Pizza in The Woodlands

And so continues my quest for the perfect slice of pizza pie. As I have told many in the past, the best pizza I have ever eaten was in Washington State of all places. Mario's Pizza offered their version of... what was it... either New York Style or maybe it was Chicago Style pizza. In either case, it was (1983) by far the best pizza I have ever passed across the gums and teeth.
That being said, Washington State is way to far and who knows if they are even in business any more to get another slice of that fantastic crusted delicacy. So now, here I am in The Woodlands Texas (since about 1985) and I have yet to find any pizza worthy of competing against Mario's Pizza.
The area in and around Houston has a multitude of pizza joints and actually, over the years, Godfather's Pizza was really quite tasty. There was one on FM 1960 just west of Veterans Memorial and when it closed, well pizza just hasn't been the same. Granted, there is a "Godfather's Pizza" in Spring, in the same building that was originally a Pizza Hut; it's tucked in between the Hartz Chicken Buffet and the El Palenque at the corner of I45 and Spring Cypress road. Now, what I remember as Godfather's Pizza is no where near what this establishment serves. The do offer an all day buffet, at least on the weekends anyway I think, and it's not bad but again, not what I remember as the Godfather's.
But I digress, and so back to the choices for pizza in The Woodlands.
Extreme Pizza at Market Square as you may recall, closed it's doors some time ago and has now been occupied by "Pizza by Marco" a long time resident of the Dallas Texas area. One of the more unique items regarding their brand of pizza is that the sauce is made under a secret recipe, even the owner of The Woodlands franchise doesn't know how to formulate it. In fact, they have regularly scheduled trips to meet a delivery person between The Woodlands and Dallas for the prized sauce.
Granted, I use the term prized loosely as the do make a roughly 200 mile round trip to Centerville Texas to get more sauce. IMO, the sauce is much more like catsup on a cracker to quote another blogger whom I find much more humorous than myself.
The crust and the other toppings were tasty but that sauce... well, I don't think that it is worth the drive to Huntsville much less Centerville in order to procure it.
And so we arrive at a recently opened pizza joint, the famous Grimaldi's coal fired pizza joint. They love to brag about how it's just like the pizza in Brooklyn.. WHAT, that's what pizza is like in Brooklyn??? Well, they can keep it as far as I care. They reverse osmosis the water (isn't that just a method of filtering?) and some other blather about the flour something... People supposedly love the pizza - again I say... WTF!?
The pizza is not that great, it was thin ( they don't offer a thicker crust) and our pizza, just like all the others I saw come out from the the brick oven had burned spots on it, not badly burned, just black areas of crust that had bubbled up during the baking process. They do not offer a decent variety of toppings like you can get at nearly every other pizza restaurant on the planet and they don't offer any combo pizza's either. With the understanding that food is served in different ways as you go across the country or even within Texas for that matter, I would be surprised if the two afore mentioned pizza eateries survive for very long in this part of southeast Texas.
And with one last item, I will close this Woodlands Blog Post -
A recently opened pizza joint on I45 "Gozzetti's Pizzeria" that occupies the just as recently failed "Pizza Buffet and Smoothies" ( how can you miss with a name like that!? ) is on my list to try in the near future. They are planning to open a second location on McBeth lane shortly - now that's confidence, opening 2 stores so quickly and not knowing if even one can actually support itself.
Let me know if you have tried the pizza at Gozzetti's and what you think of it!