SEC Women's Hoops Championship - Pizza Edition

 

Greenville, South Carolina. The site of the Women's Basketball SEC Tournament. It's a trip that I enjoy and dread at the same time. The only dread is that our hotel is nowhere near anything and it's a $30 roundtrip Uber ride for me to go anywhere and eat anything. 

This time, I took to Twitter to get food suggestions and the one that came up the most was Sidewall Pizza. My Uber driver kept asking me if he was going in the right direction, and I had to keep reminding him that I only came to Greenville once a year and that I had never been to this restaurant. We made it, and I'm glad we did. The pizza was really good, AND they make their own ice cream. Obviously this means that I took some pizza back to the hotel to avoid making an extra Uber ride out and to make room for the ice cream. 

The next day, I made the trek to Myles Pizza Pub. What I gathered from the internet was that this place used to be in Ohio, but the owner moved to Greenville and opened up here. My Uber driver also could not find this place, as it was relatively new to Greenville. However, out of the two, I would eat this pizza every day and then go to Sidewall and get ice cream. Also, can we talk about the cute mini-beer stein that my marinara came in? 

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Pizza is Love

 

February is the time that love is in the air. Well, love is always in the air when pizza is involved, but February means I get to super indulge, right? The high of checking places off the list was still strong so I put another solid month of pizza eating in. Let's revisit the sauciness, shall we?

Wildwood Pizza: On some internet lists, Wildwood is deemed the best pizza in Louisiana. It's good, but I would not vote it best in Louisiana...or even best in Baton Rouge...or even the best pizza I ate during the month of February. Don't get me wrong, it's good, and I've tried to make repeat visits that haven't turned out well for either of us. I learned the hard way they are closed on Sunday evenings and I seem to always make this drive when they are out of power. This is the Elvis pizza, and it was the pizza of the month and I wish they would bring it back. It was SO GOOD! I just need them to be open when I'm on that side of town so I can recreate this myself. 

Little Ceasar's: Let's face it, the $5 Hot N Ready deal is one of the greatest things to hit my life. As a child, one of my best memories was our field trip to Little Ceasar's. They let us go behind the closed door and see how the magic happened, and I'm sure a psychiatrist would tell me that this where my not so healthy obsession with pizza began. In college, Little Ceasar's was my go to pizza place...until they stopped delivering to my dorm. When I'm alone, this is where I turn. Crazy bread ... Italian cheese bread ...$5 pizza ... I'll take it all, please. 

Papa John's: Better ingredients. Better pizza. Papa John's. Yep, I can quote the commercials. I will say that Papa John's has been trying to up their game lately. By "up their game", I really mean "diversify our product". I was on board with the Papadias, their pizza quesadillas...or their spin on the calzone. (Really glad this one made the cut) In February, I tried their Tavern Single. The concept is fabulous, a pizza that is acceptable to eat the whole thing in one sitting by one person! The only downside was the amount of garlic butter that I couldn't taste while eating it, but could smell it on my breath for the remainder of the day. 

LIT Pizza: I love Lit. It's the Subway of pizza, and I can get a pizza and a drink for $10. Just take my money! The only downside for me with Lit is that I actually have to get out of my car in order to get it. I want to be able to get my cheap pizza through a drivethru window and in my pjs. I love Lit though, so if it was socially acceptable to enter in my pjs, I would probably eat here more often. 

Isabella's Pizzeria: This is actually the place that planted the idea of this resolution. My mom and I used to go to Party Time frequently and I would pass this place on the drive there and say "I should eat there". It took 225 Dine offering a coupon to finally get me to pull the trigger. (Pizza proximity is highly important to me, and the proximity of Isabella's did not put it on the forefront of my mind.) However, I want to go back. The pizza was good, the server was super nice, and we had a nice night out. 

Mr. Gatti's: Pizza buffets are my jam. I can pay one price and eat all the pizza I want? Sign me up! Pizza buffets that also have skeeball, sign me up! Oh wait ... our Gatti's doesn't have a GattiLand and it is the saddest part of each trip when I remember that there is only pizza and no skeeball. But their cheesesticks have my heart.

2 months down and I've already hit up 12/30 spots, and threw in an extra awesome pizza stop in NOLA. Almost halfway there and I haven't even finished the first quarter. I've totally got this...I can do it...until I felt like I couldn't. But more on that later. 

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Road to the Championship - Pizza Edition

The first detour of the Baton Rouge Pizza Tour came early in the game. January 12, 2020 to be exact. The Carby Express made a detour to the Big Easy for the College Football National Championship game. 

