Journey Through A Pizza Tournament
The Story of the Kiasticuticus Memorial March Madness Pizza Tournament (For the Cure)
Actual image from one of our tasting sessions
A Word on Kiasticuticus
First off, who is Kiasticuticus? It turns out, we may as well ask what is Kiasticuticus, because we actually have no evidence that there was ever a person who goes by this name and whom we might be able to memorialize. The truth is, nobody seems to know who or what Kiasticuticus is. But for any true connoisseur of Mount Monadnock out there, the name should be naggingly familiar, for it comes from one of the mountains lesser-traveled but most spectacular spots, Bald Rock. On a large rock atop Bald Rock itself is carved “KIASTICUTICUS PEAK.”
Presumably, this act of hammer-and-chisel nature graffiti goes back to ancient times; the texts support this idea. But what the texts cannot tell us is who carved this or why. We scoured the internet and mined the indices of all the books, new and old, that comprise the Monadnock Canon. The best we could find is an offhand suggestion that “Kiasticuticus” means “bald” in Greek. This is false.
Not Kiasticuticus.
In fact, trying a reverse translation, Google comes up with nothing at all. The word, nonetheless, is clearly Greek in origin. And given that it does not seem to actually be a regular word, we are going to go ahead and extrapolate that it is indeed a proper noun and does indeed refer to a person. In fact, we’ve created a mythos around this. Though this is not entirely true in the Monadnock Region in the 21st century, pizza in small-town southern New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, parts of Connecticut, and parts of southern New Hampshire) has long been dominated not by Italians but by Greeks, who historically ran “Houses of Pizza.”
Thus, a new legend is born, for according to us, Kiasticuticus was the Great Father of all New England Houses of Pizza. It is fitting that he be honored on our mountain and practically mandatory that we name our tournament after him.
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
All of this did. Not that we have changed our minds about this, but sometimes it’s difficult to foresee potential pitfalls when staring a good idea in the mouth.
But a localized pizza tournament - why not? It was early March and everyone was busting out their blank brackets, ready to seek fortune and fame, and someone pointed out that all the pizza in the Monadnock Region was currently unrated, and that GoMonadnock would be uniquely positioned to address this. (Keene Sentinel awards do not count because Keene does not count.) And, in the spirit of the times, why not do it as a tournament?
As it turns out, there are several reasons why a true tournament, with actual brackets and all that, made no sense. How could we possibly “seed” the pizza establishments before we set out to compare them? Wouldn’t that just reaffirm any preexisting biases we had? Even if we found a way to do this, what if the top two, or even three, pizzas in the region ended up “facing off” in the same round? If only the top pizza in each round were allowed to “move on to the next round,” we would end up with an extremely inaccurate result. The overall best pizza, yes, could and likely would still win under such a scheme, but we wanted to get a sense of who the true runners up are, even if we ultimately didn’t share the full ranked list publicly (which we aren’t, for reasons covered below).
You could solve for this using some kind of double-elimination scheme or round robin format, but this would only make a tall task harder, for we were already running into other difficulties - namely, scheduling. Between the three of us, we’ve got incredibly diverse and complicated schedules, and judging pizza would require all of us to gather in one place at the same time. You can only judge so many different pizzas in a single session (I think our biggest session was six or seven, and believe me, that was pushing it), so we had to balance the need for multiple rounds with the difficulties of our limited free time. This then immediately pitted us against the varied and limited hours of the pizza places themselves. Sunday afternoons and Monday evenings were a particularly good time for us, but you wouldn’t believe how many Monadnock Region pizza places are closed on Sunday, Monday, or both.
