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My quest for the perfect New York slice has begun, and thanks to the many excellent recommendations I received from my coworkers, I’ve got a pretty good list to work with. I’ll publish the full list of recommendations at some point later this week when all the votes are in, but for now I’ll explain my reviewing standards and then launch right into the first review.

My Standards

The concept is fairly simple: I will always order one plain slice and one other slice (whatever looks best when I get there) to cover the pizza spread available. This way I can compare apples to apples by tasting the basic element of any good pizza, the unadorned cheese slice, while still giving some latitude in case the pizzeria has great toppings or a particular specialty slice/pie that you just can’t ignore. I’ll rate the each pizzeria on a 1 – 10 scale on several aspects of the experience: pizza quality, toppings/specialty slices, and other. Now on to the first review!

Bravo Pizza on 14^th street and 7^th avenue.

The first destination on my pizza pilgrimage was Bravo Pizza, conveniently located on 14^th and 7^th, right outside of the 14^th street 1 train stop. Having expressed his own interest in pizza connoisseurship, one of my coworkers opted to join me for this trip, so maybe we can get a second opinion out of him later.

Pizza Quality: 6

The basic cheese slice at Bravo is a solid example of New York pizza. The sauce is tasty but fairly generic. The cheese is also somewhat generic but still good. It was perhaps a tiny bit greasy for my taste, but I should qualify that by saying that I’m not a big fan of grease in general. The cheese on this slice did have a some excess grease, but it didn’t have a major adverse effect on the slice as a whole. Meanwhile, the crust was doey with just the right amount of crunchiness making it very foldable. And yes, I’m a consummate folder, so they received good marks for crust. Overall, this slice is a little better than what I would consider to be the standard for New York Pizza, hence the 6 rating.

Toppings: 7

Bravo’s is one of those New York pizza places with a wide variety of topping, Sicilian and white slices all lined up on the counter, and I have to say that most of them looked pretty darn good. I decided on a meat-lover’s slice with sausage, pepperoni and bacon for my topping selection, mostly because they really covered the whole slice and I like my toppings to be ubiquitous whenever possible. True to appearances, the toppings were pretty good! They added to the flavor of the slice without overwhelming it, and were quality ingredients in there own right. They were a little different from the typical fare, a little crisper than a lot of other pizza toppings I’ve had, but the effect was great, and also seemed to have minimized the extra grease that usually accompanies the meat slice.

Other: 5

I wanted to make a category for intangibles such as price, atmosphere, convenience, and anything else that may not actually make the pizza taste any better, but will have some impact on the overall experience. Bravo didn’t stand out to me in any particular respect with regards to this category. The location is convenient if you actually were to travel to get there as I did, but while I’d drop in if I were in the neighborhood, I wouldn’t likely go out of my way to get there, making this something of a moot point. Service and ambience were typical (don’t laugh, some places really excel in this category…and some really suck). The price was a little high by my usual standards, but not enough to be a deal breaker.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that Bravo serves up a solid New York slice with good toppings, at a not unreasonable price. Stop by and give it a shot if you’re in the neighborhood, but don’t go too far out of your way for it.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 2:47 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.