Now the winner of the Rachael Ray pizza madness tournament has been revealed by the powers that be at the magazine (we had been sworn to secrecy before this), we are free to answer some of the questions that have been raised by some loyal Slice community members....
[Photograph, Robyn Lee; chart, Every Day with Rachael Ray] If the truly pizza-mad among you haven't picked up a copy of the March issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine (the one in which Ed Levine and I wrote an article bracketing out 64 pizzerias across the country), it's out on newsstands now. Additionally, the magazine's website has posted the online version here. What you might find in that issue: That the champion pizzeria is Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. The final four pizzerias were Pizzeria Mozza (LA), Motorino (NYC), Great Lake (Chicago), and Pizzeria Bianco. The bracket that...
Click me bigger! [Every Day with Rachael Ray] Some of you may have seen the stuff on the various Grub Street blogs, the Eater blogs, Village Voice/Fork in the Road, on the Chicago Tribune's Stew blog, in the New York Post, etc. The news that Rachael Ray has found the best pizza in the country. Yes and no. Every Day with Rachael Ray *magazine,* for the March issue, pegs a best-pizza-in-the-country story to college basketball's March Madness. The story will feature a 64-entrant mad-good-pizza bracket. I'm told that subscribers should be getting theirs as early as today; the issue...
From the mailbag: Adam,I now log into Slice every day and really enjoy it. When will you have the write-up and photos from Pizzeria Bianco up?--Rich S. [Photographs: Adam Kuban] OK. Bianco. Yeah. Sorry, Rich. I'm actually trying to juice the Slice traffic numbers by making you and the rest of the readers who have been following Pizza Madness 2009 check the site every day. ... Just kidding. I just got a bit behind with Thanksgiving and now the holidays and all that jazz. Now it is time to tell my tale. In mind-numbing dear-diary detail. For I wish to...
From the Slice inbox: "Waiting for your review of Mozza and Antica. Please get to it soon. Thanks. —Pizzafreak" OK. Here you go, Pizzafreak. My blathering about "Pizza Madness 2009" continues ... —The Mgmt. [Photographs: Adam Kuban] Until I touched down at LAX on Thursday, October 29, most of my knowledge of Los Angeles came from CHiPs, The Rockford Files, the Terminator franchise, and The Closer. I had a feeling I'd be in for a shock. It came pretty early. On the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and North Crescent (straight-up 90210 territory), I saw both a Bentley Continental ragtop...
And my documentation of Pizza Madness 2009 continues. Here, I'm just going to roll up my San Francisco leg into one post, since A) I had trouble getting photos in some of these darkened joints and B) this is where the Neapolitan pies really started to blur together. —The Mgmt. View Pizza Madness 2009, San Francisco Leg in a larger map As I said in an earlier post documenting "Pizza Madness 2009," I knew Seattle and San Francisco were going to kick my pizza-eating ass. I was well-prepared for San Francisco going in, since I've now visited the city a...
[Photograph: Adam Kuban] And so with Serious Pie, Tutta Bella, and Via Tribunali under my now-straining belt, I bid adieu to Jet City, but not before noticing that one of the magazines the hotel provided in the room was Seattle Metropolitan, from the same publisher as Portland Monthly. Both doing their annual food roundup issues. Both with pizza on the cover. Seattle's shows Serious Pie's Guanciale, Soft Egg, and Arugula pizza. Portland's, as I pointed out in my Nostrana report, highlights a pie coming from that pizzeria's oven but makes no mention of the pizza in the actual blurb...
[Photograph: Adam Kuban] There are five Via Tribunali locations in Seattle, each of them VPN-certified. I don't know what the other four look like (though I get a bit of an idea looking at the VT website), but the one in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, attached to the Crocodile, is dark, moody, and menacing, if only in a sort of pretend-menacing kind of way. In perhaps a nod to Mt. Vesuvius and the fire of the wood oven, there are ink-black and fiery-orange paintings of erupting volcanoes on the wall. The chandeliers hold glowing-red candelabra bulbs, their imitation flames flickering....
Click to view gallery » My second pizza stop in Seattle, after Serious Pie and some digestion time spent at the Space Needle, was the Tutta Bella on Westlake Avenue in the area known as South Lake Union. For fellow tourists, that's basically just a little north of—and a relatively easy walk from—Downtown, Belltown, and Pike Place Market. This Tutta Bella is part of a four-location VPN-certified mini empire; the original is in Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood. [Photographs: Adam Kuban] Tutta Bella Westlake: 2200 Westlake Avenue, Seattle WA 98121 (at 9th Avenue; map); 206-223-2309; tuttabella.com...
[Photograph: Adam Kuban] Serious Pie 316 Virginia Street, Seattle WA 98101 (map); 206-838-7388; website Pizza Style: Artisanal Oven Type: Wood-fired The Skinny: The crust is soft and incredibly airy but takes most of its crispness from a dusting of cornmeal. The Margherita is good, but the real thing to get here is the sausage-and-cherry-bomb-pepper pie. It's amazing. Price: $14 to $16. Happy hour half-pies are $5 M–F, 3–5 p.m. After 48 hours of reminiscing, hanging out with old friends, and eating a boatload of pizza in Portland, my next stop was Seattle, aka Jet City, aka the Emerald City,...
