Review: Urban Pie Pinzza Roman Style Pizza (Frozen)

 Let's begin with a mildly controversial statement: You can get good - maybe great - pizza at Costco and in your grocer's freezer.

If you're not yet tuned in to the regfrigerated take-and-bake "Pinsa" style pizza at Costco, get some soon. It's better than 90% of pizzerias. Our full review is HERE. Don't confuse this "take and bake" Pinsa pie with the tasty but ordinary floppy greasy pizza that Costco sells hot up front with the hot dogs and a few other snacks.

But let's get on to the main topic here - frozen pizza. For decades, it ranged from bad to mediocre. It was elevated with the advent of the DiGiorno rising crust pies, which are better than a lot of generic mom and pop shops and better than most of the big chains like Domino's and Papa John's. 

Inside the box

More recently, true gourmet pizzas have made it into the freezer section, led by top-shelf brick-and-mortar pizzerias making a frozen version of their pies. The one that first got my attention was the Neapolitan pizza from Roberta's (review HERE), which was in the freezer section at Whole Foods. I've been to Roberta's in Brooklyn (review HERE), and I found the frozen version to be, at a minimum, a solid reminder of how good that pie is fresh out of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven

A few weeks ago, we reviewed the Table 87 Coal Oven Slice (also found at Whole Foods). It's pricey, but we concluded that "Despite some room for improvement, this is as good as frozen pizza gets; it's at least as good as the frozen Roberta's pizza."

On the same trip when I bought the Table 87 slice, I also bought the Urban Pie "Pinzza" Roman Style Pizza. Because the Costco Pinsa style pizza is so good, I was eager to try this frozen pie with a similar crust. Costco calls their crust a "Roman Pinsa" style. What's that? It is made with a combination of Italian 00 wheat flour, rice flour, and soy flour to develop a light and airy crust that’s crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. 

This particular pizza ("Pepperoni Burrata") spent a few months in my freezer, and somewhere in its journey it seems to have partially thawed, because the generous pepperoni topping was skewed to one side. It's a pretty small pie, an oval roughly 11" long and 7" wide, weighing in at 15 ounces. Like the Costco pizza, the crust has wheat, rice, and soy flours. 

Nice crisp undercarriage

Although the label says Burrata, the ingredients show whole milk mozzarella and stracciatella cheeses as well as a tiny amount of Parmesan. Perhaps it's just cheese semantics; stracciatella is a fresh Italian cheese with a creamy texture and rich flavor, made by soaking shredded mozzarella in fresh cream, and often used as the filling for burrata.

Nice structure, light and airy crust

Out of the package, the pizza was not particularly pretty, and it looked ordinary out of the oven, too (baked at 450 on the center rack for 15-17 minutes). It was done after 16 minutes and the pepperoni was getting dark on the edges. I cut it into six small slices.

The key to a successful pizza - any style, fresh or frozen - is the crust. Always the crust. And the pinsa crust on this pizza is very very good - almost great. Crispy, chewy, yet light and airy, and very tasty. It shares many characteristics with the terrific Costco take-and-bake pinsa style pizza.

The sauce and cheese were good quality, but unremarkable. They served as role players here, melding nicely while letting the crust do the heavy lifting. The pepperoni added an important umami boost; would have liked the slices to be a little thicker. Spicy cup would really lift up the overall profile!

Overall, one of the best frozen pizzas you can get. It's very good, and can get to great with some tweaks to the sauce and cheeses. $14 is cheap for a pizzeria pizza, but expensive for a smallish frozen pizza; still, I'd buy again. It's a damn good pizza to have on hand in your freezer, right next to your Table 87 pizza.

Review: Allday Pizza - Austin TX

How do you find the best pizza places? 

Slice mix at Allday Pizza

For the decades during which I lived within an hour or two of New York City, I was skeptical of the claims about how New York pizza is terrific. But my "research" generally involved being hungry somewhere in Manhattan and grabbing a slice from the nearest pizzeria. But, most pizza everywhere, including NYC, is mediocre stuff coming from bad chains like Sbarro or mom'n'pop joints using cheap Sysco ingredients.

Allday Pizza, Hyde Park

The internet changed all that, and I was able to discover the pizzerias in New York making the top-flight pies, such as Lombardi's and Totonno's and John's and Joe's and Denino's. While there are plenty of online sources for New York pizza, it gets more difficult in places like Little Rock, San Diego, and Austin.

