About six months ago in August of 2022, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy visited Syracuse, New York, to try a bite of Varsity Pizza on Marshall Street. For those unfamiliar with Portnoy's work, his mission is to review a single bite of one pizza place every day, with his adventures documented on his wildly successful YouTube channel One Bite Pizza Reviews.
Varsity Pizza piqued my interest after finding out that my friend eats there twice a week. As if that wasn't enough, he always orders the same thing: cheese pizza. Just like Dave Portnoy!
YouTube, One Bite Pizza Reviews
In the review, Portnoy is sporting Syracuse merch that he bought from Shirt World on Marshall Street, holding a box of Varsity's cheese pizza. After a few bites of a slice, Portnoy shrugs and says, "6.5? This is like, exactly what I would expect from a college pizza. Not gonna blow your d*ck off, but I've had worse. I've had better: 6.5." Portnoy goes on to mention that the inside of Varsity Pizza looks like your prototypical late-night food spot, and that his expectations of college pizza are always lower than city pizza considering that appeasing drunk kids at 4 AM is probably pretty easy. This comment was probably met with a twinge of pain from most Syracuse students: 4 AM pizza sounds perfect, but unfortunately Varsity only closes at 8 PM (as per the hours listed on its website).
That being said, my favorite pizza that I've tried from Varsity have always been the specialty slices, available from 11 AM to 1 PM on weekdays (alas, I can't eat cheese pizza the same way my friend or Dave Portnoy can). That, combined with the fact that you can add cheese, red pepper, and even sriracha when you get to the counter to pay, makes Varsity my personal favorite pizza spot in Syracuse. Speaking as a college student who absolutely doesn't have the same pizza pedigree as Dave Portnoy (yet?), I'll admit that my standards aren't the highest, but sriracha in a pizza place is something I have yet to see adopted by any place I've been to and something that I now can't eat pizza without. Try it if you haven't yet!
Despite the woeful inaccuracy regarding the availability of its pizza, I think that a 6.5 is a pretty fair assessment of Varsity considering that Portnoy only reviews any given place's cheese pizza. When considering its proximity on campus (something that I evaluate in my last blogpost), its specialty slices, and its atmosphere, however, I would absolutely rate Varsity at least an 8. This is giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you go in at a good time when the pizza's just been prepared - the consistency changes based on the date and time in which you go.
As a final note, of the pizza places in Syracuse, my personal favorite is OIP. No one is trying to go all the way to South Campus for a slice of pizza, though. Varsity it is.
Thank you for reading!
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