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Pizza Tour 2020 Results - Off-Boardwalk Edition

Normally, our group of five spends one entire evening tasting, reviewing and rating a slice of pizza from every pizzeria on the Wildwood boardwalk. (If you're interested in our last boardwalk pizza evaluation, check out the results of Wildwood Pizza Tour 2019!) For more info, read the 'About the Pizza Tour' page!

2020 Pizza Tour Details

For the 2020 Pizza Tour, we wanted to be safe and respectful of the COVID-19 pandemic and realized this was the perfect year to try something different: An evaluation of EVERY pizzeria OFF the Wildwood Boardwalk. So, we rounded up pizzas from Wildwood's 12 off-boardwalk pizza shops and tried them all! Reviewing the off-boardwalk pizzerias is the #1 request we've received over the years and we're so excited to finally have had the excuse to do it!

Pizza Places Reviewed: 12
Overall Average of All Pizzerias: 3.1 out of 5
Reviewers: Brian, Chris, Frank

 

The Pizzerias

Wildwood Pizza Tour 2020 Off-Boardwalk Pizzerias

The pizzerias we reviewed (numbers indicate each pizzeria's location on the map above)

  1. Carini Ristorante & Pizzeria
  2. Sal's Pizza & Italian Restaurant
  3. Poppi's Brick Oven Pizza & Kitchen
  4. Mr. D's Pizzeria
  5. Piro's Pizza
  6. Rose's Pizzeria
  7. Romeo's Famous Pizzeria
  8. Italian Kitchen Express
  9. Bill's Corner Deli
  10. A&LP
  11. Dolce Italia
  12. Joe Joe's Pizzeria

How did we choose which places to review? We specifically wanted to evaluate the true pizza shops of the Wildwoods -- as in, businesses that specialize primarily (or almost primarily) in pizza.

 

The Best Off-Boardwalk Wildwood Slices 2020

3rd Place: Piro's Pizza

Piro's Pizza - Wildwood, NJ

Piro's Pizza Wildwood NJ slice

If you've spent basically any amount of time in the Wildwoods, there's a good chance you've driven passed Piro's Pizza on New Jersey Avenue numerous times -- and if you haven't ever stopped, now's the time. Don't let the unassuming exterior fool you; these guys know how to make a great pie!
 
What impressed us the most this pie was the attention to detail. Whether it was the flavorful crust (which actually made meaningful flavor contributions to the slice, unlike a lot of pizzas), or the ring of sweet sauce acting as a buffer between the crust and cheese, or the plentiful and flavorful cheese and spices, no aspects of the pie are overlooked -- This slice, by all means, is carefully and intentionally constructed.
 
Note that this review is about Piro's Pizzeria -- not to be confused with [the now, as of 2021, permanently closed] Piro's Restaurant on New York Avenue.
 
 
Address: 4023 New Jersey Avenue, Wildwood, New Jersey 08260
Phone: 609-729-3235
Overall Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Brian: 4.5 Chris: 3.5 Frank: 5.0
Cost: $14.00 for 16" Large Pizza
 
 

2nd Place: Poppi's Brick Oven Pizza and Kitchen

Poppi's Brick Oven Pizzeria and Restaurant

Poppi's Pizza Wildwood NJ Pie

Poppi's has made a name for themselves in the Wildwoods with their wood-fired, traditional Neapolitan style pizzas. Each pie is cooked in less than 2 minutes in a 800 to 1000 degree Fahrenheit oven, and this preparation, without a doubt, comes through in the pizza's delectable flavor. The thin and charred crust, the sweet sauce, and the punchy, flavorful cheese set this pizza apart from just about every other slice on the island.
 
The pies are relatively small for Jersey shore pizza, measuring just 9 or 12 inches total diameter for the entire pie. This is dangerous, because each bite is so delicious that it makes you want to immediately take another -- It's safe to say that no Poppi's pie is safe from being finished off in its entirety, even by a single hungry person.
 
 
Address: 4709 New Jersey Avenue, Wildwood, New Jersey 08260
Phone: 609-600-3964
Overall Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Brian: 4.0 Chris: 4.5 Frank: 4.5
Cost: $12.11 for 12" Large Pizza

 

1st Place: Romeo's Famous Pizzeria

Romeo's Pizza - Wildwood NJ

Romeo's Pizza Wildwood NJ Pie

Picking up a pizza from Romeo's in 2020 is certainly unlike any other year in the pizzeria's 45-year history. Pacific Avenue is closed to vehicle traffic. Folks are casually wandering the pedestrian safe haven, seeking outdoor food, drinks and entertainment options. Billy Jack, who would normally be entertaining guests indoors with his classic rock tunes, is instead in the street singing and strumming his acoustic guitar.
 