Fun fact, the rest of my crew got to head down to New Orleans earlier than I did, as I had to work an event in Baton Rouge on Sunday. This left me with only Sunday night to truly enjoy the pizza that New Orleans had to offer. This meant I had ONE shot. Can you hear Eminem singing right now? I sure could. 

I had done my research and while there are plenty of pizza spots that are recommended, some of them landing on the best pizza places in the country, I went with a relatively new to New Orleans pizza restaurant. This spot had also landed on the best pizza in the country. Bonci Pizza. 

What enticed me about Bonci was that it was not like any pizza place I had been to before. Their website can explain it better than I can, so I'll let them tell you about it: "What is Bonci? Roman-style Pizza al Taglio. A variety of one of a kind pizzas created to excite and entice. The lineup changes frequently throughout the day based on availability of locally sourced ingredients." Also, you purchase your pizza by the pound. Mind blown. 

When you walk into Bonci, it's an almost overwhelming experience. While the restaurant isn't overwhelming, the pizza selection is. I had to keep reminding myself that the pricing was by the pound, and how much a pound of pizza actually was. How it works is that you tell them what pizza you would like, they hold a knife and ask you where you want them to make the cut. I had decided that I wanted to try multiple kinds of pizza, so I had to make sure he wasn't overly generous with that knife. 

I went with the 4 cheese, the all meat, and the baked potato pizza. Hands down, the baked potato pizza is the one I wish I had gotten a whole pound of. I haven't been to New Orleans since, but next time I go, I'm definitely going back! Also, I'm going to give full credit to the Tigers winning the National Championship with me joining the athletes (mentally) by carbo-loading the night before. 

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The Year of Pizza Begins

January 2020: The Year of Pizza Begins. I knew that this journey was definitely the path I wanted to go down. I mean, Who wouldn't want to go down a path full of delicious carbs covered in sauce and smothered with cheese? Weirdos, that's who... However, I didn't go into this resolution with a plan. Which means it's clearly a resolution since I go into NONE of my resolutions with a plan. 

In fact, I went in with such a lack of a plan, that not every place is documented with photographic evidence. The only evidence is on my waistline, and in my heart. However, I did keep meticulous notes in my pizza notebook. Somehow I felt keeping track of the months I ate these pizzas and my feelings about them was important, and I guess since I'm putting words on a screen about them it was. 

January is always super busy at gyms because people are highly motivated to stick to their commitments of working out and getting healthy. I treated this resolution in the same way and was determined to eat at a different pizza place every week. After all, if I start strong, I can make up for months where I may slack down the line when I became too busy with work to venture across town on random weeknights. This proved to be the push I needed to realize that I could do this! In fact, I didn't just eat at one pizza place a week...I went above and beyond in the month of January. 

Let's break down each of these, shall we? 

Domino's: I eat a lot of Domino's. My loyalty to the major chains waivers depending on where I live, the customer service, and the delivery area of each. When I lived in Texas, I was Papa John loyal. When I was in Ruston, we knew our Pizza Hut delivery driver by name...to the point that when he graduated, he came to our house without a pizza to tell us goodbye. Here in Baton Rouge, Domino's is the chain of choice. 

Johnny's Pizza House: This one was 100% not planned. I had failed to take food out of the freezer to thaw for dinner and my dad had gone to the grocery store. When he was on his way home, he picked up Johnny's. Normally, we are suckers for a Johnny's buffet. It takes me back to my colleges days where I first discovered Johnny's and their unconventional slicing style. (Fun fact, I got in my first two car wreck while leaving Johnny's in college...not my fault.) 

Reginelli's: This was actually the first official trip of the 2020 Baton Rouge Pizza Tour. I have not been to Reginelli's since I lived here the first time, which was right after college, and roughly 10 years ago. So good. Should have gone with a Detroit style, but we stayed true to an original and it still did not disappoint. 

Chuck E. Cheese: Good Ole Charles Entertainment Cheese! Seriously, I've never grown out of this place. Fun Fact #2, I had my college graduation "party" at Chuck E. Cheese. Now that I have a child, it's 100% acceptable for me to suggest going here for dinner. A place that has pizza and skeeball, how can you NOT want to go here for a good time? The pizza seems to taste better now than it did before, according to my mother. 

Rotolo's: Craft and Crust checked this one off of our list. We love Rotolo's, and since kiddo had a coupon for a free pizza slice, it was a must to check this one off the list before that coupon expired! While I have no shame eating an entire pizza in one sitting, I do enjoy places where I can go and order just a slice or two. 

