#headcook

So your boss decides that it’s a fun idea to make a contest for booze whom can make better Thai bites which is unfair when more then half the staff dont even know how to do them. So she is making my life harder by having to train everyone just on this one thing so they can join after her realizing 3 weeks into the contest how stupid it is.

"These fools!  We keep conspiring to make the worst pizza imaginable, and they keep right on buying it."  This is the conversation I envision occurring at the bi-monthly West Philly Pizzeria Owners meeting.   "We take the mediocre and make it worse, we get cheap cheese and undercook it, we make shitty dough and burn it, we REFUSE to stock Pepsi, and these people just keep on ordering our pizza.  They deserve what they get for being so damn stupid."

("This may be the worst we can do.  But we must keep trying harder.")

They're right, these members of the WPPO who are meeting in my brain.  We do get what we deserve for daring to dream that, living just a few short miles from South Philly, we may ever be able to eat a palatable pizza in our own neighborhood.   We are buffoons for believing that it could be possible for one intrepid explorer, one brave pizzeria-opening entrepreneur, to walk past the pizza-inhospitable streets of 19143, across the Grays Ferry Bridge, and down Washington Avenue into South Philly to ask any random Italian standing on the street how to make a decent pie.   Any Italian, I tell you, of any age, could tell the WPPO how to make a better pie.

Any small child could tell you this about pizza: "You take cheese and tomato sauce and put it on some dough and bake it, but not for too long."  ANY SMALL CHILD COULD TELL YOU THIS.  Would that child suggest, "Make a pesto pizza and then put a ladle full of red sauce on top of the cheese"?  No.  Would her preschool buddies think it made sense to "add lemon into the tomato sauce"?  Obviously not.   Would that child’s younger sibling think it a good idea to "make the sauce taste more like chemicals"?  Doubtful.  Would it kill a member of the WPPO to hire a small child as a consultant to walk them through how to make a decent pizza?  YOU COULD PAY THEM IN CANDY BARS GODDAMMITT.

But I digress.   Back in January, I realized that several new pizzerias had opened in West Philly.  I invited friends over to try them out, along with an old pizzeria we'd never tried before., in a West Philly Pizza Off.    To quote my invitation, "Please join me in ranking the pizza newbies in West Philly, to see if they can live up to their geographical predecessors in serving 'Philly's most unpalatable pizza.'"   A group of intrepid pizza explorers braved the cold night to join me in the warm glow of pizza anticipation. 

Where to even start?  We spent 4 hours and over $100 trying out pizza.  Pizza that was often inedible and was, at its best, "alright."  At its worst, the pizza felt as though it was ridiculing us for daring to consider ourselves worthy of eating a good slice of pizza.

It seems pointless to wander through a detailed rating system for each.  I will instead present you with this, a brief rundown of what we saw.  I can share with you that we wound up putting on the curb an assortment of slices totaling 2 1/2 uneaten pizzas.  (Don't worry, our less-discriminating intrepid pizza explorer friends picked them up after midnight and feasted on them).  I NEVER have experienced having unwanted pizza in this manner.  Never.  Sigh.

Despite the poor quality of the eats, we managed to enjoy ourselves.  My friend remarked before leaving, “I’ve never had so much fun eating bad food.” 

Head Cook:  After the votes were tabulated, Head Cook came in with the most votes for best pizza out of the four.  Comments included such high praises as “Decent;” “Pretty ok;” “Not bad”.  Sigh.  West Philly, why can’t you get your pizza act together??

Penn Pizza:  Penn Pizza came in a close second for the best pizza.  I actually voted it number one.  I would order from here again, which would make it the one and only pizzeria I’d order from in West Philly.  My notes read “salty” and “cheesey as fuck” -- both pluses in my book, but some folks thought it was overkill. 

Wise Guys:  Wise Guys was not voted the worst, but that’s more of a testament to how bad New Style’s pizza was rather than Wise Guys having a decent pie.  Trust me, it was freaking terrible.   We got a pesto pizza from here along with a plain.  It had pesto sauce covered in cheese and then with red sauce smeared all over top of the whole thing.  What?  We figured there was a mistake and called, but were assured by the owner this is the way their pesto pie is made.  He also told us the pesto is homemade; if that’s true, they are doing something really, really wrong.  Comments on their plain pie included “Tastes like feet” “The crust is the worst and I just don’t understand it;” and “Go blow yourselves.”

(please note the world's worst butter sauce accompanying the pizza.)

New Style:  This place was far and away the loser.  Dear lord.  I am not lying when I say two people independently wrote on their scorecards about this place “Fuck you.”  Other folks said the sauce tasted like “wiper fluid and lemons” and was “acidic as fuck and hurt my throat.”   “Everything about this pizza is wrong.”  “Grossest ever.”