Approaching Romeo's, the doors are wide open, the smell of pizza and old-time music pouring out onto Pacific Ave. The pizza maker, through is mask, is singing along with the radio before welcoming us and proudly informing us that, "we're a Sinatra kitchen." 
 
We break open the box, grab slices, and wow! When we think of traditional Jersey shore pizza, this is what we think of -- cheese with lots of flavor, a complimentary touch of sweet sauce, the perfect touch of spice to pull it all together. Even the flavor of the crust, which can sometimes feel overlooked or undervalued on some pizzas, made positive contributions to the flavor. This pizza has its act together. 
 
Pacific Avenue has a long and fascinating history and, since 1975, Romeo's has been a part of it. Wildwood Pizza Tour 2020 made us realize why. 45 years in business isn't a mistake or good luck. With dinner and crazy-late night-owl business hours (5:00pm - 5:00am), grabbing a pie for dinner or for your late-late night cravings isn't a compromise on taste and quality. As a matter of fact, we have a feeling this flavorful pizza tastes even better in the late hours of the night...
 
 
Address: 3707 Pacific Avenue, Wildwood, New Jersey 08260
Phone: 609-523-1515
Overall Rating: 4.3 out of 5
Brian: 4.5 Chris: 4.5 Frank: 4.0
Cost: $16.25 for 18" Large Pizza

 

 

So, is the pizza better ON or OFF the boardwalk?

One of the biggest questions we wanted to answer is how pizzerias off the boardwalk compares to pizzerias on the boardwalk. What have we learned?

First, we should acknowledge a few variables:

  • On the boardwalk, we order a slice -- off the boardwalk, not all pizzerias offer slices, so we ordered full, fresh pies from all 12 pizzerias. Without a doubt, these are two very different ways to experience a pizza.
  • On the boardwalk we sample 20+ pizzerias -- off the boardwalk, we sampled just 12 pizzerias.
  • On the boardwalk, the 20+ pizzerias are stretched along the 2 mile boardwalk -- We picked up pizza from the off-boardwalk pizzerias and ate it all at once. We found the process of eating the off-boardwalk pizzerias less physically taxing because it required less walking and was much faster, which meant there was less time for our brains and stomachs to realize how full we were.
     

With all of these variables in mind, we statistically rated the pizza OFF the boardwalk better than ON the boardwalk.

OFF boardwalk (2020) vs. ON boardwalk (2019) averages:

Brian: 3.16 vs. 2.61
Chris: 2.83 vs. 2.57
Frank: 3.29 vs. 2.59

If you're interested in seeing how we rated the ON boardwalk pizzerias, check out the results of Wildwood Pizza Tour 2019.

 

Did you notice there was a tie? How we split it!

Wildwood Pizza Tour 2020

You might notice that Romeo's, Poppi's and Piro's actually had the same rating of 4.3 out of 5. Wow! What a great problem to have -- 3 absolutely delicious pizzas! 
 
To break the tie, we had to use a couple secondary metrics that we collect and evaluate. For starters, we looked at our "controversial" metric -- that is, which pizzeria had the widest spread of point ratings among the reviewers. It turns out that Piro's had a bigger variance than both Romeo's and Poppi's; Frank gave Piro's slice a 5 star review while Chris gave it just a 3.5. Romeo's and Poppi's both varied by just 0.5 points among the 3 reviewers, thus setting them ahead of Piro's in our collective opinions. To settle the tie between Poppi's and Romeo's, we looked at value (price and size). Poppi's 12 inch pie for $12.11 is more expensive, per square inch, than Romeo's 18 inch pie for $16.00, thus giving Romeo's the competitive price advantage.
 
Forget all of these details though -- The main takeaway is we loved all 3 pizzerias -- and we think you will too.
 

 

Takeaways about the Off-Boardwalk Pizzerias

Frank carrying many boxes of pizzas

We've been asked many times over the years if we'd ever review the pizzerias off the Wildwood boardwalk. We always wanted to but could never figure out when or how exactly to do it! It was terrific fun to finally make it happen. Even after visiting the Wildwoods for decades, we hadn't tried many of these shops!

And with that in mind, these pizza shops deserve a lot of credit. They aren't in the spotlight and among the lights and fanfare of the Wildwoods Boardwalk, yet we have learned that they're making some of the best pizza you'll find on the island! This is a really fun and exciting thing to discover. We hope you'll try some of these off-boardwalk gems the next time you're craving that delicious Jersey shore pizza!

 

 

Credits

Video: Brian, Chris, Dave
Video Editing: Chris
Note / Scorekeeping: Frank, Megan
Music: BenSound.com
Special Shout-Out: The Off-Boardwalk Wildwood Pizzerias, the "pizza pizza" guy from 2010