Tag: Pizza: A Slice of Heaven

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Pizzeria Bianco – Phoenix, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

To celebrate the 100 year anniversary of pizza in America, Ed Levine, the creator/founder of Serious Eats,  ate nothing but pizza for an entire twelve month period, taking a representative pulse of the best from among thousands of pizza purveyors. His terrific tome, Pizza A Slice of Heaven, published in 2005,  provides a definitive guide to a much-loved product that in its elemental form is simplicity itself–bread, cheese and whatever toppings a pizzaioli artisan might care to add. To the surprise of many, Levine declared the best pizza in America (and the world, for that matter) to be made in the unlikely town of Phoenix, Arizona where the intensely brilliant Chris Bianco plies his trade as no other. Before a business…

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Grimaldi’s Pizzeria – Scottsdale, Arizona

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

I don’t often refer to myself as a “restaurant critic” or “restaurant reviewer.” My preferred gloss is “observer and essayer on the culinary condition.”   Yep, that’s a high falutin bit of ego-stroking, but it’s accurate.  One of the things I’ve observed during frequent trips to the Phoenix area–both while employed at Intel and while snowbirding over the Christmas and Festivus holidays–is that middling quality chain restaurants tend to find a home in the Valley of the Sun an year or two before figuring out they would be smash successes in Albuquerque. Another salient obseration is that some pretty highly regarded East Coast and Midwest restaurants and chefs don’t like the cold either…or maybe they’re following the exodus of snowbirds…