The Ladieth Weekend Day Two Part Um ... Two

It started innocently enough ... this talk of pizza.  At noon.  A few glasses of wine into the Urban Wine Tasting 'Hood or Hawt Extravaganza.  We were hungry.  And maybe a bit hung over.  Everyone was having a good time.  Shouldn't we move this on into the evening?  A little dinner?  How about some pizza?  We could pick up a pie at Patxi?  Or wait!  What about Little Star?

And before SSG knew it, the gloves had COME OFF peeps.

A full on debate over which place had THE BEST Chicago style pizza west of ... Chicago.  Or let's just say in the city of San Francisco.  Because by the time hint of a head to head taste test started picking up some steam we were getting weigh ins from people not even in our group.  What about Cheeseboard?  No, no!  That was East Bay.  And if you're going to do East Bay then you'd have to consider ... some name SSG can't remember.  But WAIT!  That's New York Style!  Patxi and Little Star are Chicago Style, shouldn't we keep it the same STYLE?  

BW was vigorously pulling up text messages on her phone--modern day evidence of what pizza Bree Mastaa hinted at liking best a few weeks earlier.

Could there be a bias?  

Would this really be a competition if everyone already had a clear favorite?

And that's when SSG did it.  

She suggested a BLIND Chicago Stye Patxi vs. Little Star straight up pizza SMACKDOWN the likes of which have never before been attempted ... we think.  

BW's eyes bugged out of here head "You're like BLOWING MY MIND right now."

(SSG swears no one was high in this reenactment.)

By the end of the day we had a plan.  Three groups.  D Mac was on the wine (What? You think we'd stop?).  SSG, Digs and Spleen would hit up Little Star.  BW, The Shoe and Bree Mastaa would pick up Patxi and we'd meet at Bree Mastaa's place where her hubby and some of his friends would join us after a day of golfing.  Everyone peeled out of the parking lot with their charge.

There was a slight hiccup when "pepp" was misinterpreted as peppers instead of the intended pepperoni and Patxi wouldn't change the order less than 2 minutes later.  F-ERS.  But the ladies were resourceful.  Our car received a text message "We're back on track!  I repeat, back on track!  Third pizza ordered!"  

Less than an hour later we pulled up to Bree Mastaa's penthouse.

SSG was distracted momentarily by the VIEW.

Hello gorgeous!

How you doin' fog rollin' in on the San Francisco Bay and covering up the Golden Gate Bridge ... you bastard.

Hi Digs!

The bad part about having a blog is no one wants to look at you when you have a camera in your hands.

Hello?  

Anyone? 

(Actually that's SSG, Spleen and Digs from left to right.  SSG doesn't like to get in photos either.  And UH, what the San Francisco humidity does to SSG's "let's pretend our hair isn't curly straight hair."  So TOTALLY kidding.  That's not SSG at all.  Don't let that bossy finger pointing fool you.)

Moving on ...

It was decided that D Mac and SSG would be the "platers" as neither had eaten at Patxi or Little Star.

Categories were determined. 

• Crust
• Sauce
• Toppings
• Overall Score

We decided against presentation when we hacked the ginormous slices up into twee little smackdown sized slices.

Pizzeria One was on the left, Pizzeria Two on the right.

Things around the table were serious folks.

There was much tasting of the cheese and each individual sauce--was it too oregano-ey?  Is there such a thing?  Is this crust undercooked?  Or is that crust OVERcooked?  Could people use decimal points?  Did anyone know which pizza was which?  Who, going into the smackdown, had a clear favorite?

After the second round of tasting, and before SSG knew it, she was deemed "moderator" (perhaps because she's boss ... er, opinionated).

Everyone had a chance to weigh in but a clear favorite prevailed.

Patxi took it.  

Hands down.

Don't worry if you don't understand SSG's score card.  She didn't either.  But she does know THIS ...

If you're ever in San Francisco, hit up Patxi.  And tell them the Pizza Smackdown 2009 sent you.