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Patsy's, East Longmeadow, MA, tasted on  July 18, 2004 — Ultimately opinions about food are just that... opinions. Nobody is really an authority, nobody is an expert, and nobody is objective. And even more importantly, when someone's childhood memories come into play, it's almost impossible to weed out the judgments of the food vs. the feelings of comfort and happy memories. But in order to provide this service, we must wade into that quagmire. Of course, we're discussing one of the most difficult and contentious topics in the food world... The humaneness of foie gras? No. The fairness of the Michelin star allocations? No. The accuracy/shittness of Doug Psaltis' comments on Thomas Keller and his walk-in? No. We're talking of course about... pizza. At last - something truly important.

So much about food has to do with expectations. I would claim that while there are a wide variety of styles of pizza in the United States (and of course across the world), that there is still a leader in terms of the style of pizza that represents the iconic perfect pizza in the U.S. It's a crust with medium thickness, and a balanced and integrated combination of cheese and sauce. No one part distinguishes itself over the others. The key is balance. Personally my favorite pizza is a little closer to the Italian style where the ingredients are integrated but still have their own identities. Pizza where you can almost see the original shape of the slice of mozarella before it melted and oozed all into the sauce and on the crust.

Patsy's is a small family-run "pizzeria and restaurant" in western Massachusetts - East Longmeadow to be specific. Debbie grew up in nearby Springfield. First I'll let her wax rhapsodic. According to Debbie: "It's real New York style pizza. And it has the perfect balance of sauce cheese and crust. It's simple. The crust is crispy without being brittle. It's got the perfect singed (not charred), nice, floury, slightly burned aspect to it. The sauce is not too sweet which is the downfall of most pizzas. And there's a perfect amount of it. And the cheese is congealed enough so that you could take it all off in one fell swoop but its not too rubbery. It's just awesome."

It's clear she loves this pizza. For me I thought it was very good. In fact one of the best examples of a classic iconic American pizza that I have ever had. The sauce had excellent flavor (not overly herbed which is the biggest crime I usually notice). Either way, if you find yourself heading through western  Massachusetts for some crazy reason, you can't go wrong stopping at Patsy's for a slice, or better yet a whole pie. We got an entire pie.

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On an unrelated but still delicious note, when not causing riots, Peyman and DebDu are eating their way through Paris one arrondissement at a time. Check out their latest yummy post. The diagrams are perfect!