The devil is in the details with a dish as simple and ubiquitous as pizza, and after 16 years in the teeny, bustling and oh so aromatic 8-by-6-feet Petoskey pizzeria, Mighty Fine Pizza (222 E. Mitchell St., 231-347-3255) has flavorful crust and a perfect pizza sauce down. “There’s only one person that knows the sauce recipe, that’s me,” says owner Bill “Buck” Schmidt Jr., who serves up Polish pizza with sauerkraut and kielbasa, meatball pizza with slivers of fresh garlic and Buck’s Burnt Pizza with pepperoni, bacon and feta, put through the oven twice to really crisp up the bacon. Here are a few more of our area favorites:
Chef Charles’, Elk Rapids
A Haiku to the Seven Cheese
I love feta cheese
Nestled between golden hills
Of cheddar and crust
Michael Thompson, Web Associate
Trattoria Stella, Traverse City
The white pizza and the red pizza are both great with a dry glass of wine—red with red and white with white.Jan Chapman, Sales Director
GJ’s Carryout, Traverse City
We love it for the thin crust, and small, easy-to-handle pieces, cut in squares.Monterey Wheeler, Office manager/Events Editor
Fieldstone Deli, Traverse City (Long Lake)
For a specialty pizza, their pesto pizza rocks, and the buffalo chicken is a huge delicious mess—I like to sweat when I eat.Troy DeShano, Multimedia Assistant
Galley Gourmet, Petoskey
It’s stone-fired pizza, homemade dough and sauce. My favorite is The Napa with grilled portabella mushrooms, fresh spinach, roasted tomato, goat cheese and tomato sauce. Another is The Roma, which has prosciutto, pancetta, roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic, olives, Parmesan and tomato sauce. The crust is thin, not all bread! My friends who come up from downstate always insist on ordering from there. Lisa Gillespie, Account Executive