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!).