People always say that Mom & Pop pizza places are so much better than chains, but I've never been blown away by Mom & Pop pizza parlors. Good? Sure. Insanely better than a standard chain pizza? Not at all. Obviously you'll say "But McCheese, you've never had GOOD Mom & Pop pizza!" Bullshit. I've eaten pizza at authentic Italian joints in New York, sampled it at a variety of places in D.C and Baltimore, eaten it in several foreign countries, and my own town has several locally owned pizza parlors and Italian restaurants.
I really don't get it. Someone will tell me to go try such-and-such pizza place that just opened because they have the BEST PIZZA EVAR!!1. So I go and try it and it tastes almost identical to every other Mom & Pop place I've ever tried. It's a little better than a chain pizza, maybe because they use bigger pieces of sausages or the crust is cooked a little better. Not to mention I'm paying nearly 20 dollars for a large pizza with 1 or 2 toppings if I'm lucky, whereas at Pizza Hut I can get a large stuffed crust pizza with 3 toppings for 11 bucks.
To give a concrete example: my friend and his wife LOVE this one Italian restaurant near me that they swear makes the BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD. They live like 20 minutes away, so when I'm going to their place they often ask me to swing by and pick up a couple pizzas from this place for dinner. Two large pizzas with two toppings each usually works out to about FORTY-FIVE DOLLARS. What the fuck is that? It's not even creative or interesting pizza. It's the standard, hand-tossed, New York style that 90% of places serve. I swear to god no one would be able to tell the difference between a slice of that overpriced shit and a slice from Sbarro. For the most part, pizza is pizza.
