At the halfway point, the best pizza restaurant in Bethany Beach is . . .

Pomodoro Pizza

One of the things we have learned from publishing DE Pizza Online is that our readers are not shy about telling us where we need to eat. That is a very good thing.

We started this project because we wanted to find, try, and review all the pizza restaurants of the Delaware Shore. Our readers have helped us do that. They recommend restaurants, argue for their favorites, question our opinions, and occasionally remind us that there is a pizza place we somehow managed to overlook.

Pomodoro Pizza in Bethany Beach was one of the most frequently requested reviews in the short history of DE Pizza Online. So we listened. And we are glad we did.

This is the third installment of our halfway-point report card. We have now reviewed almost half of the pizza restaurants on our original list, but we still have plenty of pizza to eat. These standings can change. But at this halfway road marker, we wanted to know, if we stopped reviewing pizza today, which restaurant would be our choice for the best pizza we have reviewed so far in Bethany Beach?

The answer is Pomodoro Pizza.

There is one thing you should know before you even think about the pizza itself: getting the pizza requires serious strategic planning.

Pomodoro is not the sort of place where you casually wander in at 7:15pm, order a pizza, and expect to be eating ten minutes later. Our review panel had an ordering expert, and we needed one.

The advice was simple: call early, get a pickup time, and remember your number. Also, Pomodoro is strictly a take-out pizza joint. There's no table service here.

Our expert executed our order like a Ph.D in logistics. She called at 10:45 in the morning, before the restaurant even opened. Prime pickup times can disappear quickly. If you wait too long, you may still get pizza, but perhaps not at the hour you had in mind. Or not at all.

In other words, getting a Pomodoro pizza is a little like securing a reservation at a popular restaurant. For Pomodoro's fans, this is apparently an important part of the experience.

Judging from the pizza, we can understand why people are willing to plan ahead.

Our review panel was the largest we have ever assembled: five reviewers, three pizzas, and a frankly robust body of pizza analysis.

Older Son was impressed before he even tasted a slice. He described Pomodoro as a serious pizza operation. Dough was being tossed by hand. The person working the oven was moving pizzas around with a wooden paddle. The whole place looked like it was staffed by pizzaristas who knew exactly what they were doing.

Then he tasted the pizza. “Far and away the best pizza I've had doing these reviews.” That's a strong opening argument.

We ordered cheese, mushroom and pepperoni pies. The ingredients made the pizzas work. The mushrooms were fresh and flavorful. The pepperoni curled into those little cups that collect their own grease. As Her put it, they were “little cholesterol cups.”

The mozzarella may have been the star. There was even a plaque inside describing the cheese as the best money can buy. Our response: it tasted like they spent real money.

This was bona fide mozzarella—creamy, flavorful and with the right texture.

And then there was the pizza engineering. The cheese stayed on the pizza. The toppings stayed on the cheese. The sauce stayed on the crust. The crust didn't collapse under the weight of the toppings.

You could pick up a slice and eat it without having to reconstruct it first. PhillyCousinSon assessed it this way: “very little flop.” We're not afraid to deploy scientific measurement in DE Pizza Online reviews.

The sauce was excellent, too. One reviewer thought it tasted more like New York pizza than almost anything we had eaten in Delaware.

The consensus fell apart at the crust. Her and PhillyCousinHer thought the outer edge was too dry or chewy. PhillyCousinSon wanted more crunch. Him liked it.

The final composite score was 6 out of 8 slices.

Pomodoro's pizza is very good. Most of the ingredients are excellent. The mozzarella is outstanding. The toppings are thoughtfully prepared. The pizza is well constructed.

And, yes, it is worth learning the ordering strategy.

That combination was enough to propel Pomodoro into the DE Pizza Online Top Five against some worthy competition.

We also heard from people who disagreed with our review and, bluntly, don't like Pomodoro's pizza. That's fine. Pizza is personal. One of the things we like about this project is that our readers have their own opinions.

We want them to. And we want to read them in our comments section or on social media.

In fact, we want more opinions. Tell us about the pizza places you love. Tell us where we need to eat and review. Make your case. We cannot eat everywhere at once. But our readers are an important part of deciding where we go next.

At the halfway point, Pomodoro Pizza is our choice for the best pizza restaurant we have reviewed in Bethany Beach.

We still have more pizza to eat in Bethany, and we still owe visits to pizza places in Dewey Beach, Selbyville and elsewhere on the Delaware Shore.

We'll get there. After halftime.

And if there is a pizza place you love that we haven't reviewed yet, keep lobbying us.

Congratulations to Pomodoro Pizza --- DE Pizza Online's halfway-point choice for the best pizza restaurant we've reviewed in Bethany Beach.

And thank you to the readers who kept telling us to go. You were right.