And yes, I’ve mentioned this plenty of times before but I’ll say it again — people ask me often how I choose the restaurants I visit for videos, so here’s how it works. Sometimes people recommend restaurants through comments, DMs, or just stopping me in public. When that happens, I look at the restaurant’s social media and add them to the list if the food looks good. Sometimes restaurants reach out and ask me to come by. Sometimes I just stumble across a place while scrolling and add it. Either way, every restaurant starts at the bottom of the list and works its way up with each new video I make. The unfortunate reality is that today there are over 500 restaurants on that list — so if you reach out asking me to come visit, there’s a good chance it’ll be over a year before I get to you. Unless things just work out like they did with Papa’s Express, where the timing lines up perfectly and I happen to have a free afternoon.
Perinton Pizza had been popping up on my Instagram feed. And if I’m being completely honest, I’m not a huge fan of their social media approach lately. I think a restaurant’s social media page should focus on food first and foremost — hire a photographer, make some great looking videos, come up with new specials, and promote what you’re actually serving. What I kept seeing instead was what appeared to be the owner doing a fake Dave Portnoy-style pizza review of his own pizza. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was meant to be a joke and wasn’t actually calling out Portnoy. But I still thought it was just kind of dumb. That’s me being brutally honest.
Anyway — I was out in Fairport, had an extra 45 minutes, and Perinton Pizza was coming up on the list. So I decided to stop in, grab a pizza, and make a video. Keep in mind I had literally just finished having lunch with a friend. I was already full. I called ahead and asked if there was anything they were known for, any specialty pizzas worth trying. The person who answered was incredibly friendly and told me there wasn’t anything official on the menu in terms of specialty pies, but that a lot of people ordered the garbage plate pizza and really loved it. So I ordered the garbage plate pizza and asked them to cook it a little well done.
When I make videos, I’m ultimately just looking for really good food. I’m not trying to find the best of everything or only feature the greatest restaurants in the state. I’m just trying to highlight locally and independently owned restaurants across New York — and I hope the food is good so I have something worth posting. Sometimes it’s incredible. Sometimes it’s just good. If the food is bad or I just don’t like it, I won’t post the video. And there are times when a dish is so over the top that I already know it’s going to perform. I knew going into this that a garbage plate pizza review was going to get more views than a pepperoni pizza review. Why? Because it’s a garbage plate. On a pizza.
Now, I’ve been doing this long enough and I have enough respect for restaurant owners to tell you that I’m not going to hold Perinton Pizza to the same standard I’d hold a place like Peels on Wheels. These are two completely opposite ends of the pizza spectrum. Peels on Wheels is making incredibly high-quality pizza where everything is made from scratch in-house. Perinton Pizza is serving pizza to the masses. Two very different operations. Both can have delicious food, but they’re not judged by the same criteria. And I hope that makes sense with what I’m about to tell you — the garbage plate pizza at Perinton Pizza was very good.
Could it have been better? Sure, of course. But for what it was, it was delicious.
I’m not 100% sure if the base was ketchup or just a really sweet tomato sauce, but either way the sweetness was a great contrast to all the salty, heavy stuff piled on top. You’ve got the sauce, crispy home fries, mac salad, hamburger, white onions. It is exactly what it sounds like — a garbage plate on top of a pizza. And remember, I told you I had just finished lunch before making this video. I still ate two slices. That’s how much I liked it.
Would I recommend the garbage plate pizza on a given Friday night? I guess it depends on who you are. I’m personally convinced that this is probably the same food they were eating in Sodom and Gomorrah right before everything went sideways. It is delicious, but it is absolutely a pizza made for monsters. I was standing in their parking lot, in a quiet little plaza just outside of a car wash, in the sun, eating a garbage plate pizza immediately after having lunch. It is one of the most repulsive things I’ve ever done. And yet the pizza was delicious.
Do I recommend going to Perinton Pizza for the garbage plate pizza? Absolutely.
Perinton Pizza
7374 Pittsford-Palmyra Rd.
Fairport, NY
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