Who has the best slice of pizza in Long Beach?
A group of friends try to find the answer during a pizza crawl
Three years ago, 23-year-old former Long Beach High School student Katherine Leonetti and her friends started a pizza crawl in Long Beach, “as a fun way to appreciate some of everyone’s favorite local businesses around town — Long Beach pizzerias.”
Leonetti said that the people of Long Beach tend to have very strong feelings about which pizza place reigns supreme, and being pizza aficionados, Leonetti and her friends, Samantha Silverman and Sydnee Grushack, came up with the idea as a way to celebrate their favorite food.
On Saturday, Aug. 11, a group of approximately 20 people gathered at East End Pizza around 4 p.m. to start the third annual ‘Pizza Crawl.’
“As Long Beach culture can sometimes be a little ‘bar-centric,’ we thought it would be a clever play on the ever-popular bar-crawl idea without the heavy drinking,” Leonetti said. “In loyal Long Beach fashion, we ride bikes to each pizzeria in town, stopping for a single slice each and filling out self-styled grading rubrics to democratically determine the overall slice ranking.”
The winner this year? Out of seven pizzerias, West End Pizza took the group’s prize for the second year in a row.
“It had the best score in the four elements we grade by: cheese, sauce, crust and overall slice integration,” Leonetti said, adding that she ate a slice at every stop.
“I ate seven slices of pizza, which I’m not proud of, but I did it,” Leonetti said, laughing. “Not everybody could handle it … towards the end you’re kind of in pain, but you get bragging rights.”
The stuffed pizza-lovers called it quits around 9 p.m. and said they plan to continue the pizza crawl next year.
“We consider it a silly and affectionate, albeit modest celebration of Long Beach’s small businesses and local culture,” Leonetti said. “It’s something that we enjoy, so hopefully we’ll do it again next summer.”
