FIPS Food Throwdowns: The Pizza Edition [Joe's Pizza vs. Tomato & Basil]

If you’re unfamiliar with FIPS Food Throwdowns, it’s a monthly series where we order the same exact thing from two different Park Slope restaurants, get it delivered, and evaluate which was better.  It's a culinary smackdown...a triumph of the delivery will.

This month, it's pizza, and truth be told, I was more excited about this than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  And we know how much those heros on a half-shell love their goddamned pizza.

Say yes to pizza (and obesity!), say no to drugs!

You would honestly think that ordering a couple stupid pizzas would be easy, so I headed over to Erica's apartment so we could plot world domination and stuff our faces.  But it wasn't true.  IT JUST WASN'T TRUE.

Before I get into a full description of the dramarama that unfolded, let's review the FIPS Food Throwdown ground rules.

Both places will be judged by certain criteria:

Ordering ease: Ever had to spend 15 minutes on the phone just trying to order a fucking chips and guacamole only to find out they have a $30 minimum and don't take American Express?  Yeah, thanks, Los Pollitos II.  We appreciate it when a place makes it simple.

Price: Because you should never spend $40 on takeout unless it's 4AM, you're drunk, and you decide that you and your two friends need 5 large pizzas.

Delivery time: Anything under 15 minutes is a miracle.  Anything over 45 minutes, I'm grabbing my torch and pitchfork. 

How'd it hold up?: Soggy fries, leaking miso soups, cold pizza—even though I know my food is being slung over some guy's shoulder and transported on a bike, I'd like it to not look like it was. 

Taste: Obviously.

Bonus: Extra sauces?  Plastic containers that you can use again for lunch?  Score.

FIPS Food Throwdowns: The Pizza Edition

Joe's Pizza vs. Tomato & Basil 

Joe's Pizza: To be honest, I've never stepped foot into Joe's Pizza, so I don't have any descriptive words to say about it, but I DO have to comment on the misspelling of "Grandma" on their menu.  We all know and love Grandma pizza.  But "Grand Ma pizza?"  That shit is one letter away from being "Grand Mal pizza" and grand mal seizures are nothing to laugh about and SURELY not something you should have for dinner. 

Ordering ease: Eh, whatever.  They put us on hold for a couple of minutes, made us repeat everything.  The usual.

Price: $13 for one large pizza.

Delivery time: We ordered at 7:47 and it was there at 8:12.  That's 30 minutes exactly, which is the standard time for a pizza. 

How'd it hold up?:  Totally fine. The pizza was hot when we received it.

Taste: Underwhelming.  It was fine, it was pizza, but it was kind of bland.  There's a quote that says that pizza is like sex and The Simpsons.  Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.  I'll stand behind that quote for Joe's Pizza.     

Bonus: No bonus, unless you count the retarded menu that you can hang on your fridge to remind you of people's grammatical inadequacies. 

Tomato & Basil (226 Fourth Ave at Union St, 718-596-8855): Tomato & Basil might not look pretty, perched on Fourth Avenue next to the Hess Station, but I had word that it offered up some pretty banging pizza.

Ordering ease: I'm a true American, so I find accents annoying and off-putting, but I can see how someone might think that someone with an Italian accent at a pizza place would be a good thing.  We had to repeat everything twice, but really, no harm done.

Price: $14.84 for one large cheese pizza.  Not cheap, but not outrageous.

Delivery time: Okay, this is where I go crazy and try to suppress my urge not to march down to Tomato & Basil and firebomb the place.  We ordered at 7:45 and the pizza showed up when?  9 motherfucking 25.  9:25!  For you Communications majors out there, that's one hour and 40 minutes that we waited for ONE pizza.  It's not like we were all like, "Give me every pizza you have in the place and don't stop making them until all of the dough is gone. GONE I TELL YOUUUUUUUU!"  After about an hour, we called to check in on our pizza—the guy on the phone didn't apologize and said he was waiting for the delivery guy to show up, like that's supposed to be our problem.  After another 20 minutes, we called again.  Erica put on her bitch-voice (not really different from her regular voice, FYI) and demanded to know where the pizza was and also demanded that we get the pizza for free since it had been almost an hour and a half and we still had no pizza.  Mr. Customer Service scoffed at the idea of giving us a free pizza because the pizza will be hot when it gets there, as if a correct temperature negates the fact that we could have made our own goddamned pizza by now.  

How'd it hold up?: Surprise!  The pizza was lukewarm when we got it!  Also, you can see in the picture that one of the sides of the pizza got trapped on the box's edge and was scrunched up and burnt.

Taste: Here's the part that's a shame—Tomato & Basil makes a good pizza.  The sauce is delicious and the crust is good.  But the pizza was warm, and when I was eating it, all I could taste is the rage I had been choking down for ALMOST TWO HOURS OF WAITING TIME. 

Bonus: Psh, these bitches ain't getting no bonus points.

Ugh, I don't even want to declare a winner here, but Joe's Pizza wins by default.  Tomato & Basil would have won on taste alone, but waiting nearly two hours for a pizza is absolutely ludicrous.  Top that with terrible customer service and not even an apology for being a bunch of incompentent ass clowns?  DONE.  Tomato & Basil—you're DEAD to me.  Take your lukewarm pizza and shove it.