Pizza!

Osterkraut wrote: The best pizza in the world is in downtown Gainesville... Oh, it's not especially good pizza, though. You are, however, stumbling out of a bar, still drunk, at 2 am, the guy's waiting right on the street-corner, and it's $6. Something about 5 Star Pizza...

I think this can be said about any mediocre pizza place in any college town. Hell, even Dominos is damn good after a brewski or 12

Aren't you like, 12?

Oh man, delicious 5-Star post-drunk walkin' pizza. It's great because if the last few slices aren' consumed they can be sold within minutes for a nice profit. "Hey bro you gonna eat those last two slices?" "No. $4 and they're yours."

I remember going to a similar place like 5 star in Geneseo and at Penn State.

At Penn State, I remember being in line for slices at 2 or 3 am and when I got up to the front the girl looks at me and goes.. "wait.. you're not that drunk".. "Let me go find some less burnt pizza"... and she did go find me some unburnt pizza. If it weren't for the fact that I was newly engaged, I would have proposed to that girl right then and there.

Osterkraut wrote: Aren't you like, 12?

No, my emotional maturity level is 13, my actual age is almost 19.

Wally wrote: Why would you expect to find pizza in St Louis.

Dude, Wally. All due respect, but step off.

a.) St. Louis style ribs refers to the cut of the rib, not the preparation. and,

b.) There's somebody in St. Louis that's plotting to make some badass, old-school, wood-fired pizza that may be among the best pizza you've stuffed in your gob.

Allow me to issue this ultimatum/invitation: any GRMer who comes through St. Louis when I'm making pizza (give me six months - gotta build the oven and such), gets a free pie, which is guaranteed to change your life.

Not to revert to hyperbole or anything, but still...

Hit me up. It'll be worth it.

St Louis could use your help. About ten years ago people were braging about a bar there and what I was served was more like open faced grilled cheese than a pizza. If I ever go back I'll have to look for you.
I did have good ribs at a couple places there.

Alex, I hope you're not referring to Imo's. Imo's pizza is so bad, truly the worst in the country. Many years ago we were in St Louis with a group of kids. Walking through the motel we saw tons of pizza boxes in the hallways all half full. If kids won't eat a pizza it really must suck.

Here in Ohio we have a couple exceptional pizza places. In Dayton, there is Rock-a-fellas. One of the owners is about 7 years out of NY where he learned the business from a friends family. The other, in Cincinnati, Italianette has been owned by the same family since 1965 and is very good.

Imo's - we used to call to Slimo's. It both sucks AND blows, and it's expensive, to boot! Worst of both worlds.

We lived in STL for 3 years a while ago. We flew out before moving to look for an apartment, and our first night in town, we figured we'd try the local foods instead of the chains.

So we grabbed a local weekender-type paper, and we saw that Imo's had won the "Best Pizza" award for the last couple of years - gotta be good, right?

Worst pizza I ever had in my life, bar none. And in equivalent 2008 dollars, it was about $25 for a large pie with a few toppings.

It wasn't Chicago Style, it wasn't New York Style, it was the worst of both - a thin round crust like a stale mazoh, cut in a random square pattern so most pieces were an inedible mess, and it had AMERICAN CHEESE on it. Having already paid too much, we looked at the fine print and saw that mozzarella was extra cost!. I was appalled. 20 years later I still remember just how awful that pizza was.

Couldn't get a decent hoagie there, either, until a Subway opened up.

Duke wrote: ... and it had AMERICAN CHEESE on it.

EWWWW!

Duke wrote: Couldn't get a decent hoagie there, either, until a Subway opened up.

Never been to the Hill, have you? I can't remember the name, but when I was in St. Louis for a week there was this amazing sandwich place my dad had recommended.

Duke wrote: It wasn't Chicago Style, it wasn't New York Style, it was the worst of both - a thin round crust like a stale mazoh, cut in a random square pattern so most pieces were an inedible mess, and it had AMERICAN CHEESE on it.

It was NOT American cheese. This would be an insult to American cheese, which I'm sure would acquit itself much better on a pizza than this. It is PROVEL "cheese", which is basically what it sounds like, IE, some sort of bastard synthetic processed cheese concoction that is roughly equivalent to a cross between low-quality Provolone and Velveeta, combining the worst aspects of both. When I lived in St. Louis I would get an Imo's pizza maybe once every 6 months just to remind myself how revolting it is. I was typically drunk when I did this.

There is decent pizza to be found in St. Louis, despite the blight on the American pizza landscape that is Imo's. Racanelli's on Delmar produces a passable NY style pie, Fortel's is also good, and There's this yuppie joint in Clayton where all the pizzas have fauxtalian names called Il Vicino that manages to redeem it's pretension by producing very good wood fired brick oven pizzas.

So Alex, tell more. Is this a home venture, or are you actually opening up a place? If I ever find myself in STL again, I'll have to look you up so we can talk bikes and Pizza :).

Worst pizza I ever had was in Baie-Comeau, Quebec. Also some of the most rude shiny happy persons I've even encountered, including my trips through the middle east.

Sam's Club sells a really large fresh made (not frozen) take-home cheese pizza for $5. It has real cheese and is quite good.

mtn wrote: Never been to the Hill, have you? I can't remember the name, but when I was in St. Louis for a week there was this amazing sandwich place my dad had recommended.

I'm sure over on The Hill there were decent places for a hoagie. A place called Charlie Gito's springs to mind.

However, we lived near St. Rock's, right around McCausland between Delmar and FPPW. The Hill was way too far to go for a hoagie, and there was no subshop on Delmar at that time at all. I remember going into a sandwich shop there and failing utterly to make them understand what a grinder was, and how I could possibly want such a thing.

I'm not trying to say Subway is great, but compared to what was available in U City / CWE, they were the closest. I gave up on hoagies for a couple of years and just stuck with regular sandwiches.

mtn wrote:

Duke wrote: Couldn't get a decent hoagie there, either, until a Subway opened up.

Never been to the Hill, have you? I can't remember the name, but when I was in St. Louis for a week there was this amazing sandwich place my dad had recommended.

Take your pick. Adriana's? Amighetti's? Gioia's? Southwest Market? Eovaldi's? Joe Fassi? Viviano's? Those are all in a one-mile radius.

Yeah, I work basically across the street from all of those places. Lunch time is pretty much the highlight of my day.

And about the pizza issue at hand: yes, Imo's sucks. But it's emblematic of 'St. Louis style' pizza, which one does tend to get nostalgic about occasionally. The best St. Louis style pizza, by the way, can be found at Milo's Bocce Garden, also on the Hill. It's even Mario Batali approved.

Anyway, the pizza I'll be making is nothing like that dreck. If you've never heard of Pizzaria Bianco, it's worth the pilgrimage to Arizona to experience it. It's that sort of wood-fired, hand made, minimally-topped, artisanal-type pizza that I'll be using to try to convince the locals here that Provel (tm) has no place on a self-respecting crust.

You Noo Yawkers need to seek out Anthony Mangieri's place, Una Pizza Napoletana. It's the real deal, made by a real obsessive.

I'm just glad I live in Philly... the food is the best you'll find

Never been to the Hill, have you? I can't remember the name, but when I was in St. Louis for a week there was this amazing sandwich place my dad had recommended.

The Hill has the best Italian food in the world!

Last summer I was there for work and every Italian restaurant was packed. They all told me up to 90 minutes to wait for a table on a weeknight. So I said I will order it "to go". 90 minutes.

I went to Sonic and hated the burger I ordered.

Cunettos FTW