Thus we instead set out to do the best we could, cramming as much pizza as possible into as few sessions as possible, and taking detailed notes as to the best pizzas each time. If the final victory came down to a tossup between two pizzas that were not tasted side by side, we would need to add an additional final round in order to make the final determination. Ultimately, this was not necessary, and I think our system worked just fine. But should you ever attempt a herculean effort like this yourself, here are some other common pitfalls you should know about:
It’s possible to get sick of pizza, no matter who you are. I can eat pizza - the same pizza, even - for three days in a row sometimes. I have no issue eating it for supper even if I had it for lunch. I always assumed being sick of it, for me, would be an impossibility. It’s not. I’ve still eaten it since our judging concluded but there’s a part of me that just hasn’t quite recovered yet.
If your stomach or digestive system is even a little bit sensitive (which I hate to admit about myself but has indeed become the case with age), mixing different pizzas together is a terrible thing to do to yourself. Even if you like all of them…there’s just something about mixing those slightly different sauces and cheeses and crusts all together in a soft lump inside yourself that is just not going to be an awesome experience. There were times when the entire length of my torso felt like skin stretched around a single giant gas bubble. You’ve been warned.
You’ll realize pretty quickly how passionate people are about this subject and how easy it is to deeply offend people - both the small business proprietors who bust their asses running our pizza joints and their fervent partisans. Of course, if you want to do this purely for private purposes, this is not a problem, and you’re always free to quietly insult your friends for their poor tastes. But for us, a visible public media entity taking this on with the intent of publishing our results for all to see, this posed quite a quandary. We do want to reward quality. We do not believe that all of the pizza places are good. But we also aren’t interested in gratuitously tearing anyone down. We addressed this in the following ways:
We introduced public voting for a People’s Choice Award because, while we value our own critical tastes above all else, popularity matters a great deal
We added a “Best New England Style” category to capture our runner up (more on this below)
Beyond our award winners, we will be keeping our full rankings private. (No, before you ask, we will not tell you who has the worst pizza.) Further, though we do present a sample of critical assessments below, we do not attribute those negative comments to any establishment by name. (Similarly, to protect the pseudo-innocent, we won’t be sharing who among us said what.)
Criteria and Parameters
Establishing a certain constant by which we could judge everyone was not all that complicated; we quickly settled on a small pepperoni pizza as the standard. (In cases where a “small” was not offered, we would choose the smallest available size.) Keeping the size as close to the same as possible was, we felt, important to be able to judge the pizza’s consistency, its ability to stay together. An antagonistic critic could certainly argue that the true judge of a pizza’s worth would be in the more standard large size, but this is just not practical for eating purposes unless we planned to purge between samples, and that’s disgusting.
Why pepperoni? We felt a single topping would be necessary because we believe respectable adults should not eat plain cheese pizza. On the other hand, it would be very easy to get lost in the weeds of complex toppings, and thus we landed on the single simplest, most common topping, which is also in experimental terms the most constant - it’s a near certainty that everyone in competition uses either Hormel, Carrando, or some other nearly identical brand of pepperoni.
Though we ourselves very much enjoy and approve of flatbread pizza, flatbread pizza is not true enough to qualify for this contest and was not considered. (With sufficient demand and after a reasonable recovery time, we could be persuaded to critique the region’s flatbread offerings in a separate tournament in the future.)
In addition, despite the many vocal pleas and write-in votes we received for Blackfire Farms Brick Oven Pizza, and despite the fact that we ourselves have had Blackfire Farms pizza and consider it excellent, we could not include it in our competition. This is not primarily because it’s a food truck as opposed to a brick and mortar establishment; we would have made an exception for that. The trouble was availability - you can only get Blackfire Farms at Granite Roots Brewing in Troy on Saturdays and it was not possible to match up this single-day availability with our tournament scheduling. We aren’t picking on Blackfire Farms for this - the truth is that no less a mainstay than Pizza Barn, which is only open three days a week, was very nearly disqualified for that same reason. Shoutout to Blackfire Farms anyway - get their pizza if you can, because it’s good even if we couldn’t judge it formally.
