Tournament of Pizza Finals

A good sized crowd gathered at Shmaltz Brewing for the finals. Both Marino's and DeFazio's brought two pizzas for the crowd and judges to eat. Both shops also took the Finals seriously and sent some great pizzas to Clifton Park. Their challenge: 1 vegetable pizza and 1 meat pizza.

The judges went for the vegetable pizzas first. Marino's sent in a pizza topped with sauteed green pepper and mushrooms. Defazio's sent in a smoked mozzarella pizza with red peppers and red onions.

Marino's Vegetable Pizza
This was the warmest slice we ate. The crust was nicely browned and had good color. It had gotten a little tough in transport from Schenectady to Clifton Park but nothing serious. The sauce was good, not as amazing as the sauce on their Margherita, and I thought the pizza could have used a little bit more of the sauce. Maybe they held back to avoid potential sogginess during shipping. The toppings were sauteed before going on the pizza. I thought the white button mushrooms were delicious. While I'm not a fan of green peppers, this is usually the only way I like them - sauteed down so they lose their bitterness. The cheese on the slice had a nice flavor too. A very enjoyable slice.

Marino's Vegetable Pizza
Crust:4, Sauce:4, Toppings:4, Overall Taste:7, Total:19.

DeFazio's Vegetable Pizza
The crust on this pizza was delicious. I don't know what they did differently, but I thought this was the best DeFazio's crust I've had that spent time in a take-out box. It was nicely browned and tender. Just the right bit of char. Wow. The sauce is the shops regular pizza sauce, which was added for the Finals - this pizza is usually white. The flavors of the toppings worked well together - smoked mozzarella, small bits of red onion and some roasted red pepper. Up to this point, I believe that this is the best slice of pizza I have had in the Tournament.

DeFazio's Vegetable Pizza
Crust:5, Sauce:4, Toppings:4, Overall Taste:8, Total:21.

Moving onto the meat pizza round,

Marino's Meat Pizza
Marino's went with a lot of meat. Pepperoni, meatball, sausage. The crust was a little lighter than the vegetable slice I had and still had good flavor but was a little chewy. They still have a good sauce and again there could have been a little more. But on the flip side, some more could have definitely soaked into the crust during transit. Their pepperoni was the same zippy pepperoni that was on their spicy pizza in the semi finals. Sausage was still excellent. I thought the meatballs were good, but not great. All in all, a very good meat lovers pie.

Marino's Meat Pizza
Crust:4, Sauce:4, Toppings:4, Overall Taste:7, Total:19.

DeFazio's Meat Pizza
DeFazio's brought a Bolognese pizza. The crust was topped with their Bolognese sauce (slow cooked pork and veal with little bits of pancetta) topped with cheese and then a little bit of crumbled sausage on top. The crust was pretty much the same as their vegetable pizza just slightly darker - delicious. I thought the sauce was well flavored but I thought the wine taste on the finish was a little off. All of the meat was excellent.

DeFazio's Meat Pizza
Crust:5, Sauce:3, Toppings:4, Overall Taste:7, Total:19.

Pre-Results Wrap Up
In a damn close decision, I gave the edge to DeFazio's 40 to 38. The crust was the difference for me. I brought the family to the finals. Allison thought the DeFazio's vegetable pizza and the Marino's meat were the best two pizza. If she were picking a slice from the two of those, she went with DeFazio's Vegetable. Casey would pick the same two pizzas also with a preference to DeFazio's. Amy concurred picking those two pizza's as her favorites. When asked which one she would go to for another slice she said, "There, I would have gone for the DeFazio's red pepper one because I couldn't believe how much I liked it. Right now, I think I'd go with the Marino's meat lovers."

Really, really close call. I'm not sure how the other judges scored it but I think DeFazio's narrowly won the veggie round and Marino's narrowly won the meat round. It will all come down to the margin of victory in each round. I'm writing this before the results are posted so we'll see if I'm right. The All Over Albany write up of the event is here.

The Results Have Been Posted Wrap Up
Well, the results are now up at All Over Albany. The People's Choice title went to Marino's meat pizza that barely beat DeFazio's veggie pie, 73 to 72.5.  The judges narrowly gave the Tournament Title to DeFazio's 167 to 164. That's really close. If you combine the pizza scores from the People's Choice, the people also gave the title to Defazio's  144.1 to 138.6. So it looks like I was mostly right, DeFazio's won the veggie round, Marino's won the meat round and it all came down to margin of victory. Anyhow, I've talked about pizza at work enough so our holiday party will be pizza trips to DeFazio's and Marino's.

The End of the Pizza Tournament
I was absolutely thrilled to be part of the Tournament. As a long time fan (I came up with an over/under and a points spread for last year's finals) it was a lot of fun to participate. It was even fun getting interviewed by some Saint Rose students covering the finals for a class. I learned a lot about pizza along the way. I knew eating it fresh out of the oven was important, but I didn't realize how important. I also learned that when you are hyper-analyzing pizza there isn't just the variation between shop to shop, there is also variation from slice to slice out of the same pizza. And lastly, if you had asked me if I thought some of the best pizza in the tournament would be meatless, I would have thought you were crazy. But they were. And the DeFazio's smoked mozzarella/red pepper pizza was, in my opinion, Best In Show. I'm going to have to try and copy that one.