DaVinci’s Pizza Chestnut Ridge, Spring Valley, NY
Slice Rating
DaVinci’s Pizza Chestnut Ridge, Spring Valley, NY
Posted By: Mad Greek August 29th, 2011
Ok, so I didn't stay long enough to check out the legend of Panza Pie as we bid farewell to Saratoga Springs this morning. However, on pulling into Chestnut Ridge around 1 pm, and held to a standard of try it when you see it, DaVinci's Pizza of Chestnut Ridge (spring valley) was the pizza stop of the day.
It is interesting to note that when I arrived, a customer was just getting his personal 10" pizza boxed with a finishing handful of Pecorino Romano grated cheese sprinkled amply over the entire pie, and then cut into 8 small slices. It looked really good and the chef asked if we wanted a pie like that, but the Mad Hungarian had the call for a plain good old fashioned thin crust neopolitan pie. I obliged and we watched the chef prepare one fresh.
It was a bit tough to be certain, the fresh Grande cheese from Wisconsin was just that with no whole or skim milk mixtures on the pie. The tomato sauce was also fresh and made from pure California stock. The dough was also made fresh daily.
I have to admit, there was a lot of expectancy coming from the opening slap of the hand on the dough. Ten minutes later, while the pizza was good overall, I couldn't push the slice into the category of 6 or better. The best DaVinci's Pizza in Chestnut Ridge could muster up was a solid 5 out of 8 slices.
Its hard when each of the parts break the plain and should make a solid 6 of 8 on the scale, nevertheless add up to a 5 slice ranking. For instance, the cheese, a solid 6 to 7 in freshness on the slice; the sauce a straight plain semi-sweet and unadulterated pizza sauce was a fresh 6; and the crust, while not fully cooked to my well done request, a solid 6 to 7, all together don't add up.
Here's my theory, the DaVinci Pizza rolling pin. I'd use it as a rectifier to flatten someone's fingers or club some logic into someone's noggin, but I would never and I mean NEVER ruin the surface area of such fine dough attempting to make production line thin crust. Perhaps flattening the dough takes out critical absorption that allows the cheese, sauce and crust to unify into a single sum of the parts. If DaVinci were alive today, I wonder if he too, might say that the art of making pizza remain strictly hands on.
DaVinci's Italian Restaurant Pizza in Chestnut Ridge gets 5 out of 8 slices.