Last night we had the big pizza tasting contest to determine if New York, Chicago or Buffalo style pizzas are the best. And, who has the best pizza around. It all started with the good natured bantering of the two pictured to the left. Buffalo Pundit insisted New York style pizza is best, while Buffalo Geek maintained Chicago style pizza was the one to beat.

Altogether we graded 10 pizzas from 10 different pizzerias. Geek even had his flown in from Chicago. Some people appeared a bit confused but managed to eat their way through. The pizzas were graded on 6 different criteria; crust, cheese, texture, sauce, toppings and overall quality. The first couple of pizzas to grade were a bit tough because there was no frame of reference to use. I didn’t want to grade too high or too low. Everybody had a good time, in part due to the variety of wine people brought to wash down the pizza.

I decided to go for a unique submission for my entry into the contest. I brought a spinach pizza, from La Pizza Club on Hertel, that has a bleu cheese base with mushrooms. It is pictured to the left. The pizza seemed to receive quite a few good comments. Buffalo Geek thought it was the best pizza in the competition.

The best pizza of the night was neither mine nor Pundit’s. It was the spinach and mushroom pizza with blue cheese and garlic sauce from La Pizza Club. The entry was sponsored by Mike Rebmann of North Buffalo Journal and Review. It was straight up fantastic and I’ll be ordering one later in the week.

You can read Buffalo Pundit’s post on the event here and view some more pictures. Buffalo Spree magazine will be publishing the official results with the overall winner in their December issue coming out in late November. Until then, you can view some of my photos in the slideshow below.