Santarpios Pizza (East Boston)

Santarpios Pizza

111 Chelsea St, Boston, MA 02128

http://www.santarpiospizza.com/

After hearing friends rave about Santarpios, some even claiming it was better than Pizzeria Regina, Joe and I finally ventured out to East Boston to check it out for ourselves.

We walked in around noon and already 1/3 of the tables were full. Joe and I split a pepperoni, mushroom and onion pizza. After about 15 minutes the pizza came out piping hot with a mouth watering aroma. The pizzas are 12 in. pies, but since they're loaded with cheese and sauce, one is big enough to feed two.

So not to be a hater, but there's something I didn't enjoy about both Santarpios and Pizzeria Regina: the crust in the middle of the pie was soggy. I like my crust to be crispy on the bottom throughout so I was a little disappointed to pick up the slice and have all the cheese and toppings fall out due to soggy crust syndrome. I blame sauces that are too watery- but that's just my two cents.

Once you get past the soggy tip of each slice, the pizza is wonderful. The sauce is flavorful and full of herbs, the crust is crispy, the toppings are fresh and the cheese is gooey.

In my opinion, I think Santarpios and Pizzeria Regina are pretty similar and I couldn't really choose a winner, but Santarpios is definitely somewhere I'd go back to.

For those who care- the pie and 2 sodas ran us about $18 (pre-tip), so not expensive for a fresh made-to-order pie, but I wouldn't call it cheap either.

As a side note, I'm going to the Yu Family rating system (1-100). This one gets a 70.