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Pizza is as American as apple pie. That is to say, it is a dish that immigrated to America, became domesticated, and evolved to meet our tastes and use our ingredients. The first pizza place in the United States, Lombardi’s, on Spring Street in New York’s Little Italy, opened in 1905. Among Lombardi’s innovations was the slice: Instead of buying an entire pie, you could buy a wedge. Pizza is quintessentially a street food: a quick lunch or a quick snack often eaten standing up or on the go. Thomas Edison invented waxed paper, providing the folded sheet on which your slice is typically served in New York.

One of the foods I mourned when I left New York was a good slice of pizza. Outside the city, Greek-style pizza seemed to predominate, featuring a thicker crust, cooked in a round pan with short sides, and cut with a massive two-handled knife, sometimes into squares which created a plaid effect, but rendered the inner slices too floppy to eat and the outer slices devoid of toppings. In the mid-1980s, Dicarlo’s in Amherst was one of the first places to offer slices of good, Italian-style pizza and I had lunch there once a week until it expanded into a restaurant and folded.

After Antonio’s opened in Amherst and Pinocchio’s opened in Northampton, slice pizza went psychedelic, locally. Instead of simple cheese or pepperoni, these shops offered 20 kinds with toppings too numerous to list. Antonio’s appeal can be summed up by this online comment by Natasha B.: “Who knew a NYer like me could enjoy something as unholy as buffalo chicken pizza?”

RECENTLY I decided to survey some local pizza places to find the slice I liked best. Full disclosure: My tastes run to a thin, floppy crust, cheese served so hot that it’s molten, and enough oil on the surface to need blotting. I limited the choice to cheese-only to level the playing field. My dream of trying every pizza restaurant in the Pioneer Valley quickly fell apart, but I visited all the places I could manage to get to. Mary Nelen, who writes the Valley Locavore blog (www.valleylocavore.blogspot.com), consented to put aside her determination to eat only foods grown within 100 miles and accompanied me on the quest.

We started at PRIMO ONE in Hadley (103 Russell St.). I have always liked its pizza and Fonzi, the manager, is used to my requests for “really hot.” The crust was crispy, and the top was soft and moist where it blended with the tomato sauce. The cheese was hot and runny and had dots of oil on it. Mary agreed that the pizza was pretty good. The slice was $2.

Next, we moved to Northampton. First stop was SAM’S (235 Main St.), a new place that has sprung up in the former Bart’s and Quiznos. The slices arrived hot, but slightly burnt at the edges. The cheese had the requisite oil dots, but was blander than the others we tried. The sauce was sweeter. The crust separated into two layers, a crisp bottom with a lot of cornmeal (used to help slide the pie into and out of the oven) and a breadier top bonded to the cheese and sauce. It was $3 per slice.

PINOCCHIO’S (122 Main St.) has a full range of multi-ingredient pizzas, but the simplest choice, plain cheese at $2.10, was a keeper. Oil glistened on the cheese, which had the best flavor of any I sampled. The sauce was great, with marinara-like flavor. The crust was thin and crisp, and the cheese flowed up and over the folded slice as I munched. Thoroughly satisfying.

The next day, I tried two more Northampton pizza places. LUNA (88 Pleasant St.) offered a cheese slice at $2.49 that was what I think of as designer-style pizza # pies that feature nontraditional ingredients. The crust was thinner and crispier and there was a lot of sweet tomato sauce. Good cheese, and oil dotting the surface, but not as much of it.

MIMMO’S PIZZA (71 Pleasant St.) has the largest slice you will find anywhere (and the biggest crowds we encountered). At $2.89, my wedge was easily a sixth of a large pie. It had a thin crust, and was not overly crisp. It was also hot enough to be dangerous to eat, especially given its size and the amount of melted cheese. But the generous size also meant that the crust got breadier the closer it got to the edge. Mimmo’s left me wondering: How can they offer that much pizza at that price?

I hadn’t eaten at ANTONIO’S in Amherst (31 N. Pleasant St.) for a long time since the pizza was never served hot enough for my liking. Instead, I usually get slices to go and heat them on a pizza stone in the oven at home. So I was pleased when my pizza arrived with the cheese nicely melted. The slice had a crisp crust, and not a lot of the cornmeal I remembered from past visits; the sauce had good tomato flavor and was a trifle acidic. The cheese was blander than Pinocchio’s and the crust got thicker as it reached the edge, but overall the slice was much better than I was expecting. It was $2.

Mary recommended HILLSIDE PIZZA in South Deerfield (265 Greenfield Road) as the final stop, and raved about their butternut squash pizza. Politely, I put aside my immediate reaction (Yucch! Butternut squash on a pizza?), and met her there for lunch. The all-organic, cheese-only slice ($2.50) arrived hot, but the crust was breadier than I wanted and there was a touch too much oregano in the sauce. The butternut squash, red onion and asiago-almond pesto ($3) was the only non-cheese pizza I ate on this expedition. The boys from 149th Street are no doubt chortling about my defection, but the slice was surprisingly good.

Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, November 7, 2008

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Pioneer Valley Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.