Another "Best Pizza" ranking
Please lord stop all the pizza ranking, you're tearing the city apart. Plus a review of Caliente in Acrisure Field.
Eventually every pizza shop in the city of Pittsburgh will be declared the best pizza shop in a cosmic pizza singularity. Just as our DNA teaches our body how to breathe, grow and learn it also drives us rank and argue about pizza shops in Pittsburgh.
City Paper has released their reader polls of the best items in Pittsburgh. There’s about a zillion categories that cover every activity in Pittsburgh. You can’t walk down a block without tripping over a city paper winner - best crossing guard, best stop light, best pothole, where does it end?
The city paper award empowers you, the Pittsburgh resident, to vote on what’s the best version of anything in Pittsburgh. So who won the best pizza category? Here they are:
Fiori’s
Mineo’s
Iron Born
Iron born is a welcome sight to a top pizza list. Pete is creating decadent, juicy, crispy pizzas that will destroy any appetite. Iron Born is a pizza squarely made to appeal to Pittsburghers so I’m not surprised it made the list.
Hal and I spoke about the power of nostalgia when it comes to ranking pizza, an insanely subjective and personal exercise. As personal as quietly praying to god to confess your greatest sins.
Nostalgia very clearly plays a big part in city paper voting. Fiori’s and Mineo’s are different side of the same coin, depending on your region or relationship to pizza these could be what you were told to worship as a kid. This kind of pizza dogma runs rampant across the steel city as we are taught very early to respect the local pizza institutions.
There’s obviously a ton of amazing pizza out there that will get their due in time. As more visitors are exposed to different pizzas and step out of their comfort zone, whether it’s through this newsletter or brave pizza journalist like Hal, Mineos will soon be replaced by a more modern option.
Caliente Nourishes Your Football Hunger
Is there a reason to go to a sporting event in person anymore? Late-season football is frigid, expensive and uncomfortable. Beers are freezing and you are stuck drinking a booze slushy. You are locked into one view of the game and the view of ants playing football pales in comparison to the HD guys on your OLED screen. I guess there are a lot more high-fives happening in the stands, but you’re paying a heck of a premium to slap a stranger’s hands.
If you leave the comfort of your home to find yourself in Acrisure field you’ll be pleased to see a familiar pizza face near the end zone concessions: Caliente.
Caliente has spread across the Pittsburgh region like a ball of pizza dough slowly rising in the walk-in refrigerator. It was only a matter of time before landing inside a large sports venue.
So how is it? As I wrote before, their options are incredibly limited. There’s no access to their inventory of specialty pizzas and toppings are limited to plain, pepperoni or sausage and pepperoni. Already you’re not getting the real Caliente experience.
$10 gets you a square of pizza cut in half. It’s actually pretty sizable, but any adult can crush two orders of this. The dough is incredibly spongy as if it was engineered to soak up a tailgate’s worth of beer in your belly. It taste basic, but as far as stadium pizza goes this might be the best I’ve had outside of Slice On Broadway
It’s unfair to compare this pizza to food outside of Acrisure Field. You would never be in a situation where this and Badamo’s would be an option. You are deciding between a $10 sponge of pizza versus a hotdog. It’s a whole other dimension of flavors and quality, the outside world ceases to exist. Food here is rated on a completely different scale, it only has to be slightly better option than other stadium food.
And it gets the job done. Mark and I walked down to Caliente a few minutes before halftime (and missed three touch downs, it was a very long walk) and it was the nourishment we needed to carry us through the rest of the Pitt / Tennessee game. I’ve had terrible stadium pizza and this was decent by stadium food standards.
Slice On Broadway is Expanding!
Quick update I stole from the Slice on Broadway Instagram. They are expanding one of their locations! Plus they are opening soon in the South Side. Great to see Slice On Broadway growing.
Wow what an update! Thanks for taking the time to read this
Please consider sharing or telling all your pizza friends. It’s not every day you come across a newsletter featuring a cornucopia of local pizza news. How cool is that?
Pizza ya later!
-Dan Tallarico, Pizza Journalist
Nice issue,  remember that any reference to God is always capitalized, even when you’re  referencing he for him, the H’s would be capitalized.