The Best Pizza in Dallas

[Raynickben]

Clearly the editors who voted on the best pizza in Dallas do not hail from any Pizza capitals (New York, Chicago, etc.). Luciano's lost to Campisi's??? It boggles the mind.

Read the scores and tell me if you agree or disagree.

The Best Pizza in Dallas

[Kirk B]

Silly premise (why pepperoni?), silly picks and really sophomoric writing yield useless ratings. Kind of akin to New York doing a rating of the best TexMex (or Texas barbecue) in Manhattan. What next, a blind taste test of Dallas' best pierogi?

[Richard Kilgore]

Kirk B -- More please! What is silly about the premise (what premise?)? Why not peperoni? Why are the picks silly? Why is the writing sophomoric? What would be wrong with New York doing a rating of the best Tex-Mex or barbeque in Manhattan?

[theabroma]

Because New Yorkers don't know bupkis about BBQ or TxMx, much less Mexican food! They think BBQ is piece of flanken drowned in spiced ketchup, and then cooked in the oven, in a tallith of tin foil.

And TxMx is made from canned corn tortillas, not reheated, and filled with something lurking in cream gravy tainted with raw/unroasted/unsimmered chili powder. And they use Italian parsley as a substitute for cilantro. The soul weeps.

Now, in all fairness, we here seem not to be able to produce a real bagel for the life of us, and the bialys are a sin before Yahweh.

So, too, the pies. Badly made dough - it's foccacia dough, for goodness sakes! Bad tomato sauce - here's where we get the ganas for ketchup. The cheeses - both parm and mozzarella are not good quality, and the meats are not good, either. Go to Jimmy's on Fitzhugh and Bryan for the cheeses, and for the Italian canned tomatoes, and for the cold cuts - pepperoni, salami, including the Tuscan one with fennel, that are divine. You don't need much. Pizzas here have far too much stuff all over them. They arrive at the table looking for all the world like they just busted out of a 10x10 storage locker. And then the bad dough - full of relaxers and conditioners, is often not properly baked.

The pizzas I was lucky enough to eat in NYC and New Haven (Sally's and The Spot) didn't look like a gypsy wagon just threw up all over them. They were pretty simple, with a few good Italian ingredients, and a good hot oven. They were to be savored - and they definitely were not the kind of over salted, cheezy/greezy stuff that is craved and inhaled at 2:20pm after the bars close on a night of heavy drinking.

You didn't ask, but I couldn't hold back. God, I'd love a good slice.

Theabroma

[Raynickben]

Kirk B -- More please! What is silly about the premise (what premise?)? Why not peperoni? Why are the picks silly? Why is the writing sophomoric? What would be wrong with New York doing a rating of the best Tex-Mex or barbeque in Manhattan? 

I'm not Kirk B. but I have to agree with him. First of all, I test pizza all the time. It's my favorite food and nothing here compares to NY pizza so if I come across a pizza place in the metroplex I try it hoping that someone can do what the New Yorkers do so well. I do the same thing with subs and steamed clams. I think I need to move back to NJ.

Anyway, I love pepperoni pizza but if I am trying a place for the first time I get a plain cheese slice. The mark of a good pizza is the taste of the sauce, the sauce/cheese ratio and the texture of the dough and crust. If you add another variable in there i.e. pepperoni it can skew the results dramatically. Maybe the pepperoni overwhelms the other ingredients, maybe the pepperoni is an inferior product, etc.

I wouldn't say the picks were silly but they did leave out so many pizza joints that to say Louie's is "the best" is unfair. There is no way they could test every place so why not just say "here's what we tasted and Louie's is the best of this group". Instead the headline SCREAMS best pizza in Dallas.

Unlike the Dallas Observer that solicits reader's votes on "the best of", D Magazine does their own thing time and time again and I have yet to come across a food article that is useful. Heck, when they have their "best of" issue they try 5 (count 'em) margaritas, 5 salsas, 5 barbeque sandwiches, etc. It's absurd.

