Ok, I kind of lied in my last review. I did know about 1 famous restaurant in Phoenix and it's Pizzeria Bianco. It's written up in many many blogs and websites as being one, if not the best, pizza place in the country. I know, how weird, right? The best pizza place is in Phoenix? So I had to try it out myself to judge. Luckily it was right down the street from the convention center which is where my conference was. So it was an easy 7 minute walk over and apparently I got there at the perfect time (around 2pm) because there was no line and I had my pick of seats inside or outside. Apparently during it's busiest hours the wait can be more than 2 hours long.
The place is cute enough with a nice outdoor patio/cafe area and a pretty small indoor area with a brick pizza oven in the middle of the place. When I looked at the menu it immediately reminded me of Roberta's in Brooklyn. In fact, the whole vibe of the place reminded me of Roberta's just minus the hipsters. I started with the local organic green salad ($6) and then was torn about what kind of pizza to get. They are all of the thin crust variety and all sounded pretty tasty but I decided on the wiseguy ($18) mostly because it was the only pizza that came with sausage. When I ordered it, the waiter mentioned that it was a white pizza meaning that it had no sauce and he wanted to make sure that I was ok with it. I honestly didn't even think about it but when he said it, it kind of made me think that I wanted something with tomato sauce on it. He mentioned that I could order half and half, which was a nice idea, so I went for half of the margherita - which is your standard pizza of fresh mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil. The organic salad was nice and fresh and I really enjoyed the red wine vinaigrette that it was dressed with. I just kind of wish that there was something more than just greens to it - some tomatoes or mushrooms would have been nice. Next came the pizza. At first I was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish it by myself and I was staying at a hotel that had a mini fridge the size of my foot so there wouldn't be any place to store leftovers. But that ended up not being an issue. The pizza is very very thin, so even though it's cut into about 6 slices, they aren't very filling on their own. I tried the wiseguy side first and it came with roasted onion, house smoke mozzarella, and fennel sausage. Despite not having any tomato sauce, it was very flavorful and each was tasty bite. The fennel flavoring to the sausage was a nice touch. As for the margherita side, it was what you would expect of a margherita pizza. It was good and I was glad I was able to have half a pie of it but I was glad I didn't get a whole pie of it because it would have been a bit boring on its own. My one small gripe about the pizza was that there wasn't enough cheese on it. I know, traditional Italian pizza isn't drowning in cheese either, but just a bit more gooey cheese would have been nice.
While the food here was fresh and I had a very enjoyable lunch, I'm not sure I would say it's the best pizza in the country (in fact I still think Roberta's is better) nor would I ever wait over 2 hours to eat here. But if you happen to find yourself by the convention center and can come on an off hour, it's definitely worth a stroll over. Total price: $28 with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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