Northern New Jersey Edition
I can’t believe my family routinely lets me do this to them.
This weekend we were heading to Staten Island for my nephew’s birthday party.
Why not extend the trip a little, spend Saturday night in a hotel and eat a lot
of pizza on the way? And let’s bring the dog too.
First, some background on the behind the scenes thinking of
the very secretive Pizza Tour Site Selection Committee (PTSSC). Several very
influential members of the PTSSC follow Pete Genovese on twitter. I’m not sure
what makes his him an authority on all things New Jersey, but he seems to be
the guy. He travels the state in search of the best diners, best bakeries and,
of course, best pizza. He does a New Jersey Pizzeria Power Rankings which is a
top 25 list. I think it is annual thing. There were several newcomers to the
list that shuffled places around in 2016. Sources
familiar with the recent meeting of the PTSSC tell me the committee wanted to
see how Pete Genovese’s thoughts on pizza lined up with their own. The PTSSC
finds it interesting to try a place a pizza critic has visited. The process
kind of calibrates one’s tastes with the critic’s tastes. For example, if you
find a movie reviewer with similar tastes that writer’s reviews should hold a
little more weight than a reviewer who panned your favorite movie. All three
places on this trip routinely make Peter Genovese’s Top 25 pizza places in New
Jersey. The PTSCC also paid attention to location, travel time between
pizzerias and total travel time.
1. Pizza Town in Elmwood Park
2. Star Tavern in Orange
3. Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza in Elizabeth
Stop 1
Pizza Town USA
111 Rt 46 West
Elmwood Park, NJ
Ranked #22 in 2016 (fell from #14)
I have been here before and should I ever find myself within
20 miles of the place, will come again. When I think traditional NY Slice joint
pizza, it’s this slice. It’s crisp yet tender. I have no idea how they do that.
Here’s what we got: a slice, a deep-fried calzone filled with ricotta and ham
and a bag of zeppole.
Wohoo! We're here!
Look at the beauty of that slice
Seriously, look at it.
The small deep fried calzone is fantastic. The dipping sauce is good too.
After this trip, everyone wants me to start making zeppole.
The kids loved everything about this place. Pizza was great.
Calzone was great. Zeppole were great. My youngest wants to move closer. She
once said, “All you need to survive is a Target and Bella Napoli (for their
doughnuts).” She would be willing to forgo the Bella Napoli doughnuts for these
zeppole. Plus, while we were there, I heard a thickly accented bee-you-tee-full. Plus-plus, this is the
site of one of my favorite dough stretching videos (this is poetry in motion). Plus-plus-plus, I love this place. Pro tip:
eat the zeppole outside so you won’t feel bad about powdered sugar going
everywhere. If you’ve had a Bella Napoli powdered jelly doughnut, that is just
a powdered sugar dusting compared to these zeppole.
Stop 2
Star Tavern
400 High Street
Orange, NJ
Ranked #11 in 2016 (fell from #8)
Star Tavern is kind of the home of the Bar Pie. I have
wanted to try this place for years. There is a very long thread about their
pizza on the pizza forum. It’s very thin pizza that is meant to go well with
beer. We got here around 4:30 on a Saturday. The parking lot was packed and
there was a short wait for a table. When the pizza came to the table, the
melted cheese was approximately the temperature of lava.
Star Tavern
The joint was jumping at 4:30 on a Saturday.
Hot Lava.
A peek at the bottom.
I am usually one that digs right in and takes a bite, roof
of the mouth be damned. But not this time. Let’s give that a second to cool. The
pizza was good. It was crazy thin. The texture of the crust reminded me of a
better version of a Blaze pizza. The best bites were the crusty bits of melted
cheese around the edges. This is the kind of place where the Pizza Cognition
Theory is in full effect. The restaurant was full of families having dinner.
The table next to us was two families going out together, with a total of 4
kids at the table, I’d guess the oldest was 10. When those kids come home after
being away awhile, when they come home for a visit, Start Tavern is going to be
the first place they want to go. Should this place ever change or (I don’t even
want to say it) close, people will mourn it for a long time. A lot of people.
All that said, it is a little too far away from my personal Pizza Cognition, so
it isn’t for me, and there's nothing worng with that.
Stop 3
Santillo’s Brick Oven Pizza
639 South Broad Street
Elizabeth, NJ
Ranked #2 in 2016 (held the #2 spot)
I was definitely looking forward to this stop. At one time
this shop was at the top of Peter Genovese’s list. I think in the one of the
more recent version it has dropped to Number2. On a busy Saturday night, this
was a 2 person operation. It is take-out only. There’s a small place for
customers to stand and at times while I was there, it was packed.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure I got the best that Santillo’s has to offer. They
have a variety of options to choose from, some of them are by year. I asked the
person in front of me for their favorite. He was picking up three pizzas and
seemed to have his own thermal bag to get them home. He recommended the 1964 but said everything is good. I took his advice. I spoke with a few customers
and they all love this place. And I've got to tell you, if you are within a block of this place, it smells delicious.
If you weren't looking for it, you'd miss it. You need to go down the alley.
Near the end of the alley, this sign is over the door/
No tables, we ate this pizza out of the back of the mini van.
I thought the pizza was just OK. But again, I might not have picked
the best of the best. I thought the sauce was a little too sweet and there was
too much of it on the pizza. The crust was good but not amazing. If I lived
closer, the menu would definitely require further exploration. All in all, OK,
but I would have to disagree that this is the best pizza in New Jersey since it
wasn’t the best pizza of the day. This certainly wasn’t bad pizza but I think
I’d put the Gennaro’s tomato pie I had on an earlier New Jersey tour ahead of
it.
After our last pizza stop we headed off to the hotel. The
family consensus was that Pizza Town was the best of the day. It was fun tour
and it left me feeling a little bit cocky. I felt like I could put my
pizza next to a pizza some have argued is the best in New Jersey and I’d like
mine more. I’m sure there’s a wee bit of bias in there. My last bake in the
wood oven went well. Best one so far. I felt like I had the dough under control
and could keep the oven floor temperature steady. Hopefully that wasn’t a
fluke. This trip really made me want to fire the oven up again. Maybe on
Saturday. We’ll have to see how the week goes.
Disclosure: The head of the Pizza Tour Site Selection Committee
as well as all the distinguished Pizza Tour Site Selection Committee voting
members are just me. My vote carries a lot of swing at those loud, high stakes meetings.
