19 hours Ago By [email protected] (Chloe James)
Pizza is the king of comfort food. In fact, it feels like we're selling it short by describing it as "popular." Polls have found that pizza is America's favorite food, beating out the likes of steak and burgers.
That's a heck of a lot of slices. With thousands of pizza joints to choose from, it's no surprise that they're not all on the same level. While there's no shortage of critical darlings and hidden gems, there's also a fair share of pizza shops that just aren't up to scratch.
This isn't about personal preference — after all, there are , and everyone has their favorite. We're talking about the pizza shops that serve low-quality food made in a low-quality environment, whether that's in terms of hygiene, ingredients, or pizza-baking techniques. To reduce the risk of wasting money on poor pizza, we spoke to pizza experts – Michael McCoy, founder of , pizza chef and mentor , and , owner of the pizzeria Napoli on the Road, who was named Pizza Maker of the Year at the World Top 50 Pizza Awards in 2023 — to learn more about the telltale signs of these not-so-stellar establishments.
If you want to avoid visiting a shady pizza shop, take heed of these red flags. The dough is made and baked on the same day It's , with the right combo of yeast, water, flour, and salt going a long way. Making really good pizza dough, however, requires some degree of patience — which, according to Michael McCoy, a lot of subpar pizzerias lack.
"I would also run from any place that says they make same-day pizza dough," he says. "The best pizza dough is fermented over time, and a two to three-day-old dough is by far better tasting and better for you." Fermentation essentially means that you're giving the yeast in dough enough time to convert sugars into alcohol.
No, this doesn't mean that pizza shops using fermented dough are producing boozy pizza. Allowing the dough to ferment over the course of a few days just gives bread — pizza bases included — a stronger, more complex flavor profile, which is something that truly separates the good pizza shops from the mediocre. At the same time, pizza shops should know the limits of fermentation.
Allowing dough to ferment for too long runs the risk of damaging its structure, which in turn leaves the dough flat, hard, and boasting a sour flavor or scent, with some also claiming that an overly-fermented bread crust will smell a bit like popcorn. Great at the movies but not so great as a base for your pepperoni and cheese. There are too many options on the menu If you've ever found yourself overwhelmed with choice, forcing the rest of your party to wait on tenterhooks while you scramble to place your order, we have some good news: It's not your fault, it's the restaurant's.
Well, maybe. According to Michele Pascarella, quality over quantity is very much a thing in the pizza world. He explains that a vast menu is often a sign that a pizza shop isn't as discerning with its offerings as you'd hope.
"If you see a long list of pizzas, it may suggest a lack of focus or attention to quality," he says. "A limited, curated selection typically indicates more research and care put into each pizza, which often reflects a higher standard of craftsmanship." While may work at, well, The Cheesecake Factory, the best pizza shops will often boast a smaller list of pizza varieties that have undergone an extensive perfection process.
Ideally, Andrea Danelli likes to see a maximum of 10 to 15. The same logic applies to menus featuring a wide range of items. Too much variety is rarely a positive sign at any eatery as the likelihood of any kitchen being equally skilled in all areas at the same time is slim.
As the saying goes, if its menu offers everything from burgers to sushi to Italian cuisine, odds are a pizza shop is a jack of all trades but the master of none — pizza included. Its cleanliness isn't up to scratch Let's be real for a second — a lack of hygiene is a red flag anywhere that sells food, not just at a pizza shop. Even so, it's still something to look out for when you're trying to decide whether or not a pizza shop is shady.
We've all come across horror stories about restaurants being exposed for questionable hygiene practices, with these stories proving all the more horrifying when you realize you've previously eaten food from its kitchens. It also poses a valid question: If a business doesn't care enough to keep its premises clean, what other issues does it let slide? That's why Michele Pascarella encourages prioritizing the presentation of a pizza shop. "The cleanliness and orderliness of a pizza shop are clear indicators of its quality," he says.
