Pizza Backlog 10 | 3/13/2021 | Pete’s Pizza at Columbus Market in Columbus, New Jersey will forever be linked to Kate & Al’s, the pizza joint a few hundred yards away in the same market, because one stemmed from the other and both places make an extremely similar pie. But I never did a proper shootout between the two until yesterday. Lo and behold, they’re less similar than I thought. Pete’s seems to have even less cheese than Kate & Al’s and they use a sweeter dough than their sister pizzeria (this dough, which is almost Easter bread/challah-esque, is reminiscent of the square pie’s from Brooklyn Square Pizza in Jackson, NJ). But instead of trying to identify other differences, I just made note of those two and drifted back into pizza heaven. Sure, I still think Kate & Al’s—9.8: my current and probably forever highest score—is better than Pete’s, which I admit could just be a familiarity thing (I’ve had Kate & Al’s hundreds of times and Pete’s twice). But it’s a Beatles/Beach Boys or LeBron/Jordan situation and that is to say one is only a sliver higher than the other. I’ll do a 9.6 to put it above my former second highest-rated pizza (Mamma Rosa’s in Hamilton, New Jersey) but below Kate & Al’s. And yes, I put more thought into this than any paper I wrote in college.