Pizza lovers unite to judge town’s best pizza
If there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, Lyndhurst is a community rich in Italian lineage, culture and heritage. According to the 2000 census, 33.8-percent of the township residents were of Italian ancestry. That’s about one-third of the population.
Just as prevalent as the Italians that reside in Lyndhurst, so is the pizzeria. The township, although only about five square miles in total area, is dotted with pizzerias at nearly every glance. Go online in the yellow pages or Google pizzerias in Lyndhurst. You’ll get more hits than you have fingers.
An official tally by the township’s Emblem Club was 15. Last week the group reached out to each and every pizzeria for a friendly competition/fundraiser to declare a winner of who had the best pizza. The funds from what was finally dubbed the "Pizza Challenge" would supply a Lyndhurst High School student with a hefty $1,000 scholarship.
So the stage was set, but unfortunately, the pizza places weren’t. Of the 15 letters sent out to the township-wide pizzerias, eight showed interest. But by the contest on March 2, only three were prepared for the ultimate taste test.
"We had eight committed, one wasn’t open on Sunday, one doesn’t make a plain pie [a must for the competition] and I think some others just had things come up," said Emblem Club secretary Pat McPherson. "The best pizza places in Lyndhurst are the ones that showed up." 
Despite the pizzerias’ dismal interest, over 100 residents arrived, ready to chow down. At $8 a ticket, the scholarship was just about covered and the eating began. The rules were simple, the three participating pizzerias, Turano’s Pizza Pasta Grill, Chris’ Pizzeria and Giovanni’s Stuffed Bread and Pizza had to cook up 10 pies each, cut them into 16 slices and serve them up in secrecy. The judges, all 100-plus critics who know their pizza, were given three different colored tokens. Each represented one of the participants.
"I really think it’s the flavor. It’s not just the cheese…you need the right spices to make it a good slice of pizza," said 15-year-old Alex Goad of Rutherford. Goad, while seated at a table of four, was tasting very carefully with only a couple slices on his plate…but across from him, with a stack of slices in front on his plate, was 40-year-old Mickey Gentile. His thought process was the more you ate, the more you could distinguish the taste from one another.
"We love pizza. I’m starting to definitely taste a difference, but they’re all good," said Gentile as he took a couple brief breaks between chews.
Across the room, another packed table was debating which one suited their taste buds best. The argument there was whose was cooked to just the right crispiness, which applied the right amount of sauce and what pizza had the cheese quantity and gooeyness just right where it didn’t slide off the slice, but perfectly displaced the dryness of the crust.
"I read about it [the competition] in the newspaper and thought this was just a great, adorable idea," said Donna Bellina, who was courted by a brood of four youngsters to chow down for the cause. "There’s a lot of pizza places in town and we definitely eat a lot of it."
Jamie Kelly, a 14-year-old sitting with Bellina said her loyalty to Chris’s Pizza, the place she usually frequents, may not entirely change, but her palate did when she put a piping hot slice of Turano’s to her mouth.
"I thought Chris’s was my favorite until I had Turano’s," she said. Kelly, apparently filled in on whose pies were which during the contest, led the consensus that Turano’s was in fact the people’s choice. And by the end of the day and nearly 500 slices later, the Stuyvesant Avenue pizzeria prevailed.
Owner Dave Turano, who has only been in business for four years, said he has been around the pizza business nearly his entire life. However, he said the honor of dominating a town so true to its values in knowing what a good pizza pie really is, was a befitting honor for such a young pizzeria.
