One local man is on a journey to find the best pizza in Guelph, reviewing them as he goes.
GuelphToday sat down with Guelph’s newest, and possibly only, pizza reviewer, Saturday afternoon over a slice to get all the greasy details about his latest endeavour.
Justin, known as iLikeDinosaursRoar on online forum Reddit, has been posting pizza reviews for the last few months in the Guelph subreddit, which have garnered a bit of a following, uniting the pizza-loving community in Guelph.
Once or twice a week he will post a review of a pizza from a new spot, ranking it based on dough, crust, sauce, cheese, freshness, grease, toppings and mouth feel, adding up each score for an overall total.
“Mouth feel” is an homage to an episode from the popular sitcom, Brooklyn 99, where one of the characters ranks pizza for crust, cheese and mouth feel.
It’s essentially the taste and texture of everything combined when you start eating it.
“For me, it’s what tastes good. You almost want to lick the plate when it’s done because you’re so happy with how it tastes.”
So far he’s ranked 14 places, with Victoria’s Pizza on Edinburgh in the running for first place with a ranking of 7.6
It might not seem high, but he’s not one to give perfect scores.
Each pizza place is ranked on the first slice. He tries to keep his orders simple to capture the “average” pizza order. Plus, it levels the playing field, since you should be able to get a cheese or pepperoni pizza at pretty much every pizza joint.
So what makes a good pizza?
For Justin, it’s a sturdy crust (but not too much crust), a hefty amount of sauce and cheese, with a liberal amount of toppings that don’t fall off when you take a bite. It should also be fresh and greasy, but not too greasy.
“That, to me, is kind of the perfect pizza.”
But he has yet to find a 10/10 pizza, and doubts he ever will – that rating is reserved for only the most mind blowing of pies.
It all started with his mission to find the best pizza for himself.
“And then I just thought, maybe I’ll rate it,” he said. “On Reddit, if there’s not a post about (how) to make friends around here, I feel like there’s a food post – what’s the best place to eat this or that.”
So what makes this guy qualified to rank all the pizza in town? Not much.
He wasn’t much of a Yelp or Google reviewer before this, and doesn’t consider himself to be a professional pizza connoisseur.
“There is no reason to trust me. I’m not a pro in any sense. I just think I love pizza as much as anybody else,” he said. “Everyone has different tastes. What I’m going to rate this pizza is based off my experience, my preference.”
He acknowledged, too, that it’s hard to rate places off one visit, because of external factors, like who’s working, and how busy or understaffed a place is.
“It’s a guide, I guess. Don’t take it as gospel… (but) this is the average person’s take."
He’s entertained by the traction it’s garnered in recent weeks, but is also “a little proud of it.”
“I don’t take it super seriously, but it really surprised me how much people have taken to it.”
Every single post is filled with comments of appreciation and lively discussion around Guelph's pizza scene; someone even made a graph tracking his reviews.
“It just kind of took a life of its own, he said. “I started posting a couple and it was like, oh, this is getting a lot of attention. I didn’t expect that.”
He’s hoping others will want to join him on his reviewing journey along the way, and would love to run a pizza festival at the end with the top 10 contenders.
There are at least 60 Guelph pizza places listed on Google, and Justin estimates there might be around 150 in total. A daunting task to review them all, but he remains undeterred.
He thinks it will take a few years for him to get through them all.
“I might have to review salads after this,” he said.