"A well-maintained and clean space shows that the restaurant cares about both the food and the customer experience." Some of the biggest red flags to look out for include bad smells, unkempt tabletops, dusty or messy interiors, and an unclean bathroom. The latter may sound irrelevant, but if any eatery is neglecting a customer-facing space like the bathroom – especially in — then odds are its kitchen isn't in the best shape, either.
As Michael McCoy notes, "I am not saying that there are not dives out there with good food, but I would take a cleaner restaurant any day of the week." Pizzas are stacked with too many toppings Everyone has different preferences when it comes to pizza toppings. If you're someone who likes their pies stacked high with different veggies and meats, then more power to you.
However, in the eyes of the pros, an abundance of toppings isn't always ideal. Next time you spot a pizza shop touting a slice that seems to carry more toppings than cheese, remember that not only does layering up too many additional ingredients weigh down each slice and compromise a pizza's structural integrity, but these extra toppings also have the potential to add too much moisture. Thanks to the power of gravity, all this moisture only has one way to go: right down into the crust.
This can ultimately leave the crust soggy and weak, with you potentially forced to eat each slice with a knife and fork like a makeshift calzone should things totally fall apart. Pizza shops that are equally heavy-handed with sauce risk overloading your pizza, which can again cause a soggy slice (unless, of course, it's a pizza style that's designed to bear the load of excessive sauce, such as ). The same light hand should also be used for the likes of chili oil.
A little goes a long way with condiments in general, which is why Michele Pascarella is cautious of going OTT with the latter. Customers have free rein over customizing their pizzas Big chains such as Domino's and Papa Johns have made it the norm for patrons to have the freedom to customize their pizzas, while fast-casual restaurants like Blaze Pizza have built their entire business model on the concept. But while personalizing pizzas with your favorite veggies and meats is fun from the comfort of your own kitchen, it may not always be a good sign at an actual pizza shop.
Any pizzeria worth its salt already knows the right combo of toppings to give you the tastiest experience possible. As Michele Pascarella explains, a decent pizza shop's menu is "designed to create a balanced, flavorful experience." We're not saying that a good pizza shop should refuse to accommodate the odd request to remove or substitute an ingredient — especially when it comes to allergies or intolerances — but they should also feel comfortable enough in their expertise to only serve its pizzas as they were originally designed.
After all, they're the professionals. We're just here to appreciate the fruits (or, to be more accurate, pizzas) of their labors. As per Andrea Danelli, these ingredient combos chosen by a restaurant can also tell you a lot about the restaurant's overall ethos.
"Unique or thoughtfully chosen combinations show effort and creativity, while basic options like plain salami might mean less attention to quality," he explains. The pizza shop isn't transparent about how it sources its ingredients If you think about toppings as the bricks that build a stellar pizza, then it's easier to understand why one faulty brick can cause the whole thing to fall apart. Low-quality ingredients are easy to recognize when you tuck into your food — for example, a bad pizza sauce can often taste more comparable to ketchup — but not as easy to discern when you're looking at the menu.
After all, if a pizza shop is knowingly using low-quality cheese or tomatoes, it's hardly going to make a point of communicating as much to its customers. For that reason, Andrea Danelli recommends prioritizing pizza shops that are loud and proud about the quality of their ingredients. "High-quality pizzerias often highlight local farms or certified suppliers, and this kind of transparency shows they care about the quality of their ingredients and builds trust with their customer," he says.
At the same time, Michele Pascarella warns that you shouldn't always blindly trust the way ingredients are described on a pizza shop's menu. "Sometimes they may not accurately represent the quality of the ingredients," he says. In 2019, for example, found that 2⁄3 of pizzas in stores and restaurants that advertised themselves as using high-end buffalo mozzarella — which typically comes with a higher price tag than standard mozzarella — actually used run-of-the-mill mozzarella made with cows' milk.
"It's always better to ask about sourcing," Pascarella advises. It doesn't make its own sauce Just like the dough, whipping up a high-quality pizza sauce is surprisingly simple. With the right herbs and spices and just a dash of sugar, all you need is a base of crushed tomatoes to .
