Category: Pizza

Closed in 2012Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizza

Sandia Crust Pizza Company – Cedar Crest, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:16 AM

Deadheads and pizza have been inextricably tied since 1993 when (legend has it) an audacious pizza delivery boy absconded with several cassette tapes from Jerry Garcia’s kitchen counter.  It didn’t take long before late-night Grateful Dead radio programs around the country were playing second- and third-generation “dubs” of the rough mixes that have come to be known as “The Pizza Tapes.” The Pizza tapes featured the collaboration of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, mandolinist David Grisman and guitarist Tony Rice, all legendary figures in the music world.  The 12-song improvisation gives every indication that the session was warm, intimate and replete with the joyful spontaneity and rapport of friends not used to playing together but having a genuinely good time nonetheless. In 2000 the Pizza Tapes were released as an album with all its warts and blemishes (talking between musicians, false starts and mistakes).  Alisa Young, who hardly looks old enough to have been born in the 70s (much less the 60s), saw her first Grateful Dead concert in 1978.  Today Sandia Crust, the restaurant she and her husband Jamie, launched in December, 2005 celebrates the Grateful Dead and both the unique music and culture (or counterculture depending on your…

Closed in 2026Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizzaRating: ExcellentSanta Fe

Pizzeria Espiritu – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:59 PM

The name Pizzeria Espiritu reflects the deep-seeded faith of its founder and owner Tom Berkes, the liturgy and music director at St. Joseph’s Church in Cerrillos since 1990. A liturgical music composer, Berkes plays guitar, piano and harmonica for the small Catholic parish on the Turquoise Trail. Berkes is probably more well known for the fun and festive pizzeria he and songstress Jewel Sato founded in 1997, a restaurant which has garnered recognition as one of America’s Hot 100 Independents by Pizza Today Magazine, a respected trade publication. A self-professed Renaissance Man, it is Berkes’ goal to create a fun atmosphere where people can come in and enjoy themselves while they partake of good food. To that end, he has created a beautiful space which, aside from the frontage’s stucco exterior, is so un-Santa Fe-like. In its exterior, Pizzeria Espiritu looks more like a restaurant you’d find in a larger, more cosmopolitan city, maybe even a city in Italy. The centerpiece, a fourteen foot original oil painting by artist Gary Larson, hangs not on one of the restaurant’s walls but on the ceiling. That painting is based on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine…

Closed in 2020Gone But Not ForgottenNew MexicoPizzaRio Rancho

Sal-E-Boy’s Pizzeria – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno3:11 AM

For decades Rio Rancho has been called “Little New York” and indeed, for decades New Yorkers made up a large percentage of the population. It wasn’t the proverbial “swamp land in Florida” marketing scheme that brought sophisticated New Yorkers to the barren western wasteland that was Rio Rancho. It was the promise of sunshine and outdoor activities in a bustling, vibrant community that attracted them. It should stand to reason therefore that there would be at least one pizzeria in Rio Rancho that would serve real (or as real as you could possibly get in the Land of Enchantment) New York style pizza.  Frankly, considering the differences in water quality (reputed to be the secret ingredient in authentic New York style pizza) and availability of ingredients between this desert hamlet and America’s most burgeoning megalopolis, skeptics will argue that you’ll never find authentic New York style pizza. Sal-E-Boy’s is perhaps as close as you’ll find in the Albuquerque areas, and unlike some local pretenders to the New York legacy, they do it without modifying their water filtration system! The walls of this strictly take-out pizzeria are adorned with memorabilia from the big apple–from a map of the New York City…

IllinoisPizzaRating: Very GoodUnited States

Gino’s East of Chicago – Lake Zurich, Illinois

Gil Garduno2:10 PM

Ostensibly no one knows more about a city’s best dining destinations than the taxi drivers who ferry famished fares there…or at least, that’s the theory. The original Gino’s East was founded in 1966 by taxi drivers who lured away the pizza chef at Chicago’s Pizzeria Uno and started their own pizzeria. Gino’s East now relies on those taxi drivers for those precious and essential word of mouth referrals when passengers inquire as to the best pizzeria in a city of outstanding pizzerias. Once a year, the original Gino’s East rewards cabbies for those referrals by giving them a free personal pan pizza. That’s just a little bit of marketing genius, but in a blue collar city, slick marketing isn’t good enough; you’ve also got to make a blue collar pizza–a thick, hearty pizza with a generous application of traditional ingredients. The fru-fru pizzas they serve in California with their line-up of sushi, avocado and celery genre ingredients just don’t cut it. With a deep dish pizza that just may be the city’s best, Gino’s East has branched out in recent years and can now be found in the burbs, including the northwestern village of Lake Zurich. There’s no graffiti on…