Wow, where does the time go?! I haven’t posted any reviews in 12 years. The Syracuse and Central NY pizza scene has changed a LOT in that time. I think I’ve also learned a few things since then.
For now, I’m going to leave all the old reviews in place, even though many of them have closed or changed ownership and/or names. As time permits, I’ll go back through the old reviews and sort things out. Eventually we’ll have an archive section for the old reviews, and a fresh new section for the new reviews. Please be patient – it will take some time to work back through all the old content and get it organized/updated, and fix broken links.
My goal is to start doing regular reviews again, but to do them in a more thoughtful and thorough manner. Many of the reviews from 12 years ago were based on single visits, based on slices. Well, even a really great pizzeria can have a bad slice day, and they deserve reviews that accurately represent their product. I’m thinking maybe 2 or 3 visits will be required before a review is posted, with fresh whole made-to-order pizza(s) on at least one of those visits. When possible, I’ll bring along some friends.
As before, these will be anonymous reviews. No pizza shop should know when they are being reviewed. I should get the same treatment as every other customer. You’re probably aware of some “sports” guy on YouTube that walks out of a pizza shop, holding the pizza box. He blabs about nothing in particular for a bit, then takes a bite or two and immediately conjures up a rating (What are the rules, exactly? That part makes no sense.)
Those reviews are useless. “Good football pizza.” Yeah, that tells me NOTHING. His reviews are more about promoting the reviewer and getting clicks than they are about finding great pizza. People want INFORMATION they can use! I’m no expert, but I can certainly go into great detail about what I do and don’t like, and exactly WHY. And even if I don’t like it, hopefully the way I describe it will help you make your own judgement about whether YOU would like it. At the very least, we can get some good conversation going!
Another improvement I’ve thought about for a long time is to create a very geeky system for scoring that takes all sorts of criteria into account, and produces a numeric score that can be meaningfully compared between pizza shops. We’ll take into account the finer points of crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, and the general character of the shop itself.
Finally, I’ve decided to steer clear of lower-tier pizza shops, and initially focus on those that already have some good street cred. Convenience stores, national chains and the like will be bypassed unless there is some compelling reason to mention them. This time around, the Pizza Geek will be more about QUALITY reviews than about the QUANTITY of reviews.
I’ll get to work on my pizza rating algorithm, and be back here with a new review before the end of 2023.
What do you think? Where should I begin? What’s your favorite pizza shop, and why?
The Syracuse Pizza Geek 