Good Pizzas

I haven't eaten enough real pizzas to be an arbiter of good pizza. So if you don't think Trevi Cafe and Home Slice Pizza make good pizzas, please enlighten me.

The best pizza I ever had was at the Trevi Cafe in Rome. I have never bitten into such wonderful, just-right mixture of crusty and soft, aromatic, slightly sweet pizza dough. The toppings and sauce did not overpower the all important dough, and by that I mean that the oil from the toppings does not seep through the dough and create an orange puddle of grease on the plate like the pizzas from the rest of the world. And Trevi Cafe is probably considered sub-standard by Italians since Trevi Cafe is an obvious tourist establishment (2 steps away from the Trevi Fountain).

Trevi Cafe (Rome, Italy)-mushroom, artichoke, and ham pizza

One evening, my friend and I headed to First Thursday on South Congress. As we prowled through the street stalls, we talked about how pizzas in Aix-en Provence and Rome are incredible and how they're terrible everywhere else. Pizzas come topped with corn kernels and questionable cheese that don't melt like they ought to in Taiwan and Austria. Pizzas in the U.S. are greasy and heavy. We complained on until we came upon a long line outside Home Slice Pizza. We decided to follow the crowd and ordered 2 pepperoni pizzas from the window. Excellent. This was the first time I had a pizza that took a step closer to my Trevi-Cafe-spoiled tongue. Home Slice can improve some more by getting rid of the grease.

I came back again and craved more extravagant toppings. I ordered a white pizza with garlic, chopped clams, and fried eggplants and a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and meatballs. Again, the grease...but once I sopped it up with paper towels and bit into each, I smiled from ear to ear. Utterly delicious.

White Pizza-olive oil, garlic, ricotta, mozzarella, provolone & romano topped with chopped clam and fried eggplant and Pizza-with mushrooms, pepperoni, and meatballs

Do not save Home Slice's pizzas for leftovers! The thin crust becomes rubbery when you reheat it probably because steam gets trapped underneath the pizza and the grease seeps through the dough. Damn grease!