There are so many different pizza slices to choose from.  I had a hard time picking what to review, so I went with something classic and something crazy!

The barbeque chicken slice features 2 “skins” (as Joe calls them), an upper and lower crust, a mountain of chicken, smoky sweet barbeque sauce, cheddar cheese, and is topped with onion rings.

The pizzeria is warm, welcoming, and charming.  You are immediately greeted by the large slice and desert display to your left along with friendly staff members everywhere who are eager to help and serve.  I observed the welcoming nature of the team every time a customer or group of customers walked in the door, and no one was more welcoming than owner Joe Ruffino himself.  Adorned with an apron and a wide smile, he emerged from working in the trenches and lit up the room as he came out to greet me.  He was larger than life just as I had imagined!  As we began to talk pizza he seamlessly transitioned from talking about dough hydrations to greeting customers he hadn’t seen since before the pandemic began, and back to the technical details of all of what goes into the pizzas.  It was amazing that with all that was going on, he was fully present in our conversation but also with everyone working in the kitchen as well as all of the customers in the dining room. 

Screen grab of Joe Ruffino with a special message on the Biaggio Pizzeria website.

It’s safe to say that the conversation with Joe and the customer experience made the 90 minute drive worth the trip, but I came to do a pizza review and I was fascinated by many of the crazy pizzas behind the glass.  The only place I know of with insane pizzas like these in NEPA is Franco’s in Wilkes-Barre, but even these stuffed crust pizzas were a bit different from what Franco’s is offering so it’s safe to say I hadn’t seen pizzas that looked exactly like this before.

A glance inside a portion of the slice display at Biaggio in Allentown.

It was a very tough decision as to what to order, but I decided I wanted to do a more classic slice to get a baseline for the quality of Biaggio’s more basic pizzas along with a crazy slice that I had never tried anything like before.  After some debate, I landed on the Pappas slice which amounts to a thin crust round pie with mozzarella on the bottom, sauce on top with fresh garlic and olive oil drizzle.  Many of the local grandma pizzas are comprised the same way, just on a different crust.  I found that the crust was soft and tender with some flop, and it was nicely baked and reheated to its peak form.  The flavor was intense without being overwhelming with a wonderfully sweet and savory sauce and pungent garlic.  The high quality cheese was delicious, gooey, and stringy (I could only imagine the cheese pull from a full pie) and the olive oil left a very pleasant and almost buttery flavoring to finish.  Overall, it was a very easy pizza to love with a ton of flavor and some elegant simplicity to it.