DiGuilio Brothers: Kiddo and I were very obvious first timers when we walked in to this restaurant. After being seated, we were handed the menu. By the look of the restaurant, you can tell that it's a nice place. This pizza was a little more than I had budgeted for as it was only one size and you pay per topping. Fun Fact #3 - I'm not a fan of places that make you pay per topping. I feel they limit your creativity when you are trying to enjoy some good carby comfort to your soul while on a budget. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our pizza to the fullest and left extremely stuffed as we ate every last bite of it. (Look at those Italian sausage slices though...still drooling....)

January set me up for a good trajectory into this pizza journey. Kiddo joined me for all of the adventures, so that was a huge plus! Spoiler alert, she does not last the entire journey with me. The question I get most often when people listen to me talk about this resolution or see the pics on Instagram is "What's the best pizza you've eaten?" So, drumroll please while I present to you the best pizza of the month of January, and I'll catch you again for another fun update on my quest to eat all of the pizza. *Drum roll* 

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New Years Eve, 2019

 

New Years Eve 2019 ended like every other New Years Eve. I always end the year by taking a look at where I am in life, trying to remember my resolutions I made the year before, and planning my resolutions for the year ahead. 

Most years I kept my resolutions the same: 

(1) Get healthy - Always in direct contrast with my love of carbs. <3

(2) Read 25 books - This one I usually hit, and would increase the number as the year went on.

(3) Insert something random about work ... 

(4) Be a better mom to kiddo - A staple since NYE 2011. 

This year, I decided to do some normal resolutions, but also do one that would be fun. If I have a fun resolution, then I KNEW I would be able to complete at least one. So right under "Get healthy" on my lists of resolutions, I put "Eat All the Pizza in Baton Rouge". 

Now, eat all the pizza in Baton Rouge is a daunting task. I narrowed it down to "Eat at every pizza restaurant in Baton Rouge." This then led me to dig deep and ask, how does one determine what restaurants fall into this category? The answer...Google. 

Google is a way of life now, so I took my question to Google. I typed into the search bar "pizza restaurants in Baton Rouge", clearly I meant business. Then I wrote down every restaurant that it gave me, all 30 of them, in the most appropriate notebook given to me for Christmas by my best friend. 

Some restaurants have opened since making this list, and I have made an effort to include them. Some restaurants fell outside of the city limits of Baton Rouge, and therefore were not counted in the list. (I still visited some of them.) But the goal was to hit the 30 that Google told me to go to. 

Since making this list, 2 of the restaurants have closed. RIP Datz Italian (one of my favs!) and Newk's (Google and I disagree on this being a pizza restaurant, but I wasn't going to argue with the Google machine.) 

This left 28 restaurants on the list. I also checked off 2 new pizza places that have opened, so I consider those substitutes for the ones that I scratched off. 

I went to bed more excited about a new year than I've ever been. I woke up on January 1, and the journey of the 2020 Baton Rouge Pizza Tour was on. 

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2020 Baton Rouge Pizza Tour

If there is one not so super serious thing that I'm serious about, it's pizza. I legitimately love pizza. Pizza is my all time favorite comfort food. It's the food I turn to for celebration, for comfort, for the mundane. 

Don't get me wrong, I love food in general, but nothing can truly speak my my heart and my soul like pizza does. I've had lots of really good pizza in my life. I've also had pizza that I never want to eat again. Those are words I never thought I would type, but as my palette has evolved, I've learned that the pizza I loved in my college years is not the pizza I would want in my late 30s. 

With this in mind, I set out to eat at every pizza place Baton Rouge has to offer in 2020. I felt this was a resolution that I could 100% put my efforts into and not fail. The trajectory was great at the beginning of the year, and then COVID-19 shook us all by shutting down many things. Personally, I would deem every pizza restaurant (and really any restaurant) an essential business, the governor did not. I began to think that my resolution was over right as it had begun. 

Yet here we are with 3 months left in the year 2020, and from the list I created on New Year's Eve night, we have 5 places left to hit up. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible and loaded with carby goodness topped with mozzarella. 

Many of you have said that I should have been blogging about the journey during the process, and you were probably right. However, I'm choosing to bring back the blog in order to relive some of the highlights of the pizza tour, share some fun news...mostly pizza related if I'm being honest, and continue the journey of eating all the pizza here in Baton Rouge and beyond. 

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