So it’s a Friday night in Bay City, and you’re starving for a good pizza, and you want to support a local business. Who do you call? Fellow food blogger Jason Baker (of www.iatemichigan.com fame) and I have once again been at it. We spent an entire evening sampling home-delivered pizzas from six different pizza parlors from around the city. Those pizza establishments included Brooklyn Boyz Pizza, G’s Pizza, D’Angelo’s, Eudici’s, Roma's Pizzeria, and B & C Pizza.
For uniformity purposes, all of the pizzas that we ordered were topped with exclusively pepperoni and bacon. We also took into consideration accuracy of each restaurant’s projected delivery time by ordering each pizza to be delivered at the exact same time. That way we could throw an entertaining mind-fuck at the delivery drivers when they all arrived at my house simultaneously. Yes, I’m a sadistic bastard.
Other categories that we took into consideration were price, quality of toppings, cheese, sauce, crust, size, and overall taste. Just so everyone knows, all of the establishments evaluated were reasonably equal in employee courtesy from the moment that our order was placed to the moment that it was delivered. The levelness of the playing field ended there.
Eudici’s Pizza
Eudici’s was quite standard, and unremarkable. Not bad pizza, but simply very average. About the only higher ground that Eudici’s held over the other five local pizzerias was that it was quite timely, and reasonably priced. If you’re looking for a spectacular pizza, Eudici’s isn’t the place. But as I said, they’re quick and offer good value.
Brooklyn Boyz Pizza
Pizza was invented in Italy during the later part of the 19th century, as a type of savory pastry in honor of Italy’s queen. It was a simple combination of ingredients, with huge patriotic implications. Those original ingredits (cheese, tomato sauce, and basil) were selected to represent the red, white and green of the Italian flag. It was later brought to America (the New York City/Connecticut area) by Italian immigrants, but its popularity didn’t completely take off until after World War II when repatriated GI’s sought out this tasty snack which they had dined on while fighting in Italy against the Nazis. From then on, pizza’s rise in the American culinary scene was meteoric. The ownership of Brooklyn Boyz hails from New York, so the name Brooklyn Boyz is quite fitting.
I found Brooklyn Boyz’ pizza to be quite impressive. The price, size, and timeliness of delivery were excellent. Their sauce was top notch; a tad garlicky for my wife’s tastes, but very appealing to me. Their toppings and cheese could stand some improvement. But overall, their pizza ranked quite high. I strongly recommend them.
Roma’s Pizzeria
Roma’s is a tiny neighborhood restaurant that I have been driving past for as long as I can remember. Sadly, I’d never bothered to give them my business. Only now do I understand the full scope of how I’d erred. Including Roma’s in the survey was Jason’s idea, and I’m quite pleased that he had suggested that we sample their pizza. As I understand it, Roma’s is owned by Italians, and it is nestled in Bay City’s South End, amongst a small pocket of residents who are also of Italian heritage. So if Italians are eating there, the staff must know what they’re doing. Roma’s didn’t disappoint. I found them to be best overall in quality of toppings, and crust. They were second best in the categories of cheese, and sauce; and I found them to serve up the best pizza offering off all of the six pizzas that we sampled. I give them a recommendation of the highest order. Seriously, this was great pizza. And I’m not just saying this because I’m afraid that they’re going to come to my house and put a severed horse’s head in my bed while I’m sleeping. Roma’s knows pizza!
D’Angelo’s Pizza
A relative newcomer to Bay City’s take out scene, D’Angelo’s has a lot to learn in quality, and they have nowhere else to go but up at this point. I hate to be blunt and negative about our experience with their product, but I see no need in paying credit when credit isn’t due. D’angelo’s pizza was the most expensive of the six that we surveyed, and with the exception of quality of cheese, they were in the bottom-three in all the categories that I considered. I found little value in ordering their product, and although I would perhaps try other menu items that they have to offer, I can’t say I’d go out of my way to eat their pizza. Well, maybe if it were free. But otherwise, I found better pizza choices available.
G’s Pizza
For those of you who travel to Tawas or other towns in Northern Michigan, G’s pizza is famous and well-respected. I have previously enjoyed their pizzas at their Tawas location, and apparently other folks do as well, as that it’s generally considered a must-visit for vacationers passing through the Tawas area. I had however previously found their Bay City location to be rather unimpressive for some inexplicable reason. G’s occupies the building that once housed Bay City’s “famous” Terry & Jerry’s Restaurant, a very basic, overpriced Italian eatery run by non-Italians. My wife and in-laws used to love Terry & Jerry’s, but I personally (as an Italian myself) found it to be edible, but barely passable in the authenticity department. Eventually, the owners retired and decided to sell their business off. Terry & Jerry’s 2.0 quickly tanked when the new owners bunglingly decided to cut corners and replaced fresh ingredients with pre-packaged Gordon’s Foods schlock. Shortly thereafter, G’s moved into the location. I went off on that tangent in order to foster my argument that the building must certainly have some bad mojo attached to it, and mediocrity is the greatest that any restaurant that operates out of that location could hope for. What other explanation can be mustered to explain why the Tawas location gets their pizza so right, and the Bay City location gets theirs so wrong?
So with that, G’s pizza was the second most expensive of the six. Although I would rate its toppings second best to Roma’s, it was dead last in every other category. It was even last in delivery timeliness. All of the pizzas that we surveyed were ordered within 10 minutes of each other, and were under the same constraints of a busy Friday evening. Yet G’s found a way of completing their delivery in nearly DOUBLE the projected delivery time that their order-taker gave me. What arrived was a small, greasy mess that was truly unappetizing and disappointing. I may enthusiastically dig into their product when I’m in the Tawas area; but Bay City? Never again.
B & C Pizza
Fewer pizzerias in our community are as famous or storied as B & C Pizza. Their pizza was the one that I anticipated the very most in the run-up to this culinary experiment. So many people love and believe in their pizza, that it approaches “religion” in the mesmerizing hold that it has on folks. Me being the person that I am, I had no problem testing the decades-long hype of B & C’s pizza supremacy. Their price was very low in comparison to the others (second lowest after Brooklyn Boyz), and their cheese was by far the best of all pizzas surveyed. Delivery timeliness was average, but due to the fact that they have such a huge demand from their rabid customer base, I can cut them some slack in that category. But in the category of overall taste (at the risk of invoking cries of “heresy”), I would rank them only THIRD-best (behind Roma’s and Brooklyn Boyz, respectively). Their crust was excellent, but the quality of their toppings and sauce could stand some improving. Overall, I felt that their pizza was significantly more salty than it needed to be (largely because the toppings were overly salty), and that was probably the single-biggest criticism that I’d have for them. Overall, it was a good solid offering, but not the best available.
So in summary, Roma’s pizza was by far the best tasting, and the most impressive of all the pizzas tested in this survey. And although far from authentic, they were relatively in-the-ballpark with the style of pizza that I have had at various times while traveling in Italy. Brooklyn Boyz also comes with a very, very strong recommendation. As far as overall value, they might be the best bet for the cost-conscious consumer. How can one go wrong with a pizza that was second in taste, and first over all in price, size, and timeliness of delivery. In the immortal words of Kazakhstan’s Borat Sagdiyev, “I like!!!”.
One of my former college roommates once made the claim that there’s no such thing as “bad pizza”. If this experiment proves one thing, and one thing only: bad pizza can indeed be found. But good pizza….now that’s nothing short of happiness in a box; delivered right to your door, no less.
Chew on that!
T.S.G.
