November 23rd, 2019
Old Forge, PA
Old Forge is known to some as the “Pizza Capital of the World”. You’ve probably never heard of it. We hadn’t, before we started our first year of traveling to the places on the list. That first year, Ghigiarelli’s eked on to the list at #101. It was missing the following year, and actually has since closed after the owner went missing (and is still missing). This year, another Old Forge pizzeria barely made it on the list at #101.
We made the drive back out to Old Forge last Saturday. We started out with a hike in the Delaware Water Gap area that was only sort of successful, but we were hungry for lunch by the time we got into Old Forge. We were seated right away and ordered a plain red pizza, with mushrooms on half.
As you can see, Old Forge pizza is unique. It has its roots back in the coal mining industry, when the cold miners would come home and their wives would make pizza on square pans with their bread dough, topping the pies with homegrown tomatoes. You certainly get a family feel at Arcaro and Genell’s – it’s your traditional old-school Italian restaurant and bar.
The taste of these pizzas is also unique. The crust isn’t like a traditional pizza crust. It’s more like a bread dough. It’s thicker than a Sicilian, but still tastes light. The sauce is full of chunks of onion, which we loved. There’s a lot of cheese, but it isn’t as much as some of the Sicilian places we’ve tried around NYC, and definitely not as much cheese as any of the pizzas we tried in Buffalo.
You may not like me saying so, but it’s similar to Elio’s frozen pizza. Fresher, but a similar mouth feel. Maybe like Elio’s if it had never been frozen, with better sauce. Eric said it was like a cross between Elio’s, Detroit style (without the crispy cheese edge), and a Sicilian slice.
It has been a few years since our last Old Forge pizza, but we think that we like this place better than Ghigiarelli’s. It was more flavorful. We’ve gotten a few other messages about other Old Forge pizzas we should try, so maybe we’ll be back, or maybe one of those will end up on one of the lists in the future. James liked this pizza as well, but he’s not so picky these days.
If you want to try it, I think they are one of the only Old Forge pizza places that will ship to you through goldbely.
To visit:
Arcaro and Genell 443 South Main Street OLD FORGE PA, 18518
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