By Jackie Pollack and Samantha Ferisin
Trying to find the best local pizza? Irvington Paw Print staff has got you covered. We decided to order a cheese pizza from four local pizzerias –: Capri, San Gennaro’s, Tony’s, and Irvington Pizza Company — to determine once and for all who has the best slice.
To compare the four pizzas we created five categories: crust, sauce, cheese, overall appearance and price.
We picked up all four pizzas from the pizzerias to avoid the delivery fee. The small pies were all under twenty dollars with Tony’s at $16.22, IPC at $15.96, Capri at $15.25 and San Gennaro’s at $14.95.
For the first category, San Gennaro’s was the most affordable, while Tony’s was on the more expensive side.
Before eating the pizza we ranked them based on their overall appearance. When looking at the pizzas both Capri and San Gennaro’s were very greasy and the cheese was thicker on some parts on the San Gennaro’s pie. Tony’s pizza was not as visibly greasy and there was little pieces of fresh oregano sprinkled into the cheese. IPC was the least impressive aesthetically, the cheese was very unevenly distributed and was white and lumpy in some parts and yellow and greasy in others. Visually Tony’s won because of the golden crust and lack of excess grease.
We also noticed that while cutting the pizza, although not included as a category for ranking, we had some difficulty keeping the slices intact. For IPC and Capri, the cheese was not melted into the crust so it fell off upon cutting it. For Tony’s the cheese stayed mostly intact but there was some parts, primarily near the middle of the pie, where the cheese stuck together and did not come off with the slice. San Gennaro’s on the other hand stayed completely intact when we cut it and we had no difficulty cutting the slices. So it won this round.
We then ranked the cheese and sauce of the four pizzas. For Capri the cheese was stiff and thick in some parts and slid off the pizza, and the taste was overpowered by large amount of sweet sauce that resembled pasta sauce and was too thin to be pizza sauce. IPC’s sauce was even sweeter than Capris and although it resembled pizza sauce more, it overpowered the cheese as well. The cheese on IPC’s pizza did not have any taste and was white in some parts and yellow in others. The sauce did not compliment the cheese. Tony’s sauce had a lot of oregano and there was not a lot of it compared to the mountain of cheese that was on each Tony’s slice. The staff enjoyed the ooey gooey cheese but there could have been more sauce. San Gennaro’s won this round with its perfectly golden and firm cheese. The sauce had oregano like Tony’s. But it was not overpowering, and it was the perfect mix of sweet and salty.
Capri’s crust was less fluffy and was more brown in color. It was hard to chew and more crispy than the other pies. IPC’s crust was golden, and had a balance between crunch and airiness. It did lack the bubbly fluff, however. Tony’s had a very sturdy, crisp crust, but compared to San Gennaro’s it lacked the bubbly, chewy crust.
Overall, we were initially tied between Tony’s and San Gennaro’s but Tony’s use of spices overpowered the sauce and the cheese slid of the pizza more than San Gennaro’s so we had to go with San Gennaro’s as our overall winner.
