Located in the Newfield Green shopping center, Frascati doesn't have much local competition to speak of aside from Belltown. With that said, Frascati offers much more than such a cookie-cutter neighborhood pizzeria with its full menu, casual dining options, and table service that is not exactly commonplace in the Newfield area.

Establishment. Frascati is an extraordinarily nice looking restaurant. Greeting you as you walk in is an unprecedentedly attractive hardwood vestibule beyond which is a dimly lit, intimate dining room, not unlike that of Luigi's. While relatively small, Frascati manages to pack quite a few tables into their fancy premises. Their menu reads like a laundry list of fine Italian dishes including traditional appetizers and pasta entrees, while their wine list reads...well, like a wine list. The service was friendly and prompt, there were freshly baked and seemingly white hot dinner rolls, and the feel of the restaurant was overwhelmingly positive. Frascati looks and feels like a quaint Italian restaurant that also happens to serve pizza.

Pizza. Unfortunately, we can't be nearly as positive about Frascati's pizza as we've been about the restaurant itself. The crust is super thin and absolutely void of any crispness whatsoever. The sauce was very heavily seasoned with oregano, as was the pie itself making for a rather tasty base on which mounds of mediocre (albeit heavily oreganoed) cheese were forced to settle. The pizza came to the table scorching hot and the mass of cheese and delicious homemade sausage promptly slid right off the pie, making for a very cumbersome product that fell apart faster than the Yankees' middle relief. Frascati's combines average ingredients, very good toppings, a metric ton of oregano, and a frustratingly unworkable texture to make a decidedly mediocre pie.

The bottom line. Frascati is a very nice restaurant, but their pizza is nothing to write home about. Also, oregano.

Establishment: 25/30
Pizza: 16/30
Hits the Spot: 5/10
Large Cheese: $11.95

Located amongst stiff competition in Sorrento's, and not so stiff competition in Michelina's and Luigi's, Mario the Baker offers a family dining experience on High Ridge Road with bizarre quasi table service and a traditional Italian menu.

Establishment. If John the Baker has one of the worst on-site parking situations in town, Mario the Baker has the absolute worst on-site parking situation in town (unless of course, you park next door, but be prepared to be berated by the tenants of that lot). You wouldn't guess that there's only about four spaces in the lot by the size of Mario's relatively large dining room. Suitable for large parties, small parties, and yes, even pizza parties, Mario the Baker offers a comfortable dining experience complete with tons of seating in a dining room flanked by two beautiful, muted wall murals depicting an old Italian pizzeria. Their menu is also quite expansive, including full Italian entrees, wedges, daily specials, and specialty pizzas. However, we were put off by their halfhearted approach on table service, as we were waited on for our meal, but drinks and payment were essentially self service affairs. Overall, Mario the Baker is a nice place to eat.

Pizza. Unfortunately, Mario the Baker is not a nice place to eat pizza. Mario's product is very mediocre and bland. It came out of the oven scorching hot and hit the table as an amorphous blob of cheese. While the crust was mildly flavorful and crisp, the cheese was in extreme abundance and its flavor was not there at all. The sauce was a nothing short of average and due to the sickening amount of cheese on the pie, it was often overpowered. Ingredient slip was also an issue with Mario's pie as the cheese glacier sitting atop the crust had no problem inching its way down each and every slice. The sausage topping we ordered just added to the mass of ingredients on an otherwise good thin crust pie, and it wasn't really that flavorful either. This pizza suffers from having too many things of questionable quality on a very respectable thin crust and while we would probably give them them the benefit of the doubt and chalk this particular visit up as a bad day, on a good day this pie would be average at best.

The bottom line. Mario the Baker is a nice restaurant that offers plenty of hearty Italian entrees and a pretty boring pizza.

Establishment: 18/30
Pizza: 16/30
Hits the Spot: 5/10
Large Cheese: $12.13

North Stamford loves Michelina's Pizza for one reason: Michelina's Pizza delivers to North Stamford. Convenience is the only possible reason that anyone can enjoy the 16" garbage circles masquerading around as 18" pizzas from this loathsome hole. You would be best advised to disown any friend of yours that recommends Michelina's Pizza (unless they're mercifully recommending a non-pizza item) or at least offer to drive them to Speedy's.

