crust it became a bit doughy in the center and Maud described it as "chewy" as it cooled.  Having taken some leftovers in with me for lunch, I can say that the crust would be the weak part of the pizza.  That being said, I really thought this was a solid pizza overall, especially coming from a bar setting.  That assessment is upheld when we look at the numbers.

Appearance	3.200
Aroma	3.302
Taste (Overall)	3.30
Crust	3.002
Cheese	3.093
Toppings	3.362
Sauce	3.250
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)	3.210
Specialty Pizza	3.357
X-factor	2.917
Menu	3.250

Overall, you're looking a good but not great pizza.  Would I get it again though?  Certainly if I were in the area.

New York Style Pizza (Reading road)

I (Maud) wanted to eat a New York style pizza since I just came back from New York (hahaha!). So I picked the “New York Style Pizza” in Reading road.
The place does only carry out, most people in, ordered the gyros, I will try them next time. The place was packed. So we picked up the pizzas and enjoyed them at home.
We found the pizzas were average, actually, more than average for most of us.
I must say that I didn’t expect much, I don't know why, but I was very surprised. I found the pizzas very tasty, well a little bit too salty sometimes. I also enjoyed the crust, very crunchy.
Most of us had a preference for the white pizza.

(Hey, thanks Dan, for your great pictures)
 

The average ratings were as follows:
 

Appearance	3.520
Aroma	3.667
Taste (Overall)	3.560
Crust	3.380
Cheese	3.160
Toppings	3.340
Sauce	2.800
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)	3.390
Specialty Pizza	3.580
X-factor	3.400
Menu	2.913

Jets is in Town (not the NY kind)

So, we're new comers to the Cincinnati Pizza Club. As such, I tried to pick a place that CPC hasn't picked before. Tonight, we selected Jets Pizza, which is a chain that started in Michigan and has made its way to the states below including Ohio and Kentucky. I've enjoyed it many times in my treks up to Big Blue, so I was curious how it'd fare with the crowd here.

My Opinion: Pretty solid pizza. The kind you'd munch on while watching a movie or a sporting event. Not top shelf pizza, but like a good friend, it's comforting and has enough grease to know that you're eating pizza. You can make the crust zesty with cajun flavor, which is a plus for me.

We had three pies: 

Pepperoni (the control), sausage+onion+banana pepper (a favorite last time), and veggie deep dish (my favorite).

Pepperoni

Veggie

Sausage and Banana Peppers

The pizza was well received, and most folks pointed out how Jets seemed pretty generous with the cheese (+1). Jets wins me over because you can flavorize your crust with different flavors like cajun spices, garlic, butter, romano, etc. It adds a nice variable that lets you tweak your pizza experience more. I love customization (are you listening Dominos?).

The ratings tonight were as follows:

Appearance		3.520
Aroma		3.575
Taste (Overall)		3.990
Crust		3.880
Cheese		3.800
Toppings		3.710
Sauce		3.380
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)		3.830
Specialty Pizza		3.700
X-factor		3.750
Menu		2.975

Jets Pizza fared well in the categories of "taste," "crust," and "cheese" while being low in the menu offerings (nothing really exotic or original on the menu) and in the sauce (honestly don't remember what the sauce tasted like). I'm thinking the sauce could be a little bit punchier, but that's a small complaint.

It's a good, satisfying pie. Did it win over the hearts of CPC? Only time will tell.

Angilo's Pizza, Norwood

We picked up pizzas at Angilo's in Norwood near to our place (where we ate). So, the transportation time was short, one day or another we will probably discuss how the transportation time affects pizza tasting. I think none of us really liked the crust, which was "foamy" as Jay described it. Overall the BBQ topping was the most appreciated, although I did not personally like it. I should explain that at this time, back in October, I was not a big fan of BBQ sauce in general, I used to find it too sweet, but my tastes are evolving as I spend more time in the USA...     

Here are our average ratings:

Appearance	3,1
Aroma	2,8
Taste (Overall)	2,9
Crust	2,1
Cheese	3,1
Toppings	3,0
Sauce	2,5

Aponte's Pizza 9/27/11

Way back in September, we had pizza from Aponte's in Mason.  I (Tricia) work in Mason, so it's an easy way to branch out and try some of the pizza places a little further away. Aponte's specializes in New Jersey style pizza, which Jay called wannabe New York style.  The restaurant area looked nice inside and the story of the restaurant on the menu was very interesting. 

