Fessler’s Pizza

I recently attended a “Veracity” comedy show at @improvcincinnati. In this show series, sketches are improvised based on the stories told by a guest speaker. This particular event featured Cincy’s food etymologist @dannwoellert who discussed the history of Cincinnati pizzerias, namely those from East Fairmont (i.e Cincinnati’s Little Italy). Woellert detailed how many of the city’s earliest pizzerias, including @larosaspizzeria, @pasqualespizza_newport, and @angilos_pizza derived their recipe from the pizza served at San Antonio Church events in the 1940s by Sister Blandina Segale (Deemed by Woellert to be a “Badass Sister of Charity”). Having attended Catholic school, I’d say I have a healthy skepticism of nuns’ pizzaiola skills and a bit of concern/worry when I hear the term “badass nun”. That said, I certainly appreciate Sister Blandina inspired comedy, especially when performed by Cincy’s leading improvisers. Also, it’s just fascinating that there’s a serious campaign to canonize the inventor of LaRosa’s pizza.

I bring this up now, as @fesslerspizza spun off of Pasquale’s in 2016 and thus is part of the Blandina pizza tree. In its bread-like hand tossed crust, square cut, and generous mozzarella/provolone blend, the Blandina connection between Fesslers and those other pizzerias is clear. I’ve been to Pasquale’s / Fesslers many times over years. In this occurrence we ordered a pepperoni pizza - here, all but one pepperone was under the cheese (arguably under the cheese is the way to go & likely this will be the subject of a future deep dive). Personally, I would prefer a crust with more of a crispy exterior and a chewy interior. Here it’s consistency is like a fairly dense bread throughout. However, this crust did do a good job of soaking up the grease from all the cheese and pepperoni. Frankly, with so much cheese it’s a hard pizza not to like (I know my Uncle Frank would agree). It’s also a hard pizza to cut with cheese binding it together. But whatever, I’m not the type to complain about too much cheese. Thus, I’m going to deem this the foremost modern example of “Blandina Pizza”