You wanna pizza me: A review of every slice in town

For years now, in Amherst and surrounding towns, people have been asking: which Amherst pizza tastes the best? 

Though this opinion piece represents my, and only my thoughts, I consider myself a pizza expert. 

The players in this Amherst competition included: Primos Too, Antonio’s Pizza, Amherst House of Pizza, Sibie’s Pizza, Athena’s Pizza, Papa John’s, and Bruno’s.

To keep my ratings fair, even though all the restaurants have a wide array of toppings and sauces, I focused on eating just slices of cheese. The standards I rated the pizza on were: the cheese, the crust, the texture and flavor, and last but not least, the overall slice. 

The best pizza I found in my research hands-down was at Athena’s Pizza. While they don’t do pizza by the slice and the pie is the most expensive at $13.95, its price was well worth it. Athena’s produces a beautiful-looking pie, with the perfect cheese-to-sauce ratio. It has a crust that is amazingly crunchy on the outside and doughy on the inside.

The second best pizza in my opinion was Bruno’s. While they have no dining area and only take out for pizza, their pies are delicious. The pie I got from them had a nice thick layer of cheese topped with an uneven coating of sauce–enough to know it’s there but not too overpowering. But it built up near the crust making the crust bites more flavorful. The crust alone though was pretty good, but very chewy. The price for a small pie was $9.62.

The third-ranked in this race is Primos, Too. The slice I was served was great. It was lacking on the cheese side but with a great sauce, it made up for that. The crust was good. It was very crispy. The pizza wasn’t very greasy but it was still enough to drip off the pizza when it was fresh. They sold pizza by the slice and the slice was $3.50; it only took 7 minutes from order to serve. 

Fourth on the list is Antonio’s. While I found Antonios to be the most popular pizza joint with the greatest array of flavor choices to satisfy any palate, the cheese pizza was too greasy for my liking. The slice, however, had a nice thick coating of cheese with less sauce than most as well. The crust was good, though; it was very thin and airy and had a nice crunch to it as well. 

In 5th and 6th place were Amherst House of Pizza (AHOP) and Sibie’s. I found that both of these places were pretty much interchangeable My critique was a lack of cheese on the slices making it feel like an uneven amount of cheese in each bite. AHOP’s slices also had more grease.  

The worst one by far was Papa John’s. The sauce was some of the worst I’ve had on a pizza. The cheese was alright at best. It had burn marks on some parts and the taste was disappointing. The crust was good but it didn’t make up for the overall lack of flavor.

All in all, tasting pies at most of the local pizza places for this article turned out to be a great adventure of eating and thinking! I hope you enjoyed my recs, and will check them out for yourself.