333 Dick Rd, Depew, NY 14043
Web: Buffalo Pizza-Fest
Phone: 716.903.0542
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"If you're planning a visit to Buffalo Pizza-Fest, you'll be pleased if you show up with $15 per person, expecting a fun meal with a wide variety of pizza choices and 1980's music."
We came. We saw. We ate - probably too much. And after the two of us had finished nine total slices of pizza at Buffalo Pizza-Fest, a weekend event held at the Hearthstone Manor in Depew, we didn't feel as if we'd uncovered any major local culinary treasures. But we wouldn't blame the 15 participating pizzerias for that: each brought stacks of pre-made pizzas to sell by the slice, and had to keep them warm for hours at a time. So even though the organizers ask participants to vote on the area's "best" pizzas, this isn't really the right place to judge such a thing; thus, the report that follows is just a brief guide to what we saw, what we tasted, and what we thought about the event as a whole.
Buffalo Pizza-Fest charges an $8 general admission fee per person at the door, which is discounted to $5 if admission is pre-purchased at any of the pizzerias, or $2 for kids under eight years of age. Before you enter the banquet hall, you'll also need to pick up food and drink tickets that are sold for $1 each, as individual slices are offered for 2 tickets and drinks generally go for 2 or 3. With your hand stamped and meal tickets purchased, you're ready to go inside the doors, and it's obvious from moment one that this event is designed to be something closer to a fun, all-ages pizza party rather than a place to find the area's best pizza. Everything's ready to be served in an instant on paper plates, and the pizzerias are generally stocked with menus, cards, and occasionally coupons to entice you into future visits.
In addition to plenty of music from the 1980's and 1990's - Lou Bega's Mambo #5 was playing when we first arrived, followed by Axel F from Beverly Hills Cop and Kenny Loggins' Footloose - the first thing we noticed inside the hall was one of the KITT cars from Knight Rider, near a booth set up with images of Mr. T and other TV icons of the "Me Decade." Most of the other booths against the walls were for pizza parlors, with a few miscellaneous snack and other vendors scattered around, while dining tables occupied much of the remaining space. A dance floor for kids was centrally located near the back of the room.
Some of the pizzerias were very familiar to us, so we didn't need to try anything at their booths: Bocce's, Just Pizza, and Palladino's are all amongst our local favorites, while two others - Molinaro's and Zetti's - were no-shows despite being listed as participants. Of the 12 places we hadn't tried before or haven't revisited recently, we sampled the following eight.
Mister Pizza is especially well-known on Elmwood, but the Amherst location (853 Niagara Falls Blvd, 716.837.6500) was exhibiting here with traditional and specialty versions. This was our first destination at the Pizza-Fest, and we found the Buffalo Chicken Pizza to be pretty good, with slightly spicy pieces of chicken embedded in a four-cheese topping. The real thing can be ordered with the chicken hot, medium, or mild in spice, a nice touch.
We decided to go with a traditional cheese and pepperoni slice at Getzville's Besta Pizza (2343 Millersport Hwy., 716.688-1500), and were offered the option of sweet or traditional sauce. We chose the former, and though it wasn't really sweet - we suspect the slices might have gotten mixed up - the slice was fine. It was also one of the smallest we were served at the event.
John's Pizza & Subs (1436 Niagara Falls Blvd., Tonawanda, 716.832.4343) was there to represent its four locations, one of which we liked quite a bit when we last visited 10 or more years ago. The small-ish piece was good, and included enough nice, spicy pepperoni to satisfy both of us.
Though we'd never heard of Papa Leo's (36 Main St., Lockport, 716.434.4222) before this visit, its BBQ Chicken Pizza was the best slice we tried at the event, with a sweet, spicy BBQ sauce in place of the standard tomato paste, and a very good balance of meat to cheese and dough. It was a lot like a California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Chicken pizza, only with a thicker crust and no cilantro; both of us would have gladly eaten an entire pizza like this one.
Ricota's Pizza & Subs (206 Elk St., Buffalo, 716.823.7636) had one of only two traditional cheese and pepperoni slices we tried here that we didn't like much. It was medium in size and somehow managed to be light on flavor despite offering a fair number of pieces of pepperoni and thick cheese.
We were enticed by a ticket pitch - two slices, three tickets - at Domani (formerly Antonio's Pizza, 620 Dick Rd., Depew, 716.685.2100), and chose pieces of Chicken Marsala and Cheese and Pepperoni pizza. While the latter was okay, we didn't like the gooey Marsala, which tried to integrate fine mushrooms, chicken, and a slightly runny tomato and wine sauce into a narrow slice with less than spectacular results.
Deniro's Pizzeria (2251 George Urban Blvd., Depew,
716.681.5555) was one of the more unusual traditional cheese and pepperoni slices we tried. While the thick doughy crust was undercooked, all of the other parts were really good: we liked the spicy sauce and pepperoni, as well as the fresh cheese. Of all the Cheese and Pepperoni slices we had at Pizza-Fest, this one came closest to making a positive impression, though Bocce's and Palladino's are in a different league.
Our final visit was to Mazia's Pizza (10225 Main St., Clarence, 716.759.2803), which offered a few interesting options. The one that caught our attention was the unfortunately-named Desperate Housewife, which featured an olive oil base with hot peppers, spinach, chicken strips and mozzarella cheese. While the ingredients really appealed to us when we saw them on the booth's menu card, the small slice was surprisingly bland - overloaded with spinach, lacking in chicken, and mild on peppers. The restaurant's full menu includes other TV-inspired pizza names, too.
Notably, the slices we sampled were only a fifth or sixth of what was being offered at Buffalo Pizza-Fest; each pizzeria brought two, three, or four different pizzas to serve by the slice, with white pizzas and multi-cheese steak pizzas popping up with some frequency behind plain cheese and cheese/pepperoni versions. It would take appetites much bigger than ours - think about that one for a minute - to eat anything close to a representative sample of what's being served here.
Despite that fact, the organizers ask patrons to vote for the "best" pizzas in 30 different categories - that's two categories per participating pizzeria - and will be issuing additional awards based on "crowd votes." As critical as we may be when it comes to food, even we wouldn't feel right making any sort of judgment on which pizza was really the "best" in any category at Buffalo Pizza-Fest; to be fair in just the "Best Pepperoni Pizza" category, a person would need to try 15 or more slices. Moreover, we wouldn't want to rate a single place here based on how its pizzas taste after being heatlamped for hours, unless that's how it normally serves its slices. Thus, if you're planning a visit to Buffalo Pizza-Fest, you'll be pleased if you show up with $15 per person, expecting a fun meal with a wide variety of pizza choices and 1980's-themed musical entertainment. Save your judgments for the follow-up meals this event will certainly generate.
