I'm so confused. This whole vacation thing is hard work. I've been up for well over 12 hours and it's still only 4 pm. Plus, I travelled 6 states Souther (is that a word?) this morning only to find out that it was warmer in Boston today than here!! And when I get back it'll probably be 20 degrees all week...mark my word.
My exhaustion could also be contributed to the fact that in the past 3 days I have experienced 3 hockey games, 4 overtimes, 2 broken records for the longest game ever played at our hockey arena, 1 devastating loss, and 1 incredible double overtime win to win the series! And a whole lot of food!
Yeah, let's talk about food.
I have taken it upon myself to try to find the best pizza in Boston for you all. I know how selfless this is of me, but no need to thank me. Okay...you're very welcome.
As you may know, I have been to Pizzeria Regina manymanymany times and I absolutely love it! (Side note: That is my review of the North End restaurant ONLY...the million chains throughout Boston tourist spots don't count!)
So because of my love and bias for Pizzeria Regina, I felt it necessary to give Santarpio's Pizza in East Boston a shot. I've always heard that these two are the best pizza places in Boston with many people saying they're equally good. On a Food Network special once they did a Boston Pizza Wars thing against the two pizzerias and Regina won in a very close battle.
So, case in point, I finally got to give Santarpio's a try and see if it was truly worthy of being in the same class as Pizzeria Regina. And the verdict...I wasn't impressed.
We ordered a Mushroom, Onions, and Peppers pizza and just a plain cheese one. They make their pizzas really weird, with the sauce on top of the cheese, and I just wasn't a huge fan. The veggie pizza was falling apart everywhere and the bottom crust was soggy under the cheese and then rock hard at the end.
The plain cheese pizza was definitely a million times better, but still not quite as good as Regina. Again, the crust was just too hard and practically broke my teeth.
(I apologize for the crappy pictures...it was dark in there and I didn't want to use the flash and stand out as the weird tourist taking pictures of her food. I imagine there aren't a lot of food bloggers living in East Boston)
The one thing I will give Santarpio's is that the service there was infinitely better than that at Regina! I understand Regina is small and there's always a line so they need to hustle you out, but that doesn't mean the wait staff can't be nice and conversational. But I've yet to come across a good one.
At Santarpio's though, you could tell that everybody knew everybody and almost everyone was a regular, which can sometimes mean that tourists like us (people who actually have to ask to see a menu) aren't treated as well. But this definitely was not the case. Our waiter was named Tony and he welcomed us first-timers with open arms. He was very friendly and continually came back to our table to have conversations (he even harassed my mom about the Buffalo Bill's "WIDE RIGHT").
His only downfall....he was wearing a Patriots shirt. But I suppose I have to excuse that, I am in their territory after all. BUT he had a hundred pins on his apron that he said had been given to him by customers over the years. Well of course I had to ask him if he would wear a Giants pin if I brought him one and he said, "you betcha."
So I suppose I will have to return to Santarpio's to give the pizza another shot just so I can give Tony a Giants pin (or even better, an "18-1" pin).
O=]
