Finally, the inevitable has happened. You’ve probably been wondering how many trips to Phoenix it has to take for a food blogger to tackle Pizzeria Bianco and the answer is far too many. Pizzeria Bianco, for those who are not in the know, has regularly been recognized as the greatest pizza in the country and that is no small claim, especially considering we are talking Phoenix here and not New York or Chicago. With that title, as expected, the place is nearly impossible to get a seat at, at least during normal eating hours. During abnormal hours, like 4:45 on a Thursday afternoon, things are a little different and we found multiple open tables and took one for ourselves.
For four of us, there was much discussion about what to order. As this was THE Pizzeria Bianco and I was sharing, I opted to partake in whatever pizzas were ordered, regardless of whether or not they had veggies. I did, however, make sure to take those veggies off before eating them. The first pizza we ordered was the Biancoverde, followed by the Wiseguy and an classic Margherita topped with soppressata to make things interesting.
The Biancoverde is basically a white pizza topped with greens, which I suppose is obvious if you know Italian. The white part consists of fresh mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano and ricotta, while the green part is arugula. There is also no sauce on the pizza. As I had expected and hopefully for the ease of my eating, the arugula was tossed onto the pizza after cooking and was easy to remove. With my first bite, I could tell why the place had gone with the name Pizzeria Bianco, because this pizza was awesome. It had just the right amounts of each cheese and the crust was incredibly tasty. Of the three pizzas, this was definitely my favorite.
The Wiseguy comes topped with wood-roasted onion, house-smoked mozzarella and fennel sausage without any sauce. And once again, Pizzeria Bianco made it easy for me to eat. As opposed to the onion that some pizza places use, these were huge chunks of onion and easy to remove. Unfortunately, though, I found the pizza to be lacking in flavor compared to the Biancoverde. Perhaps this was just in comparison and the Wiseguy would have been amazing in another pizza place, but not so much at Pizzeria Bianco. I think a little sauce might have gone a long way on this pizza, but realistically the sausage should have provided enough flavor to keep me satisfied.
Finally, there was the Margherita. True to its name, it was topped with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, plus the soppressata that we had ordered on top of it. At the very least, I wanted one pizza fit for an unvegan. And while this pizza was fit for me, it also did not hold up to the power of the Biancoverde. In this case, it wasn’t lack of flavor, but that the soppressata was overly salty. In my prior experience, I have found soppressata to add a nice kick like pepperoni, but better and unfortunately that wasn’t the case here. Again, I don’t know if this was in comparison to the Biancoverde or not, but I have to say it was disappointing to me.
So while the Biancoverde was truly worthy of Pizzeria Bianco’s fame and the crust is undeniably amazing, I have to admit that I expected something better. For a place to be called the best in the country, every pizza should make you beg for more and I didn’t feel that way. I would go back for the Biancoverde and encourage anyone who goes to Phoenix to check it and the other pizzas there out, but I must sadly say that it is not so special to merit traveling to on its own accord.
Hey Zach,
Its Dustin’s friend Micah. Hope your time in PHX was great and the wedding planning is going well (congrats, BTW)! Anyways, I do have a question regarding the unvegan process and grading. As I’m sure you’re plenty aware, often times veggies and other items you regularly discard have very specific purposes in the dish, be they for flavor or texture or both. When discarding them, you’re disrupting the harmony of how the dish was intended so to speak. Thus i wonder how fair it is to grade something that you yourself are altering? Is it fair to say the pizza was too salty when you opted to add an additional salty element to it (in this case the soppressata) or the converse when you’ve removed something from the dish? Thanks. Take Care.
Hey Micah-
I definitely understand what you’re saying here. I know that those veggies absolutely serve a purpose and that throwing an additional topping on a pizza can throw off the balance.
But here’s the thing…I know what onion tastes like and I know what the texture of an onion is. In fact, it’s the texture that bothers me most, so when I removed the onion from the pizza, it definitely retained some of the flavor because of its juices and while it lost the texture, I didn’t have any problem with the texture.
For the soppressata, it was the meat itself that was overly salty. Perhaps this might have been magnified by some salty element of the base pizza, but really they should have found a less salty soppressata or simply put less of that meat on there.
Again, I definitely get what you’re saying and hopefully the readers do too, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a sausage pizza to have flavor and for cured meats to be distributed on a margherita pizza in such a way that I can enjoy it without being overpowered by salt…