New Jersey’s best pizza crowned at Pizza Bowl 2

A great way to start an argument in New Jersey is to claim your favorite pizzeria makes the Garden State’s best pizza.

I don’t expect that this will put an end to the debates, but a Facebook group called “Jersey Pizza Joints” held their second Pizza Bowl and determined that the best pizza is: Maruca’s in Seaside Heights and Asbury Park.

The finals were held at Redd’s Biergarten in Carlstadt Saturday night, capping off months of voting among the members of the JPJ Facebook group; the group has over 54,000 members. According to NorthJersey.com, the sixteen finalists came from four regions:

North

Calabria, Livingston
Angeloni's, Caldwell
PizzAmore, Carlstadt
Star Tavern (late scratch) replaced by Patsy's, Paterson

Central

Jersey Pizza Boys, Avenel
Nicola's, Somerset
Prima Pizza, Somerville
Maria’s, Milltown

South

Riccardo's, Browns Mills
Lillo’s, Trenton
Kate and Al’s, Columbus
De Lorenzo's, Robbinsville

Shore

Zoni's, Red Bank
Maruca's, Seaside Heights
Capricci, Howell
The Galley, Asbury Park

Last year’s winner, Pizza Terminal in Verona, didn’t make the finals this year.

The JPJ Facebook group was started by Guy Madsen of Clifton with 25 of his friends. With over 2,000 pizza shops, Madsen told NorthJersey.com that New Jersey is to pizza as Northern California is to wine, “I always say North Jersey is like the Napa Valley for pizza,” Madsen said. “Central Jersey and the Shore are like Sonoma.”

According to the JPJ Facebook page “If your pizza isn’t from Jersey, it probably SUCKS!”

This year, the Pizza Bowl not only crowned Maruca’s as the best pizza, it also bestowed the honor of best meatball to PizzAmore Italian Kitchen of Carlstadt.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle only.

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Every NJ pizza joint Barstool's Dave Portnoy has reviewed

Dave Portnoy, commonly known as El Presidente, is the founder of Barstool Sports. Somewhere along the way, he decided to start reviewing local pizzerias, and the concept took off. Here is every New Jersey pizzeria Dave has stopped in, along with the score he gave them.