February 21, 2009

The Overview

The purpose of The Stamford Pizza Tour is to crown an undisputed pizza champion of Stamford, CT. To these means, we have assembled an elite team of pizza tasters and a comprehensive scoring metric to be used throughout The Tour.

The Tasters
The Pizza Tour tasting team will consist of three full-time judges and as many as two guest judges per restaurant. The full-time judges will participate in all legs of The Pizza Tour, while guest judges need not judge any more than one restaurant (they are, however, encouraged to lend their services as often as they like).

The Scorecard
The Pizza Tour scorecard is divided into two sections: establishment and pizza. The establishment segment consists of the following categories: parking, hours of operation, service, seating, atmosphere*, cleanliness, menu, drinks, and restrooms.

The pizza segment consists of the following categories: crust*, cheese*, sauce*, texture, ingredient slip, temperature, and toppings.

Each category carries a weight on a scale of 0-5 (categories marked with an asterisk may carry a weight on a scale of 0-10) to be decided by each individual judge. All weights must sum to 30 points in establishment and 30 points in pizza sections. An additional "Hits the Spot" metric carries a weight of 10 points and is meant to capture the overall quality of the dining experience.

At every restaurant, we will order a large pizza, half plain cheese and half some topping to be decided on site. All participating judges will record scores for each category based on their personal (unpublished) criteria, all on a scale of 0-5. At the conclusion of The Tour, all scores will be tabulated and compared, triumphantly pointing us to the best pizza in Stamford.

The Awards
At the completion of The Tour, we will proudly award Best Establishment and Best Pizza to the restaurant with the most points in their respective sections. Further, we reserve the right to award runner-up awards to restaurants that exhibit admirable intangibles that deserve recognition.