Since known Connecticut pizza lover Dave Portnoy came to Rentschler Field last weekend for the University of Connecticut’s football’s contest against The University of Massachusetts Amherst, now seemed like a good time to review every single UConn dining hall’s pizza.
I tried a slice of cheese pizza from every UConn dining hall that serves pizza on a consistent basis (Whitney only occasionally offers pizza) in one day and here are the results.
No. 7: Putnam
This slice confused me. None of the different ingredients seemed to go together, giving this pizza something of an identity crisis.
Let’s start with the cheese, because it was one of the lone positives. It tasted fresher than almost every other dining hall and was abundant, forming hardened puddles of cheese flowing off the slice by the time I took it from the pan.
The crust, however, tasted more like something you’d expect at a 7-Eleven, and the sauce would be at home on a Totino’s Pizza Roll. In any case, this pizza doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s the kind of pizza you forgot you ate just minutes later. The five minutes I spent eating this pizza were gone from my brain in the blink of an eye and I’ll never get them back.
No. 6: North
This is pizza by only the most technical terms. Yes, there is bread, sauce and cheese. Sure, it came in the form of a triangular slice from a circular whole. Beyond that, there’s not much more that combines these ingredients into a collective and recognizable product.
Attempting to chew this slice transformed my mouth into a cement mixer, requiring sips of water in a move out of Joey Chestnut’s playbook to get the slice down. The bottom of the slice was drenched in grease from sitting on top of other slices on an overflowing pan, and the cheese squeaked between my teeth from the sheer amount of grease.
While the crust wasn’t bad, it would have worked better as a breadstick than as the base of a pizza.
As a picky eater who has continuously and stoutly defended North Dining Hall since first eating there on UConn Bound Day over three years ago, even I can’t defend this slice. I’ll be back on Wednesday for the sundae bar, though.
No. 5: Connecticut
My first pizza of the day, this slice came straight out of the oven. I may have even been the first patron at CT to eat a slice of pizza that day, an accomplishment I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
This pizza was very saucy, with a sea of tomato separating the cheese and crust at the top of the slice. While the sauce was too sweet for my liking and the cheese-to-sauce ratio leaned far towards the latter (I prefer a cheese-heavy pizza), I appreciated the cornmeal on the bottom of the crust giving the slice extra texture and the crunchy cracker-like crust. While it was nothing mind blowing and far from my first choice, it’s the first slice of pizza on this list that I would eat again.
No. 4: South
I expected South to rank slightly higher when all was said and done, but I was underwhelmed.
Things started off well, as the cheese string produced by pulling the pizza from the pan got me excited for what was to come. However, my enjoyment plateaued from there, as the actual slice was a little too soft and bland, with an almost artificial taste. The slice was so dominated by cheese that I had to actively search to get a taste of the sauce.
Maybe my mouth was still burnt from the molten-hot cheese on the pizza at Connecticut. Perhaps my past enjoyment of South pizza, which could have been influenced by an overreliance on toppings, set my expectations too high. In any case, I was underwhelmed in this particular instance, leaving South with a middle of the pack ranking. Still, I gave South the benefit of the doubt in placing it above Connecticut.
No. 3: Northwest
Northwest offered a very similar slice to South. The one noticeable difference is the pizza had been cooked for just a little longer.
There were pros and cons to this adjustment. While parts of the cheese were slightly burnt, the undercarriage was more well done and left the pizza with more of a crunch.
I also preferred the sauce. Maybe it was the same; maybe there was just more of it. Who knows? To me, it tasted slightly tangier and definitely less sweet than the others, which I enjoyed.
This may sound like a knock, but Northwest’s pizza reminded me of a frozen pizza in the best possible way; I would recommend this one.
No. 2: Gelfenbien Commons
This was the last slice I tried after a long day of eating dining hall pizza. My morale was low and my interest in eating what would be a ninth slice of pizza was even lower.
The pizza from the Gelfenbien Commons brightened my mood. A thicker pizza than the others around campus, the pizza featured a spongy yet crispy undercarriage, reminding me somewhat of a Domino’s pan pizza. The cheese-to-sauce ratio was also spot on. It was just a solid slice of pizza all around.
The individual swiping ID’s at the entrance did recommend the “cheesecake apple” pizza, which was unfortunately not available when I went. That was okay, since it kept me from eating double-digit slices of pizza in a single day.
While I was still glad to be done eating pizza, the slice from the Gelfenbien Commons was a high note to end it on.
No. 1: McMahon
As I walked into McMahon, the first thing that caught my eye was a table of three guys with at least 10 rectangular plates stacked in front of them.
That’s closer to the norm than an outlier, as McMahon is as well-known for its pizza as any other UConn dining hall is for anything else. When I pitched this piece, there was the unspoken assumption that McMahon would claim the No. 1 spot, and for good reason.
Featuring a thin crust coated in cornmeal, a sweet yet subtle sauce and the most flavorful cheese of any, the lightweight slice is an amalgamation of all the positives from the other dining hall pizzas wrapped into one and thrown into a brick oven.
This is the type of pizza I would pay for, because I do; $3,448 per semester to be exact. Still, if this pizza showed up at my front door in a box, I’d be happy I decided not to cook for the evening.
Then again, I never cook. I go to a dining hall. Now, I’m just hoping walking to all these dining halls burned off the calories.