Pizza aficionados can be a rather obsessive lot, searching out the best of the best pizzas and making lists of their favorites. That's all well and good, but it might mean even more when the man at the top of many of those lists comes up with a list of his own.
In this case, that man is Chris Bianco, owner of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Ariz., and his list includes Sacramento's own Masullo Pizza (2711 Riverside Blvd., Sacramento). On Eater.com, the nationally known and highly regarded food website, Bianco prefaces his list by noting he is in London, has just turned 50 and is "thinking about places I'd love to be eating at tonight if I were somewhere in the U.S."
He came up with a list of 11 places, and says of Masullo Pizza, "Robert Masullo's pizza is alive, wonderful and never overly complicated."
That's great praise from someone so highly regarded in the pizza world. Bianco, who grew up in the Bronx, is a legend, and people are known to line up for hours or even sleep in their cars outside the pizzeria for the chance to try his pizzas.
You probably won't have to go to such extremes at Masullo Pizza - at least not yet. But now he's on the national radar, and this is a tremendous feather in his cap.
For the entire list, including two spots in San Francisco, click here.
Bianco points out that he has yet to visit Motorino, the highly regarded pizzeria in New York's East Village. Lynn and I were lucky enough to nab a table last fall, on a rainy Sunday night, and enjoyed the food immensely. I had stopped by there a year earlier, too. Una Pizza Napoletana is the pizzeria that inhabited that space before Anthony Mangieri, another legend in the pizza field, decided to move to San Francisco and get married. He reopened the business there and it is on Bianco's list. So is Pizzeria Delfina in the Mission District. These are all nationally known pizza destinations, and it is great to see a Sacramento talent recognized with these heavy hitters.
Blair Anthony Robertson is The Bee's restaurant critic. Follow him on Twitter, @blarob.
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