“See Pizza, Eat Pizza”
Rating System Introduction
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
See Pizza, Eat Pizza has been in the works for months now. One of the questions I’ve had to ask myself was how (or if) I should rate the pizza I write about. While many food blogs forgo ratings altogether, I felt that a rating system would serve my needs best. A year from now, I want to be able to look back at my site and easily see how my tastes have evolved. I want to know if a pizzeria is declining in quality or improving over time. I want to be able to easily compare one location of a micro-chain (e.g. Grimaldi’s or Totonno’s) to another.
That all being said, I needed to implement a rating system that would be instantly understood by even a casual reader and/or pizza fan while not leaving any ambiguity about where I felt a pizza place fit in the grand scheme of things.
One of my favorite things to say about pizza is that “it’s good even when it’s bad.” That is to say, even a mediocre offering brings something to the table. With that in mind, my rating system is based on how many slices I would order from a reviewed location if I was at a normal level of dinner-time hungriness when I got there (I’ve always found that lesser quality pizza fills me up faster than the good stuff):
5 Slices: Exceptional pizza. A five slice pizza is skillfully prepared using high quality ingredients. There can be no ifs or buts in its description. Simply put, it is pizza immortality.
4 Slices: Very good pizza. Four slice pizza can be eaten regularly without growing tiresome. It’s good, but missing that “special something” that puts it over the top.
3 Slices: Good pizza. Three slices is definitely above average pizza, but it has a fatal flaw holding it back (e.g. overcooked crust, bitter sauce).
2 Slices: Decent pizza. Two slices pizza has some quality that pushes you into that second slice (e.g. nice sauce), but doesn’t do much else for you. Most random slices will fall into this category.
1 Slice: Bad pizza. One slice pizza is edible, but only because you’re hungry. There isn’t any particular feature of the slice that makes you smile, but it’s still pizza - and you’re still hungry.
0 Slices: Horrible Pizza. This is pizza so horrible that you debate whether or not you can even call it pizza. Zero slice pizza is so bad, you don’t even eat it when you’re hungry. This designation is applied perhaps more rarely than five slices as only terrible, terrible pizza with no redeeming qualities fits here.