Establishment. Driving up to Michelina's on a cold winter night, one might mistake it for a Roman bathhouse because the windows will be fogged up and unspeakable things will be happening inside. Michelina's looks more like a stock room than a pizzeria as it has no dining room to speak of and is designed strictly for take-out. The staff is very well-mannered via phone, Michelina's offers many reasonably priced ($5) non-pizza lunch specials, and the interior is as clean as stainless steel can be, but that's about it. Normally, this would be fine because its not unheard of to get extraordinarily good food from a proverbial hole in the wall. Unfortunately, this is not that hole in the wall.

Pizza. This is the unspeakable thing happening inside. Michelina's pizza is beyond abysmal. The crust feels, looks, and (one would imagine) tastes like wet cardboard. Cold, wet cardboard. The military should be doing research on the cheese because when it cools and congeals approximately an eighth of a second after coming out of the oven, it has the texture and bullet-stopping properties of Kevlar. Incidentally, the sauce has a unique ability to provide a tasteless medium on which the cheese may float indefinitely, independent from the crust. Only the provision of a binder clip could save Michelina's pizza from extreme ingredient slippage. Fortunately, ingredient slip was most welcome being as the sausage tasted like it had been soaking in a chlorinated pool before going onto that wretched pizza and into the oven.

The bottom line. Michelina's should not offer pizza. Seriously, every single thing on their menu that isn't pizza has got to be better than this pizza.

Establishment: 12/30
Pizza: 10/30
Hits the Spot: 2/10
Large Cheese: $11.95

Located amidst at least two other respectable pizzerias, Sorrento Pizzeria & Restaurant goes toe-to-toe with some of the best pizza in Stamford on a daily basis. It's evident by their rapport with regular clientele that they breed a special kind of die-hard and the pizza certainly helps to keep them coming back.

Establishment. Sorrento's has all the trimmings of a classy Italian restaurant with amazingly attentive servers (which may or may not have had something to do with our official clipboards) and a relatively comprehensive wine list (relative to pizza places, of course). We were put off a bit because the restrooms were colder than most meat lockers, but the scorching hot bread and butter shut us up real quick.

Pizza. Sorrento's makes an excellent pizza. While the crust was underwhelming, all other aspects of the pie were extraordinary. The cheese was phenomenally gooey, the sauce tasted of fresh tomatoes, and the pie stayed so damn hot that it almost defied thermodynamic principles. We would be collectively floored if the sliced meatballs that topped our pizza were not made in house as they too were tremendous.

The bottom line. Sorrento's offers an extraordinary overall dine-in experience and you certainly will not be disappointed with their product.

Establishment: 22/30
Pizza: 24/30
Hits the Spot: 8/10
Large Cheese: $12.25

AWARDS WON: 

2009 – Best of Turn of River

Luigi's is an interesting restaurant as it manages to squander all of its potential to surpass any other pizza establishment by neglecting the task at hand. They've got a great location, tons of parking, a beautiful, comfortable dining room and excruciatingly average pizza. Luigi's is so average, it's almost bad.

Establishment. As we've stated, you can get away with taking a gypsy caravan to Luigi's with more than enough room to park and sit. Intimately lit, this restaurant's atmosphere is bar none. With a little effort, Luigi's could snuff out their negligent servers and stop charging for fountain drink refills and run away with the Best Establishment title. But alas, we had to beg for our bill after our waitress disappeared only to find we'd been charged for an extra few sodas.

Pizza. We're hard pressed to deem Luigi's pizza anything other than average. The cheese was alright. The crust wasn't anything special. The sauce wasn't anything to write home about. We can't quite recall what the topping of choice was, so we'll say it was forgettable. Average. Par for the course. If Luigi's was a hole in the wall, its pizza would have scored higher. Unfortunately for them, low lights, traditional Italian music, and complementary buttered rolls have a tendency of setting the bar a little higher than they could jump.

The bottom line. When you go to Luigi's, order spaghetti.

Establishment: 23/30
Pizza: 17/30
Hits the Spot: 4/10
Large Cheese: $12.95