A Quick Word on Philly Pizza

The Philadel­phia piz­za scene is hor­ri­ble. I know Doug Wallen ded­i­cat­ed a small part of his life to assess­ing the Philly piz­za cul­ture and I’m sor­ry to not have tak­en part. I have, how­ev­er, sam­pled more than my fair share of piz­za and, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, nev­er favored any par­tic­u­lar spot just out of dumb neigh­bor­hood loyalty.

Part of the prob­lem is that peo­ple will set­tle for bad piz­za. I would not. I tried piz­zas all over town in a quest to find some­thing I could hon­est­ly endorse with­out reser­va­tion. It was impos­si­ble. Peo­ple would rec­om­mend their favorite spots and I’d bring a pie home only to dis­cov­er their favorite was­n’t up to snuff.

Helen and I had been feast­ing on Gian­fran­co’s piz­za, which I would pick up down at 3rd and Mar­ket. It was­n’t bad and was a far cry bet­ter than most of the deliv­ery spots that serve Port Fish­ing­ton. (I’m sor­ry Rus­ti­ca, but your piz­zas are all too smoky and sog­gy for my per­son­al taste. San­tuc­ci’s isn’t bad, actu­al­ly, but out­side the deliv­ery range.)

We decid­ed enough was a enough and dri­ving that dis­tance for piz­za was just sil­ly. We searched the neigh­bor­hood for some­thing decent, but Cas­sizzi’s was­n’t cut­ting it. We final­ly had to break down and take the nuclear option: call­ing ahead for pick­up at Tac­conel­li’s.

I’ve put this off for some time. We know it by rep­u­ta­tion and had even tried it a cou­ple times, but weren’t so blown away that it seemed worth plac­ing a piz­za order at 11 a.m. Piz­za is a spon­ta­neous dinner!

Well, after two con­sec­u­tive nights of Tac­conel­li’s piz­za, I can safe­ly say we’ve been con­vert­ed. It’s worth the has­sle, espe­cial­ly if you live with­in five min­utes dri­ve of Tac­conel­li’s like we do. We’re no longer piz­za nomads, wan­der­ing Philly’s desert.