NOTE: You might remember that our previous visit to Athens did not end particularly well on account of a poor choice of toppings on our part. As such, we revisited the restaurant for a pizza with a far less putrid topping. The following review is a repost of our previous review, edited of course, to reflect our opinion of Athens Pizza sans loukaniko.

Located on West Main, Athens Pizza & Family Restaurant is a family owned institution calling Stamford its home since 1977. Athens contends that "[their] restaurant is clean, hospitable, and best of all, entertaining," and while we don't have a metric for "entertaining" (nor were we sure that it mattered), we're in the position to test most of that claim and then some.

Establishment. Athens Pizza looks to be a wonderful restaurant from afar, and to an extent, it is. Their dining room is large and open, with beautiful tiled floors, an abundance of windows flooding the restaurant with natural light, and staffed with personable, attentive servers. Unfortunately, this dining room is packed to the rafters with cramped, torture rack seating that can barely accommodate a party of four. The restaurant is considerably clean save for some stray food scraps tucked away under the tiny, impractical tables and a peculiar slippery film that coated every tile in the building. While we couldn't sit comfortably or juke a defensive back, we certainly could order off an amazingly diverse menu stacked with salads, soups a soup, hot and cold sandwiches, and a wide array of Greek specialties including gyros, souvlaki, falafel, and of course, traditional Greek pan pizza.

Pizza. In an attempt to expose the truth and to exorcise the loukaniko-flavored demons of reviews past, Athens put together a pretty respectable pizza for us this time around. While the crust still didn't have the same buttery, flaky, Greek-style texture we've grown accustomed to, it was still substantially chewy and crispy (surprisingly with some typically Italian-style char) despite coming up short in the flavor department. The cheese was up to par as well, with a delightfully stringy snap and a clean, fresh flavor hampered only by its inability to stay hot and not congeal. The sauce was a bit thick, tasting cooked down and overseasoned in addition to being a little over-proportioned, causing the cheese to slip around and for the pie to feel less than coherent. The difference this time is that the flavors present were good ones, so the overpowering nature of these ingredients was far less detrimental. Our topping of choice, sausage courtesy of De Yulio's Italian Sausage, was excellent as always, complementing the pizza as a whole as good toppings are wont to do.

The bottom line. Athens Pizza looks great from the outside and tempting from the dining room with a diverse, Greek menu and a pizza that's about average but certainly worth trying as long as loukaniko has no place on top of it.

Establishment: 20/30
Pizza: 19/30
Hits the Spot: 6.3/10
Large Cheese: $12.75

Just when it seemed like we were finished, we got a request for this little gem that slipped past us despite having been around Stamford for 17 years. Impossible to visit during normal Pizza Tour hours, we had to make a special Monday afternoon excursion down to Canal St. for this one.

Establishment. Catering to the office lunch crowd, Vinny's Dock House (not to be confused with Vinny's Backyard) is primarily a deli and is open accordingly ("Daily, In Season from 7:30 am," for what it's worth). Located dockside (no surprise there), Vinny's has a very unique ambiance, clean indoor and outdoor tables, and a view of the water that you can't get elsewhere (save for Paradise Bar & Grill). The service was what one would expect of a deli: quick, businesslike counter service that was less than personable, but personable enough. Vinny's menu includes breakfast options, salads, hot and cold deli sandwiches served on Arthur Avenue breads, hot special entrees (meatloaf, chicken, pork chops, fresh fish on Fridays), pastas, and thin crust personal pizza à la "The Colony."

Pizza. Modeled after "The Colony's" iconic bar pie, the pizza at Vinny's Dock House evolved from a traditional Italian-style pizza "in the pan" to its current, derivative product upon customer requests over Vinny's time in Stamford. The whole wheat crust (which was admittedly a secondary option as they'd run out of their primary white crust) was extremely thin, making up for a prominent lack of flavor with an overabundance of crunch and char. The cheese tasted average at best with its weak flavors and rather salty notes in addition to being very dry and congealing fast (not unlike Colony, after all). The sauce was a relative highlight of this pizza, tasting of fresh tomatoes with a light, clean, simple bitterness and little else. That said, this underseasoning did not impress everyone. Our topping of choice, homemade meatballs, made this pie much more palatable due to both their abundance and immense flavor. Nonetheless, this aspect was unable to pull Vinny's pizza from its role as nothing more than a mediocre bar pie imitation of one of the most overrated pizzas in Stamford.

The bottom line. While we're sure Vinny's Dock House is a fine deli, their pizza is a lackluster imitation of admittedly better pies in town, with flashes of meatball brilliance that left us wondering what this pizza would be like if it would just be itself (that's the moral of the story, kids).

Establishment: 17/30
Pizza: 16/30
Hits the Spot: 5.3/10
Large Cheese: $7.50 (12")

Located on West Main, Athens Pizza & Family Restaurant is a family owned institution calling Stamford its home since 1977. Athens contends that "[their] restaurant is clean, hospitable, and best of all, entertaining," and while we don't have a metric for "entertaining" (nor were we sure that it mattered), we're in the position to test most of that claim and then some.

Establishment. Athens Pizza looks to be a wonderful restaurant from afar, and to an extent, it is. Their dining room is large and open, with beautiful tiled floors an abundance of windows flooding the restaurant with natural light. Unfortunately, this dining room is packed to the rafters with cramped, torture rack seating that can barely accommodate a party of four. The restaurant is considerably clean save for some stray food scraps tucked away under the tiny, impractical tables and a peculiar slippery film that coated every tile in the building. While we couldn't sit comfortably or juke a defensive back, we certainly could order off an amazingly diverse menu stacked with salads, soups a soup, hot and cold sandwiches, and a wide array of Greek specialties including gyros, souvlaki, falafel, and of course, traditional Greek pan pizza.