But at the same time, there are also far too many disappointing sauces out there that taste too sweet or too bitter to really complement the overall pizza. While over half of pizzerias reportedly make their own sauces in-house, others take shortcuts by outsourcing the sauce or tweaking a pre-made product for their own purposes with extra herbs or spices. In Andrea Danelli's experience, it's often the restaurants with bigger menus (that inevitably require more ingredients) that rely on pre-made items, "which can take away from the freshness and flavor.
" Although the majority of restaurants find ways to cut corners and save money to some extent, the reality is that if a pizza shop isn't crafting its own sauce — which is ultimately one of the deciding factors of a pizza's flavor profile — it falls into the trap of tasting like any other generic eatery and could signal a general lack of commitment to providing top to bottom quality. You can't instantly smell the quality of the pizza First impressions count in a pizza shop. In an ideal world, the very first thing you should notice about a pizzeria is its aroma — a tantalizing blend of bubbling cheese, baking dough, tangy tomatoes, and fresh herbs.
If you step into an establishment and you aren't instantly hit by this smell, this should be your first sign that something is amiss. "When you walk into a quality pizzeria, the smell of dough fermenting and pizzas coming out to the table [is how] you can just tell you're going to have a good experience," says Michael McCoy. Trivial though it may sound, the importance of smell can't be emphasized enough.
The truth is that everything involved in the process of prepping a high-quality pizza has a strong scent. Its absence may mean that an establishment is either using low-quality ingredients or isn't preparing everything fresh. For Michele Pascarella, a good aroma is up there with "a warm welcome, a well-organized space, [and] an open kitchen" in terms of instant green flags at a pizza shop.
"If the service is cold, the space feels disorganized, or the smell is off, these could be indicators of a low-quality establishment," he says. "These first impressions are key to setting the tone for what to expect." Pizza slices look congealed, soggy, or dry Some pizza shops — especially those that sell pizza by the slice — will have entire pies out for display.
This serves two purposes: giving customers an idea of what to expect from their order, and speeding up service. Considering how these pizzas ultimately serve as advertisements for an establishment's menu, you'd think that each and every pizza shop would put extra effort into making them look as appetizing as possible. However, that's not always the case.
If a pizza shop is displaying slices stacked with congealed cheese, that's a telltale sign that they've been sat out too long. As cheese is exposed to heat, its proteins break down and the fat escapes (hence why it melts). However, as it sits out and cools, these proteins will gradually reform, creating the congealment.
The longer it sits, the more time the crust also has to absorb the moisture of its toppings, which is why the slice may seem soggy. Conversely, it can also experience something called retrogradation. This is where starch molecules in the crust crystallize and start to absorb moisture, leaving the pizza crust looking dry or stale.
If you spot any of the above, that's a sign that a pizza shop leaves its slices out too long and is probably best to be avoided. It's one location in a large chain The U.S.
is in a tall supply of pizza chains, with Domino's alone boasting over 5,000 restaurants nationwide. It's thought that roughly 1⁄3 of all pizza restaurants worldwide are chains, with that number jumping to over 50% when you go to the U.S.
While you can definitely find tasty pizzas within these large franchises, Michael McCoy claims that the restaurant owners who avoid all of the red flags he's mentioned are usually those who run their own businesses out of a true love for the art of making pizza. "Look for places that are not a chain," he says, providing his final nugget of advice to those choosing where to pick up a slice. "These people who follow everything I've said above have a true passion [for] a dying art and they should be supported.
" Although we're sure that plenty of people behind the scenes at major franchises are genuinely passionate about pizza, the downside of operating within a larger chain is that mass production and standardization can often have a negative impact on quality. High-quality ingredients are tough and rarely cost-effective to buy in bulk. We're definitely not claiming that all smaller chains or independent pizza shops don't cut corners, but the reality is that it's often much easier for them to do so.
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