Grr 8 Pepperoni Pizzas

Judging food is a lot of fun, and I love to do it anytime I get a chance. But it’s also hard work, and often you have to put your personal preferences aside.

Like, for example, in judging the All Over Albany Tournament of Pizza.

This year Round Two was the pepperoni round. It just so happens that I find pepperoni to be an abomination. It is a pizza topping I never order, and only rarely will eat. Except over the past few weeks, I found myself sitting down to eight different pepperoni slices from some of the better pizzerias in the Capital Region.

While I wasn’t looking forward to the pepperoni, I was looking forward to the experience. What could I learn about pepperoni from trying so much of it over a short period of time? And might some be better than others?

Well, let’s look back at the rounds and see what I learned.

In Saratoga it was a face-off between Mama Mia’s and Amore. This picture is an accurate assessment of the two pies. On a certain level pepperoni is about meat fat. And if you look at these specimens the Amore pepperoni is glistening, while the Mama Mia’s is dull. It’s no coincidence that in the tasting, the Amore pepperoni was the superior of the two.

However, the lesson from this contest was that effects of better pepperoni only go so far. Mama Mia’s was a superior pizza despite its clearly inferior pepperoni.

Then it was off to Schenectady.

We taste these pizzas blind. Still, there are a few pizzerias that I’m very familiar with, like Pizza King. When their slice appeared before me in the first round, it was unmistakable. In the pepperoni round, I was certain, absolutely certain that I knew which slice came from Marino’s. But in this case I was wrong. The one that tasted like the Marino’s I remembered from last year was really 5^th and 50. I was floored.

I’m still floored. Being wrong doesn’t sit well with me. In fact, I had to go into the back and examine the boxes of the pizzas themselves.

As far as pepperoni goes, spicier beats out less spicy. It’s a sausage after all. Nobody orders pepperoni because they want a bland pizza.

In Troy we saw that less can sometimes be more.

Not paying for the pizzas we are eating takes a big factor out of the equation. One pizza may be a little bit better, but it may be a lot more expensive. Or in the case of DeFazio’s vs. Giuseppe’s, one pizza was a good bit smaller, while the other was more generous in size.

But when it came strictly to taste, the smaller, better-made pie came out on top. However, this came down to a battle of crust. The strength of its pepperoni wasn’t the thing that put either shop over the top. When DeFazio’s is on point their crust is virtually unstoppable.

However the biggest eye opener came in Albany.

Of all the pepperoni pizzas I had sampled, there was really only one that stood out. And naturally, it lost (which is not to say that I didn’t vote for it, because I did).

Texture, and specifically a contrast of textures, is one of the things that brings me great pleasure in dining. Dahi puri is almost a study in textures. The pizza makers at Sapienza seem to understand this.

I don’t quite know how they did this, but the pepperoni slices barely seemed tethered to the pie. It was almost as if they were leaping off the cheese in an attempt to get into your mouth first. And the slice was covered with these raised pepperoni.

Not only did they give the slice some extra height, the edges of the pepperoni crisped up beautifully, and the curls contained all the flavorful and juicy fat.

Marisa’s place had an entirely different style of pepperoni that laid flat, which enabled its fat to run free and its smoky flavor to permeate the entire pie. The greasiness didn’t bother me. When you add a topping that is almost entirely fat, you are not allowed to complain about grease. But it was lacking that magical textural element that was present in Sapienza’s pie.

In fact of all the pepperoni pizzas that we had, Sapienza’s is the only one that I would order again, outside my duties as a judge. And that I think is saying something.

Next up in the Tournament of Pizza are the semis, and then the finals. I’m really excited to see who can pull this thing out. Congratulations to Mama Mia, 5^th and 50, DeFazio’s and Marisa’s for making it to the top of your brackets.

When this thing is over, I’m looking forward to visiting these shops so I can just eat and not judge.