The ratings for the pizza came out ok.  No one seemed too impressed.  Kevin thought the sauce was a little bland while Jay liked the crust and everyone loved the bacon (who doesn't love bacon, right?).  At this point, I would share pictures, but unfortunately I can't find any.  Since it was early on, it's very likely we didn't take pictures.  =)

Here's the actual ratings for the week:

Appearance	3.27
Aroma	2.70
Taste (Overall)	2.92
Crust	2.63
Cheese	3.50
Toppings	3.27
Sauce	2.30
Pepperoni Pizza (Overall)	2.77
Specialty Pizza	3.27
X-factor	2.97
Menu	3.50

Pomodori's Pizzeria

Since I enjoyed Pomodori's the first time around, I thought it would be a good place to start off.  Guillaume and Maud had not yet moved to Cincinnati so it was just Tricia, Ken, Jay and myself.  Pomodori's specializes in wood-fired ovens.

We ate at Pomodori's, which is a casual dining experience.  It's a nice restaurant that features their wood-fired oven prominently.  As Ken noted, they have really nice copper topped tables (though he didn't like the chairs).

Their pizza's come with a spicy sauce (so not the traditional Cincinnati sweet pizza sauce).  They apply the sauce very lightly, which Tricia also noted had a nice garlic touch.  Both Jay, Tricia, and I really liked the artichoke toppings and I noted that the figs were also very good as a topping.  Tricia liked the look and taste of the crust.  You can have a look at them yourself:

The standard pepperoni 

Artichoke topped pizza

Fig & Prosciutto Specialty Pizza

Since the Cincinnati Pizza Quest has already been here once, I've included both the numbers from this trip and our last visit.

Category	Old Score (March 2010)	New Score (13 September 2011)
Appearance	4.17	4.00
Aroma	4.00	2.50
Overall Taste	4.33	3.55
Crust	4.25	3.85
Cheese	3.83	3.475
Toppings	4.33	3.70
Sauce	4.50	3.10
Pepperoni Overall	4.17	3.75
Specialty Pizza	4.25	3.675
X-Factor	3.67	3.00

You can see that this time around, the scores were a lower in general.  I'll reserve commenting on that until we get a chance to compare more places to just see if the new team tends to rate lower. However, we can look at how I rated it this time versus last.

Category	Kevin's Old Score (March 2010)	Kevin's New Score (13 September 2011)
Appearance	4.0	4.0
Overall Taste	Didn't rate...	4.0
Crust	4.5	4.0
Cheese	3.5	4.0
Toppings	4.0	4.5
Sauce	4.0	3.5
Pepperoni Overall	4.0	4.0
Specialty Pizza	3.5	4.5
X-Factor	4.0	4.0

So while some of the numbers changed, there weren't any big swings, except for the Specialty Pizza.  However, the first time around we had a bunch of mushrooms on the pizzas, which I don't like.  So that may explain it.

Overall, I'm going to say what we said last time.  Pomodori's makes a good pizza and is definitely worth a visit!

We're back, sort of...

It's been a long long time, but the posts should finally start rolling again. A quick explanatory post since it's been so long and we've also had some changes. First the reason for the delay, two-thirds of your pizza tasting team had the fortunate opportunity to move onto green pastures in Seattle last spring.  So I was left all alone for a bit of time.

However, reinforcements arrived last fall.  Starting last September, a new team joined up with Kevin to restart the Cincinnati Pizza Quest.  Introducing your new questers:

Tricia - Kevin's lovely wife
Guillaume and Maud - our French connoisseurs!
Ken - our beer expert and brewmaster
Jay - the resident golfing expert and master brewer with Ken

We'll be changing up the posting a bit so you can get a flavor of each of us.  Whoever hosts for the week will also be writing the blog post.  Since it's now April and we started back up last September I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get some posts up quickly.

Now back to the pizza!

Pizza Tower

A couple of weeks ago we had to push pizza night to Friday night because Kevin and Nik had a work engagement, so Kevin decided that we should take a field trip North, to Pizza Tower. You can tell immediately when you walk in that this is a very family/kid-friendly pizza place. We were able to stake out a table where we could watch the game while enjoying our dinner. We started out with the garlic breadsticks, with cheese, and then moved on to 3 pizzas: 1/2 Cheese & 1/2 Pepperoni (no meat for Kevin that Friday), Spinach Artichoke, and Captain Pesto's. While waiting for our food, Nik entertained himself with the dough that they give kids:

{snowman - it started to fall over}


{go reds!}






{the eiffel tower}

Then came our food (please excuse the low quality of the pictures, they were taken on my phone):

{Spinach Artichoke - we didn't read
the description close enough to
realize it had bacon...}

{Captain Pesto's}

And here's what we thought:

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

Appearance (overall): 3.75
Aroma (overall): 3.75
Taste (overall): 3.67
Crust - 3.50
Cheese - 4.17
Toppings - 3.92
Sauce - 3.67
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.67
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.08
X-factor: 4.42

As I mentioned, we started off with the garlic breadsticks, with cheese, and with the spicy cheese sauce. The breadsticks were good; Kevin thought that they were fairly generic, but not bad. The spicy cheese sauce was good, but is something you can easily get at the store. I would go with the marinara in the future, although it wasn't my favorite either. The tomato sauce was a little too tomato-y and oregano-y, yet without much flavor, but the pesto was great. The pesto on Captain Pesto's Pizza really helped boost the sauce score for me.

