The "3" in Red Star Pizza 3 is for three stars.
I had hoped to leave myself enough time to grab a bite and a drink at Al's Airport Lounge before heading off on my first flight ever from Trenton Mercer Airport, but alas it was not meant to be. Time was very limited and I couldn't chance finding food in the "airport," so I drove a few hundred feet past Al's and saw a Red Star pizza joint. A quick lookup on Yelp confirmed what I figured might be the case: just another mediocre pizzeria in Jersey.
Beggars can't be choosers, so in I went.
The interesting thing about New Jersey is that we have a lot of pizza joints, and even the less stellar ones are better than what you'd typically find outside of Jersey. In cases like this where you just happen upon some local pizza outfit, chances are pretty good you'll find a decent slice to tide you over.
Such was the case at today's unplanned visit to Red Star Pizza.
An experience like this starts with a scan of all the available slices on the counter. In better pizzerias, you won't find too many ready-made pies that have been sitting out for hours on end. And to achieve that, many better pizzerias limit the variety of slices they have at any given time of day, generally sticking to plain, pepperoni, and perhaps a Sicilian or white that tend to move pretty quickly. (See also: Joe's in Manhattan.) Red Star had quite the variety when I stopped in, and most of it looked like it had been sitting out for at least a solid hour or more. Needless to say, things only looked mildly appealing at first glance.
I generally order whatever looks most fresh, which in this case was a Sicilian slice - not my first choice typically. But for good measure, since this was my first time here, I had to make sure I tried a regular slice, too. (Pizza Snob Rule #1: Always get at least one plain slice when you try a new pizzeria for the first time. That's the true measure of any pizza place.)
Both slices came out nice and hot, though the Sicilian looked like it had recovered better from it's cold, congealed sleep on the counter than the regular slice. To my surprise, both turned out tasting better than I expected.
The pizza here tastes very old school, which, unfortunately, is very hard to describe unless you grew up in New York City or New Jersey and ate a lot of pizza in the 70s and 80s. There's a nostalgia to be experienced here, even though nothing about it is special. The flavors are all there, but everything tastes pretty generic. That said, nothing is wrong or out of place, either.
If there was anything to note at all about the pizza is that they do a nice crust. Oftentimes generic pizza can be a little too doughy for this guy, but that was not the case here. The water must be decent in Trenton.
And that's pretty much all that I can say about ole Red Star Pizza. Definitely not a place I'd go running back to, but fine in a pinch, which was what I was in. read more