That brings us to the biggest controversy of all - radius. We could not and would not include Keene itself; that’s a given. They can do their own rankings. Aside from that, we began drawing up a loose radius of around 20-25 minutes, which made most of our decisions fairly easy. The one perhaps controversial candidate in this regard is Zizza, which is just across the Milford line, even though we declined to venture any further into Milford and judged no other Milford pizzas. We included Zizza nonetheless for three main reasons: first, it’s located in the fuzzy, blurry gas-station-and-dunkin-donuts border zone with Wilton; second, it’s within the 25-minute radius, typically a shorter drive than the Rindge options and scarcely a longer drive than nearby Wilton House of Pizza; thirdly, many people are familiar with Zizza from its recent origins up at Hilltop in Wilton.
One final note: we do not have many chain pizza restaurants in this region. If we did, we probably would have disqualified all of them on principle. Since, in reality, there’s only one - Domino’s in Rindge - we figured we could include it just to see. (Spoiler: Domino’s did not win.)
Certainly, there will still be omissions that some will object to given the outlined criteria. We did the best we could but still apologize for any perceived errors or slights and are open to feedback as to how we can improve any future tournaments in the years ahead (no, we are not going to do this annually, mainly because of the pitfalls - well, that and the fact that pizza places don’t necessarily change much year on year). We skipped Main Crust Pizza Co in Marlborough out of anti-Keene prejudice (it’s too close and on the way) and we missed Troy House of Pizza without a good excuse.
The Candidates
Peterborough:
Bowling Acres
Grappelli’s
Pancho’s Pizza
Pizza Barn
Pizza Peddler
Jaffrey:
Athen’s [sic]
Jaffrey Pizza Barn
Rindge:
Domino’s
Pizza Haven
Pizza Pie
New Ipswich:
New Ipswich House of Pizza
Pizza Haven Too [sic]
Wilton:
Wilton House of Pizza
Milford/Fuzzy Border Zone:
Zizza
Antrim:
Rick and Diane’s Brick Oven Pizza
The Experience, a Slice of Life
We did this in three rounds, each of us approaching the available options with our own private method, taking notes in complete silence so as not to sway one another with outward reactions. When everyone was done, we would compare notes, and usually some sort of consensus was arrived at. We also included other family members, some adults and some children, as informal judges. Their feedback was considered and in some cases recorded, but in no instance did it change the outcome of a given ranking.
Sometimes the pepperoni was flaccid and other times spry and crispy. The variety in the crust - the character of its bottom as well as the size and shape of its outer rim - was staggering, although what came as perhaps a surprise to me was how few of our contestants had large outer crusts. Not large in the sense of “thick” (thicc) like a “deep dish” pizza, but how far it extended beyond the edge of the cheese and sauce. Very few of the options, similarly, had visible pooled grease on the top (something I see as a desirable trait, but which is not a universally shared sentiment among us).
Cheeses and sauces, as one might expect, held to a certain baseline of similarity, such that outliers were immediately obvious - whether good or bad. A random assortment of notes, good and bad:
“Flatter crust than [redacted]. First impression - good. Like the cheese. Not too much sauce. Good flavor. Crunch.”
“Kinda terrible. Too much sauce. Cheese is lame. Crust unremarkable.”
“So-so. Crust wings up weirdly on edges. Flavor mediocre. Good in a pinch, otherwise forget it.”
“I really like the crunchy pepperoni; visually very appealing.”
“My inner child nostalgically appreciates this, but I don’t actually think it’s a good thing.”
“Smell is pepperoni-forward; sauce tastes worlds better than others.”
“Looks better than expected, BUT” (that’s it).
“Odd color. Unexpectedly good flavor - delightfully salty! Pepperoni not crispy enough. Love the airy crust, but it could also be a little crispier. Flavor becomes unexpectedly bad over time. Needs to be cooked more.”
“First reaction: tastes Greek. A little too much sauce, though, and not enough crust. This is like B-pizza.”
