164. World’s Best Pizza

Everyone has a favorite pizza joint.

But when an international pizza-ranking organization lists the 50 best pizza joints in the whole world, you have to sit up and take notice. Some of them are in oddball places like Copenhagen and Beijing. But about half are in Italy, so we decided that while we’re in the neighborhood, we’d check some of them out for ourselves.

With this many stickers, it’s gotta be good.

Our first stop was #18 Dry Milano in, of course, Milano. (The “dry” I can’t explain.) Very, very hip in decor and clientele, it offered some very inventive options along with the traditional. So we split the difference: a slightly spicy veggie Peperoncini, combined with a focaccia like you’ve never seen, topped by creamed tuna sauce and a thin slice of veal. I know that sounds a little weird to American ears, but I promise, it was fantastic. And Ben claims his chocolate sorbetto was the best he’d ever had in his whole, entire life.

Will veal-and-tuna-sauce focaccia catch on in the States? Doubtful, but that’s our loss.

Last night, we headed to #8 Seu Pizza Illuminati in Roma, a bright, bustling place filled with families that could not be a greater contrast with Dry Milano. We tried a more traditional Amatriciana — basically a regular pizza with guanciale (Italian bacon) — and a “Greek Freak,” with feta, spinach and pumpkin, including pumpkin seeds. Both were extremely delicious: we kept going back and forth, deciding which pie was our favorite.

In Italy, you get your own pie and you eat it with a fork and knife. If they cut it into eight pinwheel pieces, they’re doing it for you as an American.

So for us, #8 won hands down. We loved the pizza, but we especially loved feeling part of the neighborhood, surrounded by local parents and kids, including a toddler who kept making a break for the door.

We could travel the world, making a life’s work of this. Two down, 48 to go.