Sciortino’s Trattoria and Pizzeria in Greenville, SC

The Facts:

Pizza: Sciortino’s Trattoria and Pizzeria

Business Category: Locally-owned

Website: https://www.facebook.com/Sciortinos-Trattoria-Pizzeria-123512401005238/

Location: 3734 Pelham Rd. in Greenville, SC (just west of I-85, exit 54)

Date of Review Visit: October 11, 2016

What I Ordered: 12” Neapolitan pizza with sausage and pepperoni; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $14.53 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

The Micro:

Crust: Founded by an immigrant who moved to South Carolina from New York, Sciortino’s offers two crust styles: Sicilian thick crust square pizzas and Neapolitan thinner crust round pizzas.  I would normally choose the thick crust option, but the Sicilian crust is only offered in one size (16”), which is too large for just me.  Therefore, I chose the 12” Neapolitan option.  The crust is not ultra-thin, but it is nice and crispy.  The pizza has a heavy garlic taste.  I spent a long time trying to decide whether the garlic taste was due to garlic in the sauce or a garlic-laced solution brushed on the crust.  I finally decided it was both, which leads to a small deduction for an otherwise quite good crust.  Score: 9/10.

Sauce: As you would expect for a New York style pizza, the pizza has only a little sauce.  I already mentioned the garlicky taste.  Some people may like the garlic, but it does not suit my taste preferences.  Score: 9/10.

Cheese: This pizza has 100% mozzarella cheese, which means the cheese has very little flavor.  The cheese appears in good quantity and produces very little grease, so those are plusses.  Sprinkling on some parmesan helps on the flavor side.  Score: 7/10.

Toppings: The sausage is slightly spicy but not overwhelmingly so, and the same can be said about the pepperoni.  Both toppings appear in excellent quantity.  Score: 10/10.

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The toppings dominate the pizza’s appearance, which is excellent.  The dining atmosphere is upscale casual with more refinement than a typical strip mall pizza place.  Sciortino’s also serves free garlic knots as a pre-meal appetizer that tastes almost as good as the pizza crust.  The service is prompt and attentive.  Score: 10/10.

Value: The price is higher than average, but the pizza is good quality.  Also, this pizza is huge: it easily feeds 2 normal-sized people or 1 of me.  Thus, the value is not as bad as you might think.  Score: 7/10.

Taste: The garlic really overpowers everything else.  If you like the taste of garlic, you will like the taste of this pizza.  I very much don’t like the taste of garlic, so I don’t like the taste of this pizza.  Score: 15/20.

The Final Judgment:

Sciortino’s offers a touch of class for a reasonable price.  I can see why some people think this pizza restaurant is top-of-the-line.  By my reckoning, it is very good but not quite elite.  Score: 67/80.

Uno Pizzeria and Grill

The Facts:

Pizza: Uno Pizzeria and Grill

Business Category: National Chain

Website: http://www.unos.com/

Location: 5304 Sunset Blvd. in Lexington, SC (3.5 miles west of I-20, exit 61)

Date of Review Visit: September 25, 2016

What I Ordered: individual (7”) deep dish pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and extra cheese; Dr. Pepper to drink

Price: $15.57 (includes drink and tax but not tip)

The Micro:

Crust: After almost 4 years of keeping this pizza blog, I finally made it Uno’s, the original and most famous entry in my favorite pizza category: deep dish Chicago pizza.  The pizza is only 7 inches across, but the crust is nearly 1 inch thick.  My crust was nice and crispy on the outside but chewy on the inside and baked to perfection.  Score: 10/10.

Sauce: The sauce is Uno’s signature ingredient: it comes with huge chunks of tomatoes spread over the top of the cheese and toppings.  I don’t like chunks of anything in my sauce, not even tomatoes.  Thus, I went with a minor deduction here even though the tomato chunks are actually quite juicy and tasty.  Score: 9/10.

Cheese: My pizza had plenty of cheese, possibly because I ordered extra cheese as one of my toppings.  (Side note: their “create your own” pizza comes with three toppings, so my usual diet of sausage and pepperoni pizzas did not fit until I added the extra cheese as my third topping.)  The cheese tasted like pure mozzarella, and the little extra grease it produced led to another minor deduction.  Sprinkling on some parmesan helped the bland mozzarella taste.  Score: 9/10.

Toppings: Attention all pizza makers: these crumbled up chunks of sausage have the taste many of you are trying but largely failing to imitate.  The pepperoni is nice and filling too.  Score: 10/10.

The Macro:

Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza looks like the classic Chicago-style deep dish pizza that it is, and the dining room has a nice casual dining atmosphere with pictures from Chicago on the walls.  The service was prompt and friendly.  Score: 10/10.

Value: This pizza’s price is the most I have ever paid for an individual sized pizza, so if this criterion were price I would be looking at a very low score.  Fortunately for Uno’s, this metric is value, not price, so the super-high quality helps a lot.  Uno’s does not make bargain basement value pizza, but it scores better than you would expect for a pizza of this price.  Score: 5/10.

Taste: This is the classic robust Chicago-style pizza taste everyone else is trying to copy.  There is no such thing as a perfect tasting pizza, but Uno’s is close enough to earn, for the first time ever from me....  Score: 20/20.

The Final Judgment:

Everyone should eat at Uno’s at least once.  I may not become a regular due to the price and lack of locations in my area, but I would come often if there was an Uno’s in upstate South Carolina.  Score: 73/80.