And New Yorkers COULD do a rating of best Tex-Mex but many Texans living there would shake their heads and say....uh...no.

[theabroma]

Anyway, I love pepperoni pizza but if I am trying a place for the first time I get a plain cheese slice. The mark of a good pizza is the taste of the sauce, the sauce/cheese ratio and the texture of the dough and crust. If you add another variable in there i.e. pepperoni it can skew the results dramatically.

Right you are Raynickben.

It's kinda like the Vanilla Ice Cream Proof - when you boil something down to its essential running gears, that's where the acid test is for taste.

"The proof of the pudding ... etc. truly does lie in the eating, and there's not too many places you can hide if the holy trinity of bread, sauce, and cheese aren't iin tune.

Theabroma

[slkinsey]

Unlike the Dallas Observer that solicits reader's votes on "the best of", D Magazine does their own thing time and time again and I have yet to come across a food article that is useful. Heck, when they have their "best of" issue they try 5 (count 'em) margaritas, 5 salsas, 5 barbeque sandwiches, etc. It's absurd.

Presumably, though, they arrive at the list of which five places or products to test by some kind of process, though. Right?

For example, although there are hundreds of pizza places in NYC, if I were writing an article I wouldn't have trouble deciding on at least a preliminary list of ten, after which time I would perhaps visit the places I had not yet experienced and reduce the list further to the final five. I also wouldn't necessarily feel like I had to devote a few column inches of my article to a description of that process. Needless to say, however, some people would feel that I had slighted their favorite place by not including it.

As for soliciting customer input in making the ratings... it inevitably ends up being a popularity contest that favors establishments that are the most effective in getting their patrons to submit votes, rather than a true gauge of quality. I see that kind of thing as "Most popular ____ in ____" rather than "best of."

[foodie52]

The pizzas I was lucky enough to eat in NYC( and New Haven Sally's and The Spot) didn't look like a gypsy wagon just threw up all over them.   

That's really funny!!!

[Raynickben]

Unlike the Dallas Observer that solicits reader's votes on "the best of", D Magazine does their own thing time and time again and I have yet to come across a food article that is useful.  Heck, when they have their "best of" issue they try 5 (count 'em) margaritas, 5 salsas, 5 barbeque sandwiches, etc.  It's absurd.

As for soliciting customer input in making the ratings... it inevitably ends up being a popularity contest that favors establishments that are the most effective in getting their patrons to submit votes, rather than a true gauge of quality. I see that kind of thing as "Most popular ____ in ____" rather than "best of."

To be more specific the Dallas Observer editors list their picks for "the best of" alongside the reader's choices. The picks are often not the same and now I have two views of what's best.

[Richard Kilgore]

So what about everyone else? What are your favorite pizza haunts in the Dallas area? Make that the whole DFW area so we don't miss something important.

[Scott -- DFW]

The best pizza I've had in DFW was at Chicago St., in Plano (almost to Frisco). I've had their deep dish pizzas several times and found them to compare favorably with many in the Chicago pantheon (e.g., Giordanno's). (I've heard their stuffed crust pizzas aren't quite as good.) I went there on a recommendation from Kirk (a former Chicagoan) on Chowhound. It's one of the best food tips I've gotten in the few years I've lived in Dallas.

Scott

Chicago St Pizza

8000 Coit Rd

Plano, TX 75025

Phone: (972) 335-7273

[JetLag]

Perhaps the best pizza in Dallas was picked the same way Texas Monthly's resaurant critic picks the best resaurants. By reading press releases from the restaurants.

[Richard Kilgore]

Jetlag -- welcome to the Texas Forum. Hope you will visit and post often.

In fairness to all, the D Magazine article in the link above spells out the procedure they used. You can disagree with the procedure and you can disagree with the results, but there is no indication anywhere that they based any part of their procedure on press releases. Quite the opposite -- they ate a stupifying amount of pizza. (And as far as that goes, there is no evidence that Texas Monthly based their findings on press releases, only that they used them. Not that there are not a lot of questions one can ask about how Texas Monthly has been so very far off in some of their choices. But that's another thread.)

