Writing about food and restaurants in San Diego, necessitates taking a hard look at one of the most popular foods in the world, pizza. My research for the story, tasting pizza, brought me to four pizza places in the city. I started at Sicilian Thing in North Park. The Vegeta pizza topped with feta, spinach, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and olives was crispy and full of flavor (in the interest of full journalistic disclosure, I ordered it without mushrooms.) I kept an open mind when I had the BBQ bacon and pineapple pizza. The flavors were sweet and spicy, and there was a great contrast in textures, from the crispy bacon and the pineapple. The Almost Lasagna pizza, a.k.a. meatball and ricotta pizza (round, thin crust) was delicious. The meatball slices had the perfect amount of garlic, enough to know it’s in there, but not so much as to be overpowering. The smooth dollops of ricotta cheese were a delicious complement to the savory meatballs. The crust was chewy and crispy like a good crust should be, and the marinara sauce was slightly sweet. The Sicilian slice (rectangular, thick crust) was light on sauce, but the crust was satisfyingly crunchy. At Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria in North Park, I ordered a deep-dish Margarita pizza. The pizza was generously topped with fresh basil, but once the basil was baked on top of the pizza, (not raw after baking) the flavor was weakened a little. The deep-dish crust at Lefty’s was very crunchy, and the sauce made from crushed plum tomatoes and slices of (baked-in) fresh tomato, tasted like it came from the garden. The mozzarella had a delicious, slightly salty flavor, and had a good sauce-to-cheese ratio, for the thick crust. Lefty’s menu includes Italian beef and Chicago dogs too. In terms of pizza, Lefty’s represented Chicago well! Bronx Pizza in Hillcrest has 17 varieties of New York style pizza. The pizza at Bronx is absolutely authentic New York style. Try telling that to a cynical New Yorker, and you’ll probably get a flat-out “yeah right!” like I did when I moved here. But after eating a slice at Bronx, the cynicism floats away,when you bite into a perfectly chewy and crispy crust. The pizza is made with the perfect ratio of sauce to cheese, so when you fold your slice in half, a melty blend of dripping saucy cheese pools at the bottom of the fold, at the crust. Bronx Pizza makes calzones as well as pizza, and their calzone was crispy, and filled with creamy ricotta cheese, and oozing mozzarella. Any pizza toppings can be baked into the calzones. Hoboken Pizza in Pacific Beach, makes a fantastic Sicilian pie as well as their classic round pizza. The Sicilian slice is a well-balanced pizza with major crunch, a delicious marinara sauce, and a plethora of mozzarella. The pepperoni on my slice curled up slightly, and had a great, almost singed flavor. As far as good pizza goes, Hoboken is legit.