Folks, I’m about the stir up the biggest controversy this newsletter has ever stoked.
But first, let’s take a look at Uno Chicago Grill’s e-mail program. I took my son there recently for a pizza to celebrate him earning his high blue belt in karate.
On the table there was a small pad of paper asking for customer e-mail addresses. A couple days after I supplied mine, an e-mail arrived in my inbox from Uno Chicago Grill with the subject line: “You’re in!”
The message offered me a free appetizer if I visited my local Uno Chicago Grill within a specified period of time. This is solid direct e-mail marketing. Ask for permission, acknowledge the new subscriber quickly, make an offer in the “thank you” e-mail and give it some urgency by putting an expiration date on it.
The only negative was Uno’s e-mail designers didn’t use ALT tags, so when the graphics failed to render, there was no text explaining the offer. I had to turn the graphics on to get the gist of the message.
On a positive note, Uno has sent me a series of e-mails since that are personalized to the location where I provided my e-mail address by using subject lines such as: “Free Offer at Uno Woodbury.”
Woodbury is the hamlet close to my home where the local Uno is. Putting Woodbury in the subject line is a sure way to catch my attention and remind me that Uno is not spamming me. Nice job, Uno Chicago Grill.
Now on to the controversy.
Speaking of pizza, there is an ongoing national debate over which city has the best pie. Chicagoans claim theirs is best. Bostonians say theirs is best. New Yorkers claim—as they do seemingly everything—that theirs is best. Then there’s the smaller group claiming that New Haven, CT has the best pie.
They are all pathetically misguided.
Let me say it flat out: Most New-York-City Pizza is a crime against humanity. With few exceptions, the stuff passed off as pizza there is for the most part tasteless, warmed over, damp cardboard.
There are some decent brick-oven joints in Manhattan—such as Lombardi’s—but brick-oven pizza should be placed in its own category.
And it’s not like I want New York City pizza to stink. I’ve lived in the area for more than 10 years and would love to find a place that rivals the pie of my childhood.
And as for Chicago deep-dish pizza, it’s OK, but who needs all that bread?
I’ve had Boston pizza, but frankly don’t remember it.
And New Haven pizza? It’s not bad, but nothing to write home about. Apparently a Forbes writer dubbed Frank Pepe Pizzeria in New Haven best in the land some years back and New Havenites have been wearing his proclamation like a badge of honor ever since.
In fact, Pepe’s and New York’s Lombardi’s also made Forbes’ most recent top-10 pizzeria list. Nothing in Boston made it.
And the true best pizzeria in America wasn’t mentioned either. What and where is it, you ask?
Why, Bocce Club pizza in Buffalo, N.Y., preferably a pie from the Clinton Street location.
However, that neighborhood is pretty rough. Bocce’s Clinton-Street pizzeria was targeted by armed robbers twice in one month last year alone, for example. Bocce’s other locations are also better than anything else in the country, so choosing a safer location to try its pizza is excusable.
Ex-Buffalonians—there are a lot of us—are so loyal to Bocce’s, the pizzeria will FedEx’s its pies half baked anywhere in the U.S.
When people from other cities claim their pizza is best, we just look at them pityingly and shake our heads knowing what poor, misguided souls they are.
When I first met my in-laws in New Haven, they made the mistake of bragging about Pepe’s. So on my next visit, I had a Bocce’s pizza FedExed to my mother-in-law’s bed and breakfast.
We ordered from Pepe’s, warmed up the Bocce’s pie and had a taste test with my wife’s family and my mother-in-law’s guests. Two-day-old, warmed over Bocce’s won hands down even among the New Havenites in the room.
What makes Bocce’s so great? For one, the sauce. And for another, the pepperoni. It’s thick, spicy, and it curls into little cups that hold the oil when it’s baked. The crust is great, too. It’s not overpoweringly thick as in Chicago and not paper-thin as in New York City.
And I’m not one of those homeys who says everything in the town where I grew up is better. It’s not.
But if Buffalo does one thing well, it’s junk food. This is the town that invented hot chicken wings, for Pete’s sake. In Buffalo, they’re not Buffalo wings. They’re just wings. And heck, average pizza in Buffalo is better than anything the rest of the country has to offer.
Whenever ex-Buffalonians go home, there is a series of things food-wise most attempt to do: Get some wings and a pizza—from anywhere will do compared to what they’ve had to suffer through where they currently live—get Ted’s hotdogs—also the best in the world, but an argument for another day—get a sub—John & Mary’s subs, particularly the ones offered at the Niagara Falls Boulevard location, put New York’s heroes to shame—get a Super Mighty at Mighty Taco—though my wife swears ex-Buffalonians love Mighty Taco more from 1970s, 2 a.m., curing-the-munchies memories than anything else, and I’m not entirely convinced she’s wrong—and get some Bison brand chip dip to take home.
Here is a link to a Web page featuring Bocce’s on Clinton, complete with a photo of one of its pizzas. Oh, and those rolls in the back of the shot? They’re kimmelweck rolls—Kaiser rolls topped with rock salt and caraway seeds for beef-on-weck sandwiches with gravy and fresh horseradish—another Buffalo original.
Man, I need to get home for a visit, and fast.
OK readers, your turn. Where is the best pizza in the country?
