Brattleboro Village Pizza in Brattleboro, VT

The Facts:

Pizza: Brattleboro Village Pizza

Business Category: Locally-owned

Website: http://www.villagepizzaexit3.com/

Location: 1155 Putney Rd. in Brattleboro, VT (at I-91, exit 3, 3^rd exit from the traffic circle)

Date of Review Visit: August 3, 2015

What I Ordered: Small (10”) pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and Canadian bacon

Price: $11.83 (includes tax but not drink)

The Micro:

Crust: I was looking for some traditional northern-style pan pizza on my recent trip to New England, and Brattleboro Village Pizza did not disappoint.  The crust is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside; it is about 1” thick around edge and just thick enough underneath.  My pizza was baked perfectly.  Magnifico!  Score: 10/10.

Sauce: The sauce appears in good quantity, and it has a very sweet taste, even sweeter than Papa Johns.  I have only written that last phrase about one previous pizza. My opinion is that tomato sauce should taste like tomatoes, not a bag of sugar.  Nevertheless, this sauce is pretty good for the style it is.  Score: 9/10.

Cheese: The cheese appears in good quantity, and it produces some but not lots of grease.  The taste gets lost in the sweetness of the sauce, so the cheese has no discernible flavor.  Score: 8/10.

Toppings: The sausage has just the right amount of spiciness.  The pepperoni comes in nice thick slices.  The Canadian bacon is very sweet; it tastes like it is glazed in brown sugar or honey.  All toppings appear in good quantity.  Overall, these toppings really hit the mark.  Score: 10/10.

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza’s appearance was excellent.  The lady serving me could enter my order faster than I could place it; that’s impressive and a first for me.  The dining atmosphere is purely functional, making for the only slight deduction on this criterion.  Score: 9/10.

Value: Brattleboro Village Pizza uses an odd pricing structure for their toppings.  For a small pizza, the 1^st topping costs $1.15, while each topping thereafter costs only $0.25.  This pricing encourages you to pile on the toppings.  There’s also Vermont’s confiscatory 10% restaurant tax.  Outsiders don’t call this place the People’s Republic of Vermont for no reason.  Overall, the high price ensures that this pizza is not great value, but it scores better than you might expect due to the excellent quality.  Score: 5/10.

Taste: As you can guess from the comments above, the sweetness of the sauce and the Canadian bacon overpowers everything else.   I prefer sweet to spicy, so this is a pretty good tasting pizza on my palette.  Score: 18/20.

The Final Judgment:

Brattleboro Village Pizza makes very good pizza if you don’t mind the sweetness.  I don’t mind the sweetness, and therefore I give it high marks.  Score: 69/80.

New York Pizza and Pasta in Anderson, SC

The Facts:

Pizza: New York Pizza and Pasta

Business Category: Locally-owned

Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/New-York-Pizza-and-Pasta/106642760880

Location: 194 Civic Center Blvd. in Anderson, SC (in a small strip mall between Tractor Supply and AmStar Cinema)

Date of Review Visit: July 25, 2015

What I Ordered: Large (16”) pizza with sausage and pepperoni

Price: $16.88 (includes tax but not drink)

The Micro:

Crust: True to the New York in its name, the crust offered by New York Pizza and Pasta is thick on the edge but thin underneath.  The crust has a fresh bready taste, but the crust’s texture on my pizza was problematic because my pizza was slightly overbaked.  Thus, the crust had a tough cardboard-like texture (not a cardboard taste, mind you).  This crust is not bad, but I’ve had better.  Score: 5/10.

Sauce: Again true to its New York billing, this pizza does not have much sauce.  What sauce does exist has a thick consistency with a fresh tomato-y taste.  Score: 8/10.

Cheese: While the cheese appears in great quantity, it also produces above average grease.  Thus, while this cheese blend has a tasty flavor, the grease is a red flag and a mandatory deduction.  Score: 8/10.

Toppings: I actually didn’t like the taste of the toppings much at first, but the more I ate the more I liked them.  The pepperoni has nice thickness and some but not overwhelming spiciness.  The sausage has just the right balance between spice and pork taste.  The toppings appear in good quantity except for 1 slice that had no sausage.  Score: 9/10.

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The New York style crust and crumbled sausage give the pizza a typical New York style appearance.  The picture on the box appears very low resolution and grainy.  I don’t usually comment on the box, but the picture quality was especially awful in this case.  The dining room seemed to be small and functional with some nice large TV’s.  Communication with my server was a little awkward (odd greeting and seldom takes carryout orders it seemed), but the service was not bad all things considered.  Score: 7/10.

Value: The price is higher than average, but this is a 16” pizza, not the usual 14” pizza the national chains call a large.  The quality is also pretty good, so the price/quality value ratio grades out better than you might initially think.  Giant and super-giant pizza sizes of 20” and 28” respectively potentially help on the price side too.  Score: 7/10.

Taste: The toppings greatly improve what is otherwise a slightly above average tasting pizza.  Score: 16/20.

The Final Judgment:

New York Pizza and Pasta is not quite the best pizza in Anderson (see DiVinci’s or Mellow Mushroom for that), but it is pretty good.  This restaurant deserves a spot in your pizza rotation.  Score: 60/80.