So back on topic regarding D Magazine and your choices (same of alternate) for best pizza in Dallas.

[Raynickben]

My vote for best NY style pizza is Joe's Pizza in Plano (NW corner Parker and the Tollway). I also like Luciano's which was rated in the article. I used to like Covino's alot until twice I got pizza soup i.e. the pizza had so much cheese on it we had to eat it with a spoon.

[ExtraMSG]

It's important to distinguish pizza ideals. Pizza has been a part of American cuisine long enough that there are several types, including:

* New York: Thin slightly crisped crust (foldable) with minimal toppings.

* Chicago: More like a true pie even with a pastry style crust and thick layers of sauce and "toppings"

* California: Thin and crusty, usually with gourmet combinations and light on the cheese and sauce.

* Homestyle: Thick foccacia style dough, lots of cheese, lots of toppings. Think Pizza Hut pan pizzas.

Comparing across types is as useful as comparing Tex-Mex to interior Mexican or Memphis BBQ to Texas BBQ, etc. Sounds like a lot of people (except Scott) here have NY style as their ideal. I actually prefer Chicago and California style pizzas.

Interesting link: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3341710/

Raynickben, how do the pizzas down there compare with what we have up here?

[Raynickben]

Hi Extra MSG,

I had a lot of great California style pizza there in Portland. Pizzacato, Bugatti's, and Pizza Bella all had interesting and tasty combinations. Pizza Bella (in Lake Oswego) has a pizza with roasted new potatoes, carmalized onions and raclette cheese that is so damn good. In fact their plain NY style cheese pizza is quite good as well. And Bugatti's in West Linn has a pizza with roasted red peppers, garlic, feta, and kalamata olives that I must recreate in my own kitchen, maybe tonight now that I'm thinking of it. I am not a fan of Pizza Shmizza! I know there is a place downtown that I heard had great NY style pizza but I can't remember the name and I never patronized the place.

Dallas does have outlets for all of the pizza types you described. I usually just prefer the NY style.

[ExtraMSG]

For the longest time, Scott -- DFW had told me he couldn't find anything in DFW meaningfullly better than Pizza Hut until he went to Chicago St. But I'm not sure how much he likes NY style, so I was just wondering about how DFW's pizza options compare with ours here.

Pizza Schmizza is okay for a place that has a ton of locations, but Hot Lips and Escape from NY are clearly superior.

[Raynickben]

For the longest time, Scott -- DFW had told me he couldn't find anything in DFW meaningfullly better than Pizza Hut until he went to Chicago St. But I'm not sure how much he likes NY style, so I was just wondering about how DFW's pizza options compare with ours here.

Pizza Schmizza is okay for a place that has a ton of locations, but Hot Lips and Escape from NY are clearly superior.

Escape from NY is the place I was thinking of. Never had the chance to try it!

But we're suppossed to be talking about pizza in Dallas right? I have friends from Chicago who swear by Chicago St. as well. There's a Chicago-style place in Irving, I'll have to track down the name, that is also highly regarded.

[Kirk B]

The best pizza I've had in DFW was at Chicago St., in Plano (almost to Frisco). I've had their deep dish pizzas several times and found them to compare favorably with many in the Chicago pantheon (e.g., Giordanno's). (I've heard their stuffed crust pizzas aren't quite as good.) I went there on a recommendation from Kirk (a former Chicagoan) on Chowhound. It's one of the best food tips I've gotten in the few years I've lived in Dallas.

Scott

Chicago St Pizza

8000 Coit Rd

Plano, TX 75025

Phone: (972) 335-7273

Scott, I am honored that you mentioned this! Your recommendations have enhanced my Dallas food experiences, too.

Next time you head up to Chicago St., let me know. I'll join you for a slice (or five).