“Properly greasy - ooh yeah, that’s what a House of Pizza should be. Does not make the mistakes [redacted] made. Could be cooked a little more and I really want a more substantive crust here. The crust as it exists is all dough, no air.”
A Note on Options for the Allergic Population
Though this was not considered a criteria for judgment and did not affect the results, we wanted to take note of which of our contestants offered gluten free and/or dairy free options. This is good news for those concerned with the former and less so for those concerned with the latter.
Contestants with Gluten Free Pizza:
Pizza Barn
Panchos
Grappelli’s
Jaffrey Pizza Barn
Pizza Pie
Domino’s
Pizza Haven
Wilton House of Pizza
Zizza
Rick and Diane’s
Contestants with true* Dairy Free Pizza:
Pizza Haven
Grappelli’s
*Domino’s claims to have dairy free pizza but it’s just a regular pizza with no cheese on it; this does not count
The Winners
People’s Choice Award: Grappelli’s Pizza, Peterborough
Folks, this was not even a contest. Grappelli’s ran away with an astounding 77% of the popular vote, a true testament to the passion and loyalty of its partisans. And indeed, Grappelli’s - particularly under its relatively new ownership - exudes a certain exuberant spirit, warm, convivial, and friendly, with fresh ingredients and quality methodology - not to mention both gluten-free and dairy-free pizza choices. Huge congratulations to Grappelli’s - we encourage everyone, if you haven’t already, to get out and see what over three quarters of the region’s pizza voters are positively raving about (and we mean rave - though social media comments were not counted as votes, Grappelli’s would have won this poll as well, with by far the most fervent exclamation mark-laden customer comments).
Best New England-Style Pizzeria: Pancho’s Pizza, Peterborough
Ironically, given that we understand that Pancho’s is not Greek-owned, it offers the fullest experience in the region of what a Greek House of Pizza should be. In that sense, though it did not eclipse the overall winner, it can be said to actually represent the closest thing to what we hoped to find in this Kiasticuticus tournament.
The crust is properly thin underneath, yet has just the hint of crisp that we need, with its outer edges delightfully rich, airy, and even bubbly. When it comes to taste, it soars above the pack with respect to cheese, sauce, the balance between the two, and even the crispy pepperoni itself. After only a single bite, the excellence is apparent. If you are in or near Peterborough and don’t want to drive an extra fifteen or twenty minutes out of the way, this is a no-brainer - go to Pancho’s.
Winner, Kiasticuticus Memorial March Madness Pizza Tournament (For the Cure): Zizza Authentic Pizzeria, Milford
The truth is, Zizza is so good, we had to offer the runner-up category; frankly, having them in the tournament is practically unfair. Indeed, we recognized at multiple points that its presentation as something of a fancy pizza place put it in a different category than the other contestants. Perhaps that’s so.
Zizza deserves to win anyway and you need to know about it. Not only is it the only establishment that uses fresh mozzarella as opposed to bagged and shredded, they know how to do this so that it’s not just a few lumpy white icebergs floating in and sliding off of a vast red sea of sauce. Oh no - the balance here is masterful. The sauce is perfectly proportionate, a unique and subtle thin sauce that runs enough to slide blissfully onto your tongue. Like Pancho’s, it achieves the perfect level of thin, crispy crust underneath balanced with a generous, airy outer layer. The quality of ingredients, veritable craftsmanship in its execution, and that flawless, chef’s-kiss balance between all of it is what makes Zizza, easily, the king of the region’s pizzerias. And that’s just the pepperoni - wait until you try their fig and prosciutto!
Fair or not, it’s worth the trip, and we extend the heartiest congratulations to our tournament winner.
Thanks to all who participated, either by making pizza, voting, judging, or yelling at us - framed certificates will be delivered to the winners in the next few days, and we’ll also be announcing the winner of the free large pepperoni and soda to Zizza’s within that same timeframe.
