If there’s one food that kids are pretty much experts in, it’s got to be pizza.
So while we value the opinions of the almost 150 people that showed up for the inaugural Pizza Pie Showdown and named Constantly Pizza as tops in Concord, we thought in order to crown a true champion, there had to be a sample vote from a group of youngins. And one of the easiest ways to get a group of kids together is at school.
Now you probably saw that the Pizza Pie Showdown doubled as a fundraiser for the Friendly Kitchen, and it just so happens that right before February vacation, the students at Christa McAuliffe School put together a pretty impressive food drive. It lasted three weeks, and the elementary students collected more than 50 cardboard boxes of breakfast goods – cereal, peanut butter, jelly, raisins, brown sugar, oatmeal, coffee, hot chocolate, as well as necessary supplies like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap and cleaning materials.
For that effort, we felt they deserved to be rewarded with a pizza party. Unfortunately, we don’t exactly have the budget to buy slices for every student in the school – even though we would have loved to. They probably would have as well.
The student council was the top suggestion, and it fit right into our wheelhouse. There were 25 members representing grades 3 through 5.
The Pizza Pie Showdown included eight local pizza shops, but since the top three really distanced themselves from the field during the tally of votes, we got two pizzas from each place – Constantly, Vinnie’s Pizzaria and Sal’s Pizza – delivered to the school last Thursday for lunch. And then it was up to the kids to decide.
Unlike the Pizza Pie Showdown, where the local pizza establishments could bring whatever they wanted for people to taste test, we went with strictly cheese.
We actually think that’s the best way to tell just how good a pizza making operation is.
Each student got a slice from all three locations, but with a catch – they didn’t know which pizza was from which place. That’s right, it was a blind taste test.
The kids got a sheet with the letters A, B, C on it and were asked to rank the three slices from best (1) to worst (3), and add any comments they would have liked.
Of the 25 students, 11 sided with the voters at the Pizza Pie Showdown and chose Constantly as the winner, making them the undisputed champion – at least for the purposes of this exercise.
Also like the voters at last week’s event, Vinnie’s came in second with a total of eight first-place votes, followed by Sal’s with six.
Early on in totaling up the votes, Vinnie’s looked like they were going to have some redemption from the night before, as their pizza jumped out to a quick lead. But as we got closer to 100 percent reported, Constantly had made a comeback for a lead that proved to be insurmountable.
The fun part of it all, was that we also asked the students to answer a few questions. After all, we had to make them earn this little pizza party – beyond the whole Friendly Kitchen drive.
One of the questions we asked was where their family typically ordered pizza from. And since this was a blind tasting, quite a few offered up the interesting result where they put the place they normally get it from at home as last of the three.
We wanted to see if the students liked to branch out when it came to pizza, so favorite combo was a must ask. We got answers like garlic chicken, meatball, garlic chicken/spinach/ pepperoni, Hawaiian, mushroom and olive, as well as a number of votes for straight up cheese and ’roni.
Then to have a little fun, we wanted to know what the craziest combination they could think of. This is where things got interesting.
We had a few entries for candy pizza, as well as others that actually included specific kinds of candy.
There’s was one that said mushroom and bacon, which doesn’t sound all that outside the box, but if you add in ice cream then things might get a little messy. That wasn’t even the only one that wanted to add the frozen treat to their hot pizza – like another one that specified mint ice cream with sausage.
And get a load of this one: sauce, frosting, ketchup, prunes, chocolate, banana and cheese. Additional toppings included cotton candy, pickles, eggs, Doritos, Sprite (and seltzer), hot dogs and cow tongue. Not sure we’d add those to our pizza, but hey, it could be good?
All in all, this was a fun thing for us to do. We got out of the office, made the day for a bunch of good students and ate some pizza.
Thanks to the folks over at Christa McAuliffe School, most notably Principal Kris Gallo and student council advisors Bonnie Larochelle and Mike Pelletier, for setting it all up.
And congratulations to Constantly for grabbing yet another title.
