Pizza Judge

On Columbus Day, October 9th, from 1pm to 4pm I was one of the judges for the 2nd Annual Rockland Tasty N'Healthy Pizza Contest. Sixty pizzas competed and I don't know how many different restaurants. The Pizza Contest is sponsored by the Rockland County Department of Health. It was held in the Nanuet Mall in Banchetto Feast Restaurant.

The other judges were: Charles Calotta from the Sons of Italy; Claudette Clark a Dietician at Nyack Hospital; Rossano Giannini, restaurateur; Dianne Haltner, Nutritionist with the Cornell Extension; Diane Lombardi, Dietician.

We got there at around 12:30pm and the event began at 1:00pm. The judges were lined up at a table with their backs to the mall entrance. There must have been a lot of publicity for free pizza because the place was packed with noisy throngs!

I don't know about the other judges but I only tasted the smallest morsel of each pizza. Sometimes, when the toppings looked good, I ate a bit more of that. Just imagine tasting 60 pizzas... We didn't finish the tasting until after 4:30pm with only one brief break.

There were several categories: Healthiest Pizza, Best Thin Crust, Best Traditional Pizza, Most Creative, People's Choice and Grand Prize for overall best.

There was one pizza with bananas and blueberries, another with french fried potatoes, and just one with seafood but it also had pasta on it. There were several plain tomato pizzas that had cold salad piled on top of them; this was not my favorite. The so-called traditional pizza was the type with an orangy mix of tomato and cheese, also not my personal favorite. I actually did like some of them, especially the whole wheat thin crust ones. And there was one salad one that stood out with a plain thin crust on the bottom and arugula layered on top that was covered all over with good slices of tomatoes. I hope that got a prize. But mostly I was inspired to come up with something that was closer to my ideal 'healthy' pizza. That's later.

The winners were: Sal's in Spring Valley for the Healthiest Topping; Basilico on Route 202 in Pomona for the Best Thin Crust Pizza; Franco's in Nanuet for the best Traditional Pizza; Dough Boys in Stony Point for the Most Creative Pizza; People's Choice with 475 votes out of 2968 went to Rocco's in New City; and the Grand Prize went to
Di Maria's in Valley Cottage.

I don't think I will eat another piece of pizza for a loooong time.