Tomato Pie Pizza Joint (South Pasadena) — Restaurant in South Pasadena

Found this place online last night while looking for a NY style pizza place. Being from NYC I’m always looking for a place that can at least come close to what pizza from NYC taste like. Oh man, I’m really happy we stopped here. I’m a purist, so I find out every thing I need to know about a place by having a plain cheese slice. The sauce was on point - not too salty or sweet with just the right amount of tang. Sometimes the sauce just overpowers everything else because it ends up tasting more like paste than sauce, but this sauce was more like the old-world sauces found in NYC where you can taste all the right spices without feeling like you just got smacked in the face with a basket of basil and garlic. The dough will never taste exactly like the dough in NY because NY has that high alkali water, but it was very good. It wasn’t like some pizza dough that taste like you just ate a bunch of unsalted crackers and can’t seem to want to swallow it. The cheese was perfect, not too much or too little. Everything was balanced, and that’s what makes a good slice of pizza. We ended up eating a slice of white pizza with 3 types of cheese and a garlic sauce. I believe they called it a white. Man it was good. Finally, we had a square of something they call tomato pie. It looked like a Sicilian, but it wasn’t. The sauce was a very slow cooked marinara that was amazing. I know it sounds like I own this place, but I don’t. I just know good pizza when I have it. Go figure, the owner is from Syracuse NY. Good on...

I would say this place is more like a 4.3 maybe a 4.4. I come here every so often for pizza and the pizzas mostly decently good, you know? I mean it's not the thin crusted thin style that I sometimes like to eat but it's more like the style I had when I was a kid. They have a couple tables in the back where you can eat if you feel so inclined; I like to go there towards dusk when the heat is down and or the sun is not shining so brightly. The only real issue I have with this place are the wings. I don't know what they do to them, but I'm just going to say it and this is the way I see it; namely, that they are fatty and there is little to no crust on the chicken itself. Let me explain, it's as if they're microwaving the wings. Maybe they're not, but I've eaten their wings multiple times, and they're always...well, there's a deep fry coat on it but it's soggy not crisp in any way at all. I don't understand if they're actually making them fresh or they're actually cooking them, how they get like that, so that leaves microwaving. Like I said, I don't know that they do microwave them, but let's just say I don't recommend the wings. The staff are what you'd expect in a place like this, you know; not rude, they just want to get your order out to you. Eat there, the pizza is good, thick crusted, salty meat and the tables have choke napkins on the tables to use. Try the wings even, if just to make your own...

There are a lot of "gourmet" pizza restaurants popping up - especially near me in Echo Park-but Tomato Pie South Pasadena is by far my favorite. Not only do they have a wide variety of choices that are made from high quality tasty ingredients they are not trying to gouge you on the prices- in fact the prices are more than fair. Some "gourmet" pizza restaurant owners are about profit margin profit margin profit margin. But the slices were big, the ingredients high quality and the prices fair. Not only that- I could tell the people who were working there were having fun......and that made for a more enjoyable ordering experience and wait than I have had in a restaurant in a LONG time. The fact everyone was so cool and enjoying themselves is evidence of the fact that the owners must be pretty cool people to work for- and even though the main reason I will be going back often is the spicy chicken pie it's nice to know that I will be supporting some cool people when...