Costanzo's Jersey Style Pizza

Some of the best pizza in Savannah has gotten better. Costanzo's Pizza is now under new ownership and while many things haven't changed, the quality of the pizza has changed. The ingredients are the same, but the quality control is now in place and it is producing a much better pizza than before. Tonight we went with a large (18") mushroom pizza, with 1 slice of it cheese for our son. This thing was so good, I felt like I could eat about 3 of them.

Costanzo's is Jersey Style pizza and they also offer pizza by the slice. They have a great Monday - Friday lunch special of 2 slices & drink for $5.00. One of the best deals in town for one of the best pizza's in town.

This pizza came from the original Waters Ave location across from Memorial Hospital, but they also have another location further down Waters at Eisenhower. They offer dine in, take out, and delivery services.

Fini's Pizzeria - Pizza and Garlic Knots

I know I've posted about the Fini's in Flowery Branch before, but I don't think I've touched on the original, and my most frequented location. We first stumbled on this small restaurant while living in an apartment in Duluth. The guy that started it was around all the time and it was neat seeing the owners and his family work the busy space on a Friday night. They've since expanded the empire, but the food quality is still great and the staff is always friendly and accommodating to the pickiness stylish specificity that we sometimes have. We opted for a 12" supreme with spinach instead of onions and a side of garlic knots first. (I was in the range of hunger where you feel like you are going to starve if you don't eat in the next 13 minutes.)

The pizza was great as always. The crust at Fini's is a thinner crust, but not like a cracker. There's enough dough to get the idea that you're eating pizza and then a crispy bottom that holds the slice together while you hold it up. I think I remember hearing the owner one time say he wishes he could just get rid of the forks in the restaurant so nobody would eat the pizza with a fork...I always thought that was so cool. It would be even cooler if he actually did it, but still pretty cool to say in front of a customers. My digression was to get to the point that you can just pick it up and eat it...no greasy floppy mess. The garlic knots were fine. Maybe a little overcooked and hard, maybe not enough butter and garlic, but I'm used to the greasy vampire bombs from Provinos as my garlic standard, so take that with a grain of salt.

"Your Pie" in Savannah

Your Pie, @YourPie, is a new made to order pizza restaurant in the heart of downtown Savannah (located behind Five Guys & Ruth's Chris). The concept here is very simple...everything is fresh and made to your order. You have several different sauces to choose from, several cheeses to add, and then every topping under the sun to put on top of your pizza. Your crust options are white, wheat, and gluten free. The pizzas are then baked thin crust style in a giant open flame brick oven. Our pizza was out to us in under 5 min. Now that is a quick fire! The pizzas are 10" and are perfect size for an individual meal or make a few and share them with everyone at the table.

As for my pizza: I went with a basic marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, feta cheese, mushrooms, green peppers, capicola, and garlic. This pizza was amazing, but next pizza I get, I might go without the garlic. The garlic pieces on the pizza were huge and I feel like I might be breathing garlic fire for the rest of the weekend. I can't wait to go back and come up with new and creative pizza combos.

My wife got the Caprese Salad in the wheat bread bowl. She added garlic to her salad and had the same complaint as I did. It is just too much. The garlic needs to either be minced or cut into smaller pieces. How they make the bread bowls for the salads was pretty cool as well. They keep a stone bowl in the oven until it is needed to make a bowl (all salad bowls are made to order). The then take the dough and place it over the bowl, which then goes back into the oven. A couple of min later they pop it off and just like that you have the pizza crust bread bowl.

The kids meal (we just got our son a simple cheese pizza) comes with a small gelato. They have about 10 different flavors on hand and we chose to go with the Cookies & Cream. It was also very good and was a nice way to cap off the meal with everyone getting a couple of bites.

All in all it is nice to have a new-fresh dining option in Savannah. These always seem few & far in between. We look forward to going back and wish Your Pie nothing but huge success!

Polka Dot Pig Gastro Pub in Augusta

This is a new restaurant in Augusta that has been open for a month. We decided to give it a shot and it was pretty good. We started off with a White Pizza and an order of Duck Empanadas as our apps. The white pizza is fire cooked with 5 different cheeses, fresh basil, and a garlic pesto. The empanadas were filled with duck, roasted black cherries, and crumbles of goat cheese. Both apps were very good and I would gladly eat them both again. For my main course I got the Chipotle Braised Beef Short Ribs with Jalapeno Mac-n-Cheese and Roasted Corn with Green Chilies. The short ribs were perfect. The mac-n-cheese was different and was on fire with every bite. Not really my cup of tea, but it wasn't horrible. Still, I would have been much happier with the old standard mac-n-cheese. All in all, they have a lot of different tastes on the menu and I would gladly go back. Hopefully though they will have things flowing better and get kinks worked out while shaking off the new restaurant rust. They only had 1 high chair for the entire restaurant (not good with as many tables as they have). Also, our apps came out within 10 min of ordering. We didn't get out main dishes for another 45 min. It was worth the wait, but it shouldn't have taken that long.

Recent Mastications

Included here are a Mighty Eighth Burger from B & D Burgers, Chicken Parm from Carrabba's and Guiseppie's Pizza in Bluffton, bowl of Golden Grahams, Hot Pastrami from Subway, homemade pizza, birthday cake from Publix, Angus Burger from McD's, Triple Play of Chicken/Salmon/Steak from Longhorn's, the All-American "Burger" from Arby's, ABC Sandwich with Greek Salad from Atlanta Bread Company and a Real Fruit Lemon-Lime Slushie from Sonic.

The Wreck at The Salty Dog Cafe, Hilton Head Island

Nice night out at South Beach with the family. I got the Lobster Flatbread which was garlic butter, artichoke hearts, lobster meat, and mozzarella cheese dusted with spices and baked over crispy flatbread. It was pretty decent and I washed it down with a Long Island Iced Tea. You will also see the view from our table on the outer deck.

http://www.saltydog.com/

Lou Malnati's Pizzeria

You can't go to Chicago without eating at Lou's! This place is an institution the originator of the Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza. As with every dinner we had in Chicago, we started off with the Calimari. This didn't disappoint at all. We then got a large Malnati Salad. This is Romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, black olives, sliced mushrooms, crumbled Volpi salami (which was like crunchy bacon bits), gorgonzola cheese and tossed with Lou's famous dressing with a touch of romano cheese. This bowl was so big, I ate two plates of salad, and through 5 of us we hardly made a dent in this beast.

It was then time for the main event...the pizza. We got one medium cheese and one large of "The Lou". The Lou consists of fresh spinach, mushrooms and sliced tomatoes covered with a blend of mozzarella, romano and cheddar cheese. That alone sounds great, but we kicked it up by adding in sausage as well. This took a great pizza and made it outfreakinstanding. I somehow plowed through 3 slices of this and I think I am still suffering from pizza sweats.

We then finished off this meal by watching the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup and by eating the warm Chocolate Chip pie thing. It was a chocolate chip cookie baked to the point where it was still soft and gooey. It was then topped with homemade vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. We only got one, but could have very easily made out way through 2 of these.

Recent Mastications

Some of what you will see here include my special homemade French Toast, various spinach salads with my homemade balsamic dressing, Publix rotisserie chicken (Mojo on the salad and Bacon Peppercorn on the plate), a cookie from Atlanta Bread Company, General Tsao's Chicken, Grilled Chicken & Shrimp from Red Lobster, Screaming Mimi's pizza, Chicken Sandwich from Wild Wing, and the worst cheesesteak (think it was made with Steakum's) and onion rings.