The Hill Report: Your Home Slice

13th Avenue on the Hill has it's share of neighborhood pizza providers. Here's a quick guide for your next walk in the 'hood.

If you're walking up from Broadway, you'll probably first encounter City o'City at 13th and Sherman. A vegetarian pub/coffee shop that makes great pizza.

For the sake of accuracy I must include the Domino's Pizza, if you can call it pizza.

Within the next two blocks of 13th you'll find a couple of places that serve good pizza-by-the slice, as well as whole pies: Pizzicato at Pennsylvania and Benny Blanco's just past Pearl.

Let's start with Benny Blanco's. This is the place where the term "hole in the wall" was coined. To say it is small is an understatement. Word of warning; the leggy pizza girl watching over the patrons of this establishment has no basis on reality. I'm not discussing her anatomical proportions, I'm just saying that the guys dishing-up the pizza here have nothing in common with this saucy rendition of Saint Pomidora, patron saint of the midnight-pizza patron (yeah, I DID just write that sentence, y que?). So while your checking out Saint Pommy on the wall, (you lech!) one of the rude boys behind the counter will be throwing your selected slice into the oven and then flopping it onto a paper plate.
Either the blasting music will drive you out, or one of the guy's will after they take your two bucks. That's ok, you need to get out of there anyway so you can dig into your perfect slice of peperoni before it gets cold on you. Nice crisp edges on a nicely foldable triangle of salty peperoni and gooey cheese. No fancy stuff, just some solid grub for the street. Open until 3a.m., what else you want?

Benny Blanco's Slice of the Bronx
616 E. 13th St.
Denver, CO 80205
(303) 831-1346

On that same outing walk, I swung by Pizzicato to find out what their peperoni slice to go was like. For more info on Pizzicato, check out my review here.

On this pizza-by-the-slice outing here's what I found. 75 cents more and 30% smaller, but yeah, it was better. The quality of the ingredients is noticeably superior. If you can live without Saint Pommy, and you cravings are more gastronomic than simply quantitative, go to Pizzicato. If, however, you're just looking for a good, quick fix, then don't forget about Benny Blanco's.

Pizzicato
1300 Pennsylvania St.
Denver, CO 80203
303-957-2550