Pizza Madness Round 1 includes supreme takedowns

Last year’s Pizza Madness victor, Grandma Tony’s Pizza & Wings, with locations at 7010 E. Broadway and 7878 E. Wrightstown Road, fell in Round 1 and bowed out gracefully on Facebook, thanking fans and the Arizona Daily Star for support.

“We are honored to have won The Best Pizza of Tucson last year!” the page says. “We would like to congratulate all of the independent pizza restaurants that made it into this great contest and wish them luck this year!”

The lengthy post includes an invitation to try the pizza at the “family of businesses” – The Gaslight Theatre, Little Anthony’s Diner and Grandma Tony’s Pizza & Wings.

“We would also encourage you to support all of the wonderful local independent restaurants in Tucson,” the post continues. “Thank you again for your support! We’d like to congratulate BZ’s Pizza Company on a well fought race and wish them luck in the next round!”

BZ’s Pizza Co. is at 8838 E. Broadway. The vote count was 822 to 682.

The upsets kept coming when Chariot Pizza, 1835 S. Alvernon Way and 3930 N. Flowing Wells Road, unseated downtown darling Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink, 101 E. Pennington St.

The 21-year-old business put to rest its competition, a 2-year-old restaurant that gave a mortuary a makeover, with a narrow 547 to 523 victory. To advertise, Chariot opted for a strategy with all the fixins.

Give either location a call, and before you make contact with staff, you’ll hear a recording telling you to rock the vote online.

“We were telling drivers to tell people to vote for us for best pizza, and of course, when customers came, we asked them to vote for us and texted all of our friends and family, and told our employees and put it on Facebook,” owner Charles Ryan said.

And get this — Ryan did not even realize his pies had a presence in the contest until voting started.

“Someone said, ‘You’re in this pizza thing,’” he said. “We were down 30 votes before we realized we were in it.”

Courtney Fenton, a manager at Reilly Craft Pizza & Drink, said the ousting by the New York-style pizza definitely came as a surprise.

“We posted on our Facebook page, but that is about all I know of,” Fenton said of the restaurant’s strategy.

Other pepperoni powers from last year’s Final Four sizzled through Round 1. Frog & Firkin, 874 E. University Blvd., Rocco’s Little Chicago Pizzeria, 2707 E. Broadway, and Zona 78, 7301 E. Tanque Verde Road and 78 W. River Road, sit safe in their pans.

For now.

The thin crusts at Pizzeria Bianco, 272 E. Congress St. — which opened in July to fanfare from pizza lovers everywhere — squeaked past the pies at Scordato’s Pizzeria, 4820 N. Campbell Ave., 442 to 423.

No matter how you slice it, the number of pizzerias in town has mushroomed since last year’s battle.

This is one food fight we just might dare to call “supreme.”