Pizza. There aren't too many good things to say about this pizza and we could chalk it all up to our topping of choice, loukaniko. This authentic Greek pork sausage, flavored with fennel, anise, and orange peel offended both our palates and our sensibilities, coming back to haunt us in the form of wretched burps and scarring memories for the remainder of the day, if not longer. The sausage rendered this pie just short of inedible, exuding oil such that the pizza looked like a waxy mess from the moment it hit the table. The crust was nothing like the buttery, Greek style crusts we've come to know and love, it was chewy, airy, and largely flavorless. The cheese was absurdly greasy (again, due to Mr. Loukaniko) but passable in the flavor department, however, it congealed almost immediately, forming a shell like coat that slid around across the thick, now loukaniko-ized sauce like Brian Boitano in the 1988 Olympics. It pains us to have a single ingredient weigh so heavily on our opinions as this devil sausage did, but thems the breaks for now.

The bottom line. Athens Pizza looks great from the outside and tempting from the dining room, but our visit was inconclusive, as it was unfairly tainted by a extremely poor choice of toppings on our part.

Establishment: 20/30
Pizza: 13/30
Hits the Spot: 2.7/10
Large Cheese: $12.75

UPDATE: We've decided to give Athens another bite at the apple, so to speak, as our penchant for choosing unique toppings if a restaurant offers them just plain blew up in our face on this particular visit. This review will stand as our honest opinion of this particularly topped pie, but shouldn't speak for the quality of Athens' pizza in general. We'll be back.

UPDATE 2: We went back.

Located in Glenbrook, Nick's Pizza has a quiet but loyal following and reputation as a quality family restaurant with great value. Touting a "long tradition of Italian cooking" and origins in "a small town near Naples in Southern Italy, where pizza first originated" Nick's sets the bar high from the get go.

Establishment. Nick's Pizza seems, quite honestly, to have somewhat of an identity crisis. We walked into what looked like the classic model of a counter service pizzeria. Upon surveying all of the tables in the main dining area and finding none that weren't taken or consumed by large puddles of water, we ventured into the back room to find a touch of class that we never would have expected. Nick's small, low lit auxiliary dining room with a full bar, large, comfortable hardwood booths and dinner rolls (glorious, glorious dinner rolls) welcomed us in from the laminated pressboard jungle we'd left. The service was nothing short of excellent as our waitress was very attentive, personable, and lightning quick. Not surprisingly, the menu was laden with Italian specialties and pizzas with numerous topping options and specialty pies.

Pizza. For as extraordinary as Nick's establishment is, their pizza is twice as underwhelming. While the crust was phenomenally flavorful and yeasty, it was easily the strongest aspect of this pie, hearkening back recent memories of the aforementioned glorious dinner rolls. Nick's sauce was conservative and underseasoned, bordering on bland and the cheese was average at best. The texture of this pie caused the bulk of its score to melt away, as it seemed undercooked and uncharacteristically floppy. Surprisingly enough, the pizza came to the table piping hot and remained as such throughout the bulk of the meal, so go figure. The slices of meatball that topped our pie were a bit on the bland side as well (see a pattern?) but they were perfectly tender albeit so sparsely distributed that we kind of wanted more. Such was the theme of this pizza: decidedly mediocre for many little reasons rather than a huge, glaring one.

The bottom line. Nick's Pizza is an interesting establishment with two considerably different restaurant atmospheres, both of which make a very average pizza at best.

Establishment: 24/30
Pizza: 16/30
Hits the Spot: 5/10
Large Cheese: $12.25

Located on East Main Street, Stamford Restaurant & Pizzeria is a little Italian restaurant hidden amongst a rug store, Just Cats, and Exit 9 Bagels. We were pleased to host two guest judges on this leg of the Tour, including our fellow local blogger JR of Streets of Stamford and Bryan, a Burrito Tour veteran.

Establishment. We were greeted at Stamford Pizzeria by a rather pungent aroma at the door of an otherwise presentable, intimately lit, and (mercifully) neutrally smelling dining area. Moderately sized, this restaurant was large enough for our party of five, as we were quite comfortably seated at a long table beneath a kitschy full relief map of Italy complete with little light-up landmarks. The service was excellent at first, but tailed off and became less attentive and much more frustrating over the course of our meal to the point where we were on the verge of begging for our bill. Cleanliness was also suspect, as the bathroom is located in the kitchen and kind of grossed us all out. Stamford Pizzeria's menu consists of the standard Italian favorites as well as both specialty and traditional pizzas.

Pizza. We've sounded off on the mediocre establishment, but despite all that, this pizza is very good. The crust was rather tasty and well proportioned with just the right amount of char. Accompanying it is an average sauce that was underseasoned and in short supply, but otherwise complementary to the overall pizza despite a lack of bold flavor. Stamford Pizzeria does not seem to skimp on good ingredients, as this pie was generously covered with high quality cheese for a fresh flavor and a stringy consistency that wasn't excessively greasy (but could, and did cause the cheese to slip off the pie with ease). Our topping of choice, Italian sausage, also came in the form of high quality, flavorful, meaty chunks. Stamford Pizzeria's thin crust pie cooled a bit too quickly for our liking, but was very good overall.

The bottom line. Stamford Pizzeria is a frustratingly average establishment with a decidedly above average pizza in spite of many gaudy shortcomings not at all related to the food.

Establishment: 18/30
Pizza: 23/30
Hits the Spot: 8/10
Large Cheese: $10.60

AWARDS WON:

2009 – Best of East Side

2009 – Tournament Finalist (7th place)