I asked my boys and their friend to rate pizza in Astoria for an Astoria Dave blog post, and one of them suggested we organize them in a tier list. Well, I had no idea what that was, so I googled it and low and behold it is a thing. My ignorance of the concept can be explained by my abundance of age and lack of experience in video game culture (which stopped capturing my interest a couple decades shy of the turn of the last century).
The boys (fourth graders at Lewis and Clark Elementary) are all picky eaters, so we decided on reviewing plain cheese pizzas. After several weeks of pizza discovery (outings and orders and discussion) they reached a consensus on which tier each pizza belonged to and thus guided me in assembling the tier list above. Below are our candidates and some of the boys’ tasting comments.
S-Tier
This is the top tier. The best of the best. According to wikipedia the ‘S’ tier may mean “Superb” or “Super” and may originate from academic grading in Japan.
Fort George
Fortunately the boys’ favorite is also the household adults’ favorite – plus there’s delicious beer! Unfortunately it’s also the most expensive pizza in town. But did I mention the beer?
The boys’ reviews:
– I like how their cheese is pretty stretchy.
– The wood burning oven has really good char and all the flavors are really good.
– Best goldang pizza there ever is.
A-Tier
Geno’s Pizza and Burgers
Geno’s is a delightful old-school neighborhood pizza parlor, with good burgers and pie too!
The reviews:
– The cheese is also really stretchy, which I like.
– The one with the good claw machine? Amazing! A-tier.
– Cheese is good but their crust isn’t.
B-Tier
Costco
– Pretty good, but sometimes they have too much flavor on their sauce
– Oh yeah that’s the good stuff.
– Cheap and pretty good. B-tier.
Sahara Pizza
– I like it except for the onion.
C-Tier
Domino’s
– Pretty good.
– I give it c-tier because it’s just Domino’s.
Fultano’s
– Meh.
Voodoo Room
– Pure sauce, I can’t taste any cheese.
– Too spicy.
[Editors Note: Personally, I rank Columbian Theater / Voodoo Room pizza closer to the top, with Fort George, but the boys are the final judges of this particular tier list.]
F-Tier
Tony’s Galaxy Pizza
This is the pizza served at hot lunch at Lewis and Clark Elementary school on Fridays. The consensus:
– Tony’s Galaxy Pizza sucks.
– Tastes like cardboard.
So there you go! At the moment that is what these three Astoria fourth graders think of the pizza in town. We hope to update this tier list in the future, and stay tuned; we are planning future fourth grader Astoria tier lists covering hot dogs, ice cream, and french fries.