Holiday Pizza Is One For The Books

What do pizza and reading have to do with each other?

conducted a “Taste of Italy” for teens this week as part of its summer reading program. The activity was part of a six-week program that exposes students to various things like photography, art and food, along with creative writing and book discussions, according to assistant librarian Cheryl Chamberlin who organizes these activities for the youth.

She decided on the pizza event after reading about a similar idea from a library in the Midwest. 

“Taste of Italy” was limited to 10 to 12 youths in grades 7 through 12. The group of students was asked to decide which of five pizza eateries in town - , , , , and - had the best pizza based on the best sauce, the cheesiest, the best crust and the best overall slice.

Chamberlin had the five pizzerias make a cheese pizza for the contest. The boxes were labeled A through E so the tasters did not know where the pizza came from. Participants were given tally sheets to show their choices in each of the categories. They had to rate the categories with a 1 for highest and 5 for lowest, according to Chamberlin. Then the results were averaged.

The teens honored Holiday Pizza as the best pizza in Ellington. Holiday received the best results for best crust and overall slice as well as the highest average score. Ellington Pizza received high scores in best sauce and cheesiest pizza.

“This worked out great. The kids really took it seriously,” Chamberlain said. “They talked about the sauces, went back for seconds. I was really very impressed.”

Billy Saxton, the owner of Holiday, was pleased with the results.

“It was nice. I think it is excellent,” he said.

The he added with a chuckle, “I always knew I had the best pizza around ... Seriously this was awesome for them to do.”

Hannah Kogut, 16, was surprised to learn that Holiday pizza was the pie that was striking a fancy with her taste buds as she and her family generally frequent Ellington Pizza.

“I thought this was interesting. We didn’t know which pizza was which. I thought that was neat,” Kogut said. “It gave us an unbiased opinion of the pizza in our town. Holiday Pizza has a good crust and the sauce was good too.”

Madison Milanovich, 12 also thought the experience was a fun one. Madison said she is used to eating Pizzeria Da Vinci. She was able to tell when she ate a piece of its pizza even though the box gave her no indication it was from her usual eatery.

“It was fun to taste pizza from around town. I knew Da Vinci’s pizza because of the way it looked and tasted,” Milanovich said. “Holiday is my second favorite. It was fun.”

According to http://www.recipepizza.com/history_of_pizza.htm, Italian immigrants brought pizza to the United States. Gennaro Lombardi made the first pizza when he opened the first pizzeria in New York City in 1905. The restaurant was named Lombardi's Pizzeria Napoletana. The Second World War changed American pizza eating habits forever; the soldiers obtained the taste for it in Italy. The first pizza restaurant in Chicago was called Pizzeria Uno and was run by Ike Sewell. Pizza history was made when he made the first deep dish pizza.

Hall Memorial Library has other programs lined up for the end of the summer. Check out the Web site at http://www.biblio.org/ellington/ or call 860-870-3160 for more information.