UPDATE: This contest is now closed. Pete's New Haven Style Apizza won!
Who makes the best pizza in Washington? You tell us! We're asking you to vote in the first Washingtonian.com Pizza Pool, a brackets-style contest that will narrow 32 pizzas to one winner. For a refresher on how the brackets will work, head here.
To see today's match up, check below.
Pete’s New Haven Apizza: Co-owner Alicia Mehr hails from New Haven, a pizza Mecca. Although the coal-fired slabs at New Haven landmarks such as Sally’s and Pepe’s don’t quite jump to mind here—they’re thinner, smokier, more brittle—one pie in particular does its forebears justice. The New Haven, an homage to Pepe’s most famous pizza, is a sauceless 18-inch crust laden with chopped clams and pecorino cheese. It’s salty, briny, garlicky—and it stays beautifully crisp. Perhaps Pete’s greatest appeal is pizza by the slice—a rarity in Washington, apart from the after-hours grease bombs slung along Adams Morgans’ 18th Street. The ingredients are well chosen; seldom do you find such good sausage on a $2.75 slice.
Cafe Pizzaiolo: Yes, there’s a stone-hearth oven, and the crisp, well-salted crusts are minimally sauced, but these pizzas aspire less to the boutique ideal than to the flat, zesty pies owner Larry Ponzi grew up eating during Brooklyn summers.
Did you know? If you click the links of each of those restaurants' names, you can leave your own review of their pizza at that page!
