Mmmmm...Villa Victoria, Chianti, oh excuse me...
OK, the good news -- we're going to Star Tavern. The bad news? The first slice kind of left me cold. We hit The Brothers Pizza in Red Bank. Despite some really cute toddlers with pizza all over their faces, and their sweet moms who assured me I was going to taste great 'za, I was a little underwhelmed. The plain slice was just tolerable. The slice with sausage and mushroom was better, because the sausage and extra cheese gave it some much-needed sass. The bottom of the pie was way too light -- cardboard in color. Looks like a nice bar, though, good mix of characters midday. We're now heading north to South Amboy, where I will definitely switch to beer.
If the Munchmobile was going down the shore (where I grew up), they should have keep right going thru Red Bank without stopping.
Instead, the MM should have gone to either Carmen's Pizza (Pete & Elda's Tavern) in Neptune City, or Federici's in Freehold - both have excellent thin crust pie.
Up here, I think the best thin crust I've had so far is at the Lido Restaurant in Hackensack, near where I used to live before becoming a Baristavillian (or is that Baristavillan?). Michaels over on Kingsland in Nutley is pretty good too.
But I think the all-time best pizza I have ever had was at Luca's at the Monmouth Mall, where they operated out of this little 8-sided hut outside the mall that had room for maybe 8-10 people to sit at a small counter. Perhaps my memory is clouded by childhood nostalgia, but there was something about the taste and texture of their pizza that I have never found anywhere else. Maybe it was their pizza ovens? After they moved them out of the kiosk and into an outside storefront during a mall renovation, their pizza never tasted the same again.