And the crust? It was a good edge crust, but under cooked in the center. Nik wants to know if this is a Cincinnati thing? Because we seem to encounter this a lot, and I can't say that I've ever had this be a problem before (of course, I wasn't eating as much pizza and evaluating it in the other places I've lived). Just simply letting the pizzas cook a little longer (mainly the cheese/pepperoni pizza) would've really made a difference. Kevin and I both really liked the cheese and there was a lot of it, which I never complain about :) And the (good) shrimp bumped up the toppings score for Kevin. The Spinach Artichoke pizza, however, was a disappointment. It was basically their Spinach Artichoke dip on a pizza crust, but the Spinach Artichoke dip just wasn't very good.

Overall, the Pizza Tower has a great pizza and menu selection, even if the pizza is "meh," as Kevin put it. The beer selection isn't great, but hopefully you'll get there in time to try their 1/4 pound chocolate chip cookie! We saw someone walking out with one when we got there, but by the time we ordered one, they were all out. The brownie sundae with (lots! of) soft serve and chocolate and caramel sauce was a pretty good substitution though.

If you have kids and live closer than we do (they're all the way up near Kings Island), this is definitely a family-friendly place you don't want to miss out on (they even have a rewards program too!).

Where they all fall

Look, there really is someone besides Melissa doing Pizza Nights! Nik and I really aren't made up people that Melissa created just so she doesn't look like a glutton eating 2 pizzas in a night (actually I'm the resident glutton who eats the most pizza).

So a few weeks back, Melissa put up a top ten list on the sidebar. She explained how she came up with the overall rankings on a post when the top ten list debuted. This got me thinking about my sole prior contribution to the blog (besides of course the fact that I eat pizza and write down some numbers) where I made some graphs of our rankings. So I thought it was time to make some new graphs. Behold the rankings of all 33 places we've blogged on (we had pizza night last night, but I don't have the numbers to include number 34).

Let's kick it off with the overall rankings. As a reminder the breakdown of how we get our overall ranking:

Appearance - 10%

Aroma - 10% (remember I don't contribute to this one because my sniffer doesn't work well)

Overall Taste - 30%

Pepperoni Pizza - 20%

Specialty Pizza Options/Menu - 15%

X-Factor - 15%

Nothing surprising on the top here, since that's what's on the sidebar. I was a little surprised at first to see Hyde Park Pizzeria and The Rookwood so low on the list here. When I went back and looked though, we didn't have rankings for pepperoni pizza, so Excel put in a zero for the 20% of the ranking that gets attributed to pepperoni. In reality, they are much higher. The Rookwood isn't really a pizza place (we went because we thought they had a pizza special, but it really ended the week before). For Hyde Park Pizzeria, perhaps that's a sign that we need to revisit for a more accurate ranking.

Speaking of pepperoni pizza, how do they stack up in that category?

We can see the missing Rookwood and HPP rankings here more clearly. It's probably not too surprising that the top of the list looks a lot like the overall ranking (even though the pepperoni pizza only contributes to 20% of the overall). I think one of the saddest things about this graph though is that the top ranked pizza, Balboa's is no longer in business.

Finally, for the X-Factor.

No surprise on the top 2 here, we all loved the mission of Venice on Vine and the atmosphere of Buona Vita (felt like eating with family even if it was in a bank valut).

Hope you enjoyed these as much as me!

Mt. Adams Pizza and Deli

Last week Nik headed up the hill to Mt. Adams Pizza & Deli to use our Groupon for pizza night. He picked us up our usual Pepperoni pizza and a white pizza with chicken, sundried tomatoes, and feta cheese (and olives on half):

Here's how they scored:

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

Appearance (overall): 4.08
Aroma (overall): 4.00
Taste (overall): 4.42
Crust - 4.50
Cheese - 3.50
Toppings - 4.25
Sauce - 4.17
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 4.33
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 4.33
X-factor: 3.50

As you can see, Mt. Adams Pizza & Deli easily moved in to our top ten. Why? Because they're crust was fantastic! Kevin thought it was an excellent example of a very well done "doughy" crust - the bottom was well cooked, but the inside was nice and fluffy doughy. They also have a whole wheat crust, but Nik forgot to get it. The sauce had a great flavor as well - nicely spiced and perfectly spicy.