Today's post is dedicated to Mrs. Poaches, who really couldn't have been more wrong.
Here's my trophy shot, slices of New York and Chicago on the same plate.
On the left we have Rocco's, the only NYC pie I could find that ships overnight. They only ship cheese pies, so that's my green pepper and Boar's Head pepperoni. On the right we have Giordano's "Chicago special" stuffed pizza, with mushrooms, green
peppers, onions and pepperoni.
Rocco's was good, not great, and only a fair representative of random pizza in NYC. It certainly has the consistency and proportions down; the slices were foldable and red grease dribbled down my wrist. Heaven. My only knock was with the blandness and general dryness of the crust. This was probably due to half-assed packing. The pie arrives mildly chilled, not frozen, stuffed into a ziplock bag and tossed into an envelope with a cube of dry ice.
Giordano's by contrast, is a slick operation. Their 22 pounds of pies arrived frozen solid, packed in custom styrofoam coolers lined with dry ice. I think it makes a difference. Their flakey, pie-like crusts were pretty much exactly like in Chicago. Why Giordano's thinks 20 minutes at 425 will thaw the center of the pie, I do not know, but an additional 20 minutes with foil covering the crust did the trick.
As for the pies themselves, it was really no contest, but not in the way I expected. I generally prefer NYC thin crust. Chicago stuffed is like an Italian casserole baked in a flaky pie crust, which is like the best idea ever but it's not what I think of as pizza. That said, I can't imagine ordering Rocco's again. If I came upon them in NYC, I would just keep walking and take my chances with the next establishment. Perhaps I'm being unfair; perhaps that goofy ziplock bag sabotaged their crust. But you know what? At $110 for four 12" cheese pizzas, that's hardly my fault.
So, Giordano's is the winner by TKO. C'mon, New York. Get your shit together and ship me a contender.