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I went to Shake Shack for the first time today. I will say that it is better than In-N-Out, but not better than UMAMI BUGER IN LA!!! UMAMI4EVER

For all of you on the West coast...try "Islands"...great burgers, excellent fries. In n' Out is good, Islands is better.

As for NYC being "a culinary let down, all style and no real substance"...are you sane? LA is certainly making its mark in the culinary world...San Francisco always has...but NYC is still the capital of fine dining in this country.

In-N-Out does not = Shake Shack; and that's not a bad thing in any way shape or form. I'm not sure why they seem to be comapred so often as they are two different beasts. Is it because Shake Shack is sometimes described as a "west coast syle burger?" Is it the sauce?

that mother fucker is lucky he didn't post his last name.

"The wait should have nothing to do with anything." Actually, it should make the burger taste better. The longer you have to wait, the hungrier you get. I guess there is a tipping point when you become so sick of the wait that you're ready to go off on anyone or anything, but if the burger is really that good it "should" be an epiphany. Maybe people should bring snacks to eat while they're waiting.

I've never had Shake Shack, but I've had In-N-Out. If they are remotely close to each other there's no way I'd wait in a line for either. Silly people.

Just visited Pepe's again...and Modern. Agree that the clam pie at Pepe's is great. The others, though.....aren't. In fact, they're way down the list on my criteria. Sort of tasteless....and laboriously chewy.

Though Modern's crust is floppier, the taste of their "red" pies is quite memorable, and delicious. Their clam pie suffers by comparison (the fresh clams at Pepe's are unbeatable on a pie.) IMO.

dd

I disagreed with this post the moment I saw it, and had some real-world experiences over Memorial Day weekend that only confirmed these feelings. First off, some history - I have been visiting Pepe's for more than 20 years, and while it isn't always "perfect" it is consistently the best pizza I've ever had in my life, bar none. And we eat a lot of pizza... Totonno's was on auto-dial when we lived in the city... Nick's in Forest Hills (and, more recently, Rockville Centre), Mario's on Arthur Avenue (a close second to Pepe's I have to say), Una Pizza Napoletana, we've been all over the place and there is nothing like Pepe's.

We drive between New York and Vermont at least four or five times a year and always hit Pepe's on the way up, and usually on the way back. Sometimes we get lucky and hit it right and there's no line, more often there is a line - and we wait. We tried to get into Sally's one freezing night, probably 15 years ago, just out of curiosity. Stood there for probably an hour and kept watching "regulars" come up behind us and wander in sit down at waiting tables. That's the way they roll, apparently, the tourist schlubs can stand out there until their fingers and toes fall off, Sally's is going to take care of their regulars. Fine for them, we never went back.

We were headed up to Vermont Thursday night and got stuck in terrible traffic south of New Haven, it was clear we weren't going to make Pepe's by the time they closed at 10, but there was another place I'd heard good things about, Modern Apizza... no lines, a full menu including salads, etc., open until 11 p.m. on Thursdays. So we went there instead, hit the place at 10:40 and maybe they stopped feeding the oven at that hour or something but all I can say is the pizzas we got (one regular red sauce/mozz, one red sauce, mozz and mushroom/onions) were both soupy messes. Almost inedible. Literally the first 2/3 of every slice, on both pies, could not be eaten without a fork, you couldn't pick the thing up, the "crust" was the approximate consistency of yogurt. And the flavor of the part of the piece you could actually hold in your hand was a sharp and unpleasant saltiness. In short, it was terrible. I asked the waiter if this was normal and he said yeah, that's the way the pies come out. Found that a little hard to believe for a place that had been in business so long. Needless to say, I heard about my bright dinner idea from my wife and two young daughters all the way up to our destination (until they fell asleep) and over the course of the weekend.

Ride home came Sunday afternoon, and we hit Wooster Street around 7 p.m. Graduation weekend at Yale and one of the longest lines we've seen outside Pepe's in a while. We waited. Took about 45 minutes to get to our table and we ordered a red pie with mozz and our favorite combination at Pepe's, red sauce, spinach/onion and just grated cheese. Both pies were perfect, phenomenal char, even the spinach/onion slices could be picked up and eaten by hand, no soupy mess.

Tastes vary and people have every right to like what they like... but I have to tell you, we know pizza, we eat a lot of pizza, we've been all over the place and we've hit all the bright spots and there is nothing like Pepe's... there's a reason people have been waiting in line outside that door for more than 80 years, and it's going to take a lot more than a 30-second video of someone making chippy comments and banging some crust against a pan to lay a glove on the place.

Maybe her benchmark pizza is pizza hut deep dish. You can't compare apples to oranges, and you can't compare red apples and green apples as well !

Like anything else, there are two factors at play here:

1. No place has perfect consistency, and

2. Pizza is a religion, and different people practice it differently.

I love Pepe's, and have always gotten a good pizza there. But I've also been to no end of places that people tell me have "the best pizza ever" that were hot circles of garbage. Meanwhile, some places I absolutely love, other people hate (I've got several friends in Phoenix that think that Bianco is terrible pizza). Everyone has different tastes, especially if they are from a different part of the country.

Jillian doesn't like Pepe's? Fine, that's one less person in line. :)

Roberto...my sentiments exactly...

That being said, perhaps each of us got a bad pie? Seems unlikely, but if I'm ever back in the area, I wouldn't be opposed to giving it another shot. I find it hard to believe that so many pizza lovers LOVE this place, and here I am shrugging my shoulders and saying "meh." Know what I mean?

And THAT being said, I'd prefer to try the other New Haven joints that have similar accolades.

What's funny is that one day traveling back to NYC from visiting family, I made the stop to try Frank Pepe's and frankly, I was not impressed. It was a big let down because every single pizza that was coming out of the oven looked beyond delicious and amazing (I waited by the oven since I got mine to go). I took it back to the car to share with my lady (at the time), and neither of us were impressed. Big time let down for me.