I'm a classicist/traditionalist ~ the fewer toppings the better. Having grown up in north-central New Jersey, I prefer the New-York thin crust style, and love to be able to buy a single slice, plain cheese or maybe pepperoni.

In order to compromise with a group, I'm willing to go with two or three toppings at most. I like green pepper, one meat selection, and maybe mushrooms or onions. Once in a while, for a change of pace, I'll enjoy a "Hawaiian" pizza: ham, pineapple, and green pepper. (The "ham" is usually, technically, Canadian bacon; if they let you, try substituting pepperoni.)

But I HATE "with everything" ~ it always comes out all soggy and barely recognizable as pizza!

As a meat selection, sausage is OK, but unpredictable; there are as many different varities of sausage as there are pizzarias. Pepperoni is a safer bet, almost always exactly what you expect.

For many years, dating back through my childhood and teen years, my very favorite pizza was the big 24-inch pie sold on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, NJ, right next to the Seaside Park city line. Plain cheese, please ~ why gild the lily? ~ with plenty of that nice coarse cornmeal on the crisp bottom crust. It's probably the sea air that made it taste so extra-good, but the sauce chef deserves plenty of credit, too.

More recently, during my winter of exile in New Jersey ('05-'06) after escaping my flooded New Orleans home, some old friends introduced my family and me to the absolutely finest pizza in the world, at Sciortino's on Broadway in South Amboy, NJ.

They make their own sausage as well as an absolutely sublime red sauce, and when you order a pizza with "The Works," they do NOT load it down with dozens of watery ingredients. At Sciortino's, "The Works" comprises a mere four sparingly-applied items: peppers (green), onions, mushrooms, and the aforementioned homemade sausage. Well, the veggies are sprinkled with a light hand ~ you get plenty of sausage.

Definitely worth a side trip for anyone in the New York / New Jersey area, or visiting there for any length of time. Hell, for anyone with the time and money, it's worth a flight to Newark and the 45-minute rent-a-car drive (each way).