Allday interior, Hyde Park

When I travel and want to try the local pizza, I rely most often on two sources: Eater and The Infatuation. They both have genuine professional food writers who can describe the pizza in sufficient detail to help you decide where to go. With those as my guide, I found that Allday Pizza kept appearing on the "best pizza in Austin" lists. When they expanded from a trailer operation to a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the Hyde Park section of town, I rounded up four friends for a visit. 

Allday Pizza was launched in March 2023 by east coast natives Dan Sorg (NJ) and Townsend Smith (CT).  Allday crafts their pies with dough that is cold-fermented for 48 hours from a blend of organic flours (including Austin's Barton Springs Mill flour). A helpful counter person shared with me that the sauce is made with Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes grown in California. Some pizzas contain decadently rich stracciatella house-made cheese; other cheese is from Wisconsin.

Allday is primarily a slice joint, offering huge slices (each pie makes six slices) that range from $4 for the no-cheese "Tomato Tomatoe" to $6 for slices featuring pepperoni, sausage, or the house-made stracciatella cheese. They offer a slight discount if you buy a whole pie of one type, but no discount if you order 6 mixed slices.

For our diverse tastes and dietary preferences (including two vegetarians), we chose to assemble two pies with these 12 slices:

• 2 Stracciatella (tomato sauce, mozzarella, fresh basil, Grana Padano, olive oil, stracciatella)

• 2 Classic Cheese (tomato sauce, mozzarella)

• 2 Vodka Baby (vodka sauce, mozzarella, Grana Padano, fresh basil, sesame seed crust)

• 2 Pep & Pepp (tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, pepperoncini peppers, Grana Padano)

• 1 Spicy Margh (Calabrian tomato sauce, stracciatella, basil, olive oil, Tajín crust)

• 1 Industry (mozzarella, Verde sauce, pistachio dust)

• 1 Sweet Sausage (Ricotta cream, mozzarella, crumbled sausage, soppressata, red onion, Calabrian honey)

• 1 Pepperoni (tomato sauce, shredded aged mozzarella, fresh mozzarella, pepperoni

Based on the pics and review from The Infatuation, we also split a Goo-Mah sandwich ($15) three ways (mortadella, soppressata, stracciatella, Calabrian mayo, Allday relish on a house-made sesame-seeded roll). The sandwich was terrific, bursting with flavors. The bread was very good -- could be improved only with a sturdier/crisper outer crust. It was a little messy due to the stracciatella, but worth the struggle.

On to the pizza! Let's talk first about the most important element of any pizza - the crust. This was a perfect and brilliant rendition of a New York style crust. It had a crisped yet airy big cornicione that appealed to both the eye and the palate. The main body of the crust was thin and crispy, but pliable in that classic New York way that makes people want to fold it. (For the record, folding your pizza turns it into a sandwich and destroys the taste and texture profile. Don't do it! A slight V-shaped bend at the cornicione is fine to create rigidity.)

Permissable fold at cornicione

OH HELL NO

My first slice sampled (we cut several into smaller slices to taste more varieties) was the Pep & Pepp. Riding on that idyllic crust was a fresh tasting sauce, a generous but proportionate amount of mozzarella, and some top-line cup-and-char style pepperoni. Scattered on top was a sprinking of minced pepperoncini, adding a salty/spicy/vinegary note. It was a burst of umami on top of the pepperoni umami. This was one of the more conventional slices we tried and it was terrific.

The Pep & Pepp

The Sweet Sausage had the most eye appeal - a white pie with crumbled sausage and a big round of thinly sliced soppressata, and a Jackson Pollock-ish smattering of thinly sliced red onion. This was wonderful stuff, but a bit overly sweet (from the honey) for some in our group. This pie could be improved by using pinched Italian sausage that cooks on the pie instead of pre-cooked crumbles, and by dialing back the honey. But still a great slice!

The Sweet Sausage

The "slice that most tasted different than it looked" was the Industry Plant with the verde sauce and pistachio dust. I was expecting a straight-up basil pesto flavor, but I was getting a distinctly different herbal note. My guess was mint, but the helpful counter person shared that the verde sauce is made with green herbs basil, parsley, chives, and dill in addition to capers, miso, lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I loved this slice but probably wouldn't want an entire pie that way.

The Industry Plant

The "slice I never would have chosen but blew me away" was, hands down, the Vodka Baby. We ordered two in the mix of slices our vegetarians could eat. I think it was my favorite; the flavor of that vodka sauce was jumpin'. The sauce was so good that I didn't notice the mozzarella (apparently under the sauce). Bonus - a sesame seed crust! I didn't get a picture of a Vodka Baby slice on its own, but you can see it above on in one of the pics with all the slices on the serving tray.

More evidence of a perfectly crafted crust

I relish a regular cornicione on well crafted pizzas, but I also welcome some twists (yeah, I confess to enjoying a pretzel crust). Insider tip - you can get the Vodka Chicken Parm sandwich on that same excellent bread as the Goo-mah, but with a chicken cutlet, stracciatella, and that awesome vodka sauce.

Stracciatella slice showing off that airy cornicione

The Stracciatella was essentially their regular cheese slice, topped with a dollop of stracciatella cheese and a leaf of fresh basil. Great pizza, but in general I'm not keen on heavy and wet cheese on a pie. I'd prefer this wonderful cheese on a salad or with some other bread/cracker vehicle. There's only been one exception to this - the astounding Roman-style pies at Stracci Pizza in Arlington VA.

It's not easy to find good New York pizza outside of New York and New Jersey. Until now, the best New York pizza in Austin has been Home Slice, the venerable slice joint on South Congress Avenue. But Allday is Great Pizza, not only in the conversation for "best New York pizza in Austin" but also "Best Pizza in Austin."

Happy pizza eaters

It's not easy (or fair, really) to draw comparisons between the top Austin pizzas of different styles, such as the Detroit pizza at Via 313, the New York at Allday, the Roman style at Baldinucci, the Sicilian at Pedroso's, or the Neapolitan pizza at Jester King. But Allday is crafting brilliant and tasty pies; all five of us loved this pizza. Service was terrific and the interior had a pleasant vibe only mildly compromised by the drone of industrial synth pop played too loudly.

Six years into my Austin journey and still amazed that it's easier to get great pizza than great Mexican food here in the heart of Texas. 

Review: Riccardo's Pizza and Italian Restaurant - Browns Mills, NJ

Many who grew up Trenton tomato pie are fiercely loyal to this take on pizza. So loyal, in fact, that they bristle when you call it pizza. If you're new to the concept of a Trenton tomato pie, click HERE for a primer on what "tomato pie" means in Philly, in Trenton, or in Charleston SC. It's a different baked delicacy in all three areas, and one isn't even a pizza!

Tomato pie at Riccardo's

Back in the 1980s, the only place you could get a true Trenton tomato pie was ( ... drum roll ... ) in Trenton, NJ. Trenton was full of fine Italian pizzerias (ahem, tomato pie joints) and restaurants, many of the true mom and pop variety. At the top of my list was DeLorenzo's Tomato Pies on Hudson Street (not to be confused with DeLorenzo's Pizza on Hamilton Avenue) and Joe's Tomato Pies (closed in 1999). There were many others, including my current favorite, Papa's Tomato Pies. DeLorenzo's and Papa's have both relocated to the Robbinsville suburb.

Riccardo's exterior

Even though Trenton itself no longer has any tomato pie joints or legacy Italian restaurants, the Trenton Tomato Pie is thriving in the suburbs. It has spread northward to Titusville at It's Nutt's, southward to Burlington County at Mateo's and Lillo's, and eastward to Browns Mills at Riccardo's. You can get a Trenton tomato pie at the wonderful pizza trailer Pedroso's in Austin, Texas. You can find it on the menu at Tony’s Pizzeria Napoletana in San Francisco and at Pizza Rock in Las Vegas. But let's talk about Riccardo's, the booming restaurant in Browns Mills.

Riccardo's interior

Browns Mills is a sleepy unincorporated burg in Burlington County on the edge of the Pine Barrens, and historically it was a source for modest housing for families of military folks stationed nearby at Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base. But now it is home to the tomato pie restaurant generating the most buzz on social media.

The real Pine Barrens

Note: if your knowledge of the Pine Barrens comes from the Sopranos episode bearing that name, you should know that the show did a great injustice by filming in a hilly area with tall trees, so obviously NOT the Pine Barrens, which are Kansas-style flat with short scrubby pine trees.

My God, these aren't even pine trees!

The Facebook Group New Jersey Pizza Joints is a high-activity forum on pizza, and Riccardo's is in heavy rotation there, garnering praise from just about all who visit. I had a long list of pizzerias for a recent trip to New Jersey (staying in Ewing, a Trenton suburb), and Riccardo's was high on that list.

Our party of four arrived just before 5pm on a weekday, so we faced no wait to get a table. The inside is big with about 30 tables, not the smaller layout you might find in a pizzeria. We decided to go big with our order - we chose a House Salad ($10.95) to share, the Browns Mills Tomato Pie ($23.95 plus $4.95 for pinched sausage topping), and the "Skinny Minnie Thinnie" which the menu describes as a pizza with a "cracker crust, super thin, baked in a rectangular pan, topped with mozzarella and San Marzano tomatoes, baked crispy" ($23.95 plus $4.95 for "roni cups" pepperoni and hot honey).

The House Salad

A word about the salad - made with iceberg lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, red onions, green olives, cucumbers and croutons, it was big enough to serve four. But the downside of arriving before 5pm is that our salad was probably prepared for the day before, because there was a bit of brown lettuce. It was a little dried out, not an ideal tone setter, but not a big deal either.

The Skinny Minnie Thinnie with "Roni Cups"

Both pies came to our table about the same time, and they were gloriously beautiful creations. We came for the Browns Mills Tomato Pie, but let's talk first about the other pie. Ordinarily, I steer clear of gimmicky menu items, especially in a pizzeria. This is not the time or place to be vegan, gluten-free, counting calories, etc. Those are all legitimate dietary concerns, but any such twists will (for me) diminish the essence of a great pizza. Don't go putting buffalo chicken (or even fresh mozzarella) on my tomato pie! 

A slice of the Skinny Minnie Thinnie

Hence, the idea of a "Skinny Minnie Thinnie" pizza seems like a pie to skip right over. But one thoughtful reviewer (again, on the Jersey Pizza Joints group) had mentioned it and shared pics. We took a gamble on it and I'm glad we did. 

Beautiful char under the Skinny Minnie Thinnie

This pizza was  indeed cracker-thin, but its crust was sturdy enough to give proper support to its substantial cheese payload on top. Even though the menu says that the cheese is whole milk mozzarella, we detected a flavor that reminded us of the pizza at JoJo's Tavern in Hamilton Square NJ, where the cheese blend includes cheddar (according to some reviewers).

"Skinny" may decribe the thickness of this pan baked delight, but it surely cannot refer to the calories, because this pie was dense with cheese and the lovely oil from cup-and-char style of pepperoni. That pepperoni was absolutely top grade. The hot honey (which we asked for on the side) was a lovely complement for this pie, which already had an overload of umami burst.

Some edges sported a beautifully caramelized cheese border. One member of our party noted that this Skinny pie tasted like the pizza at Quincy Hall (Arlington, VA) even though the crust at Quincy is more of a New York - Neapolitan hybrid style. At any rate, don't sleep on this one. It's not a gimmick, despite the name suggesting that it's some kind of "diet pizza."

The Browns Mills Tomato Pie

The main feature, the purpose for making the drive out to Browns Mills, was of course the tomato pie. Just one glance and we knew that this was legitimate Trenton tomato pie despite its Browns Mills moniker. The crust was perfectly rigid, not even a hint of tip droop here. The pie was well-done, right up to (but not over) the edge of being burnt. I accept - even embrace - that many of the best pies are going to have some char spots.

Underneath the tomato pie

We observed some corn meal under the crust. I am among those who enjoy the slight textural changes that corn meal introduces. And when making pizza at home, I surely appreciate how it keeps the pie from sticking to the peel on the way into the oven.

No tip droop!

This pie was hitting all the right notes. The thin-yet-crisp crust with a flavor of its own, the slightly sweet sauce (less chunky than DeLorenzo's), the ideal balance of the sauce-to-cheese-to-crust ratio, and even the lovely fresh basil on top. The pinched sausage was indeed the ideal topping, and it was top quality stuff.

This is spectacular tomato pie. All the elements were in perfect harmony. Full legit in every aspect, and it's better than my old standby, Joe's Tomato Pie. This was flawless. Riccardo's deserves every bit of the praise it's getting online. 

How does it compare to the Robbinsville pies of DeLorenzo's and Papa's? It deserves to be in the conversation, but based on eating all three over two days, I rank them Papa's, DeLo's, then Riccardo's. But the quality differences are tiny. Yes, each tomato pie maker has its distinct character, but you can easily defend putting any one of these three at the top of your list.

Beyond superlative pies, we had excellent service. This is not bargain tomato pie; $29 for a pie with meat toppings is surely on the high end, but it's still a great value. The tomato pie and the Skinny were both so good that by now I'd have been back to try the Grandma and Detroit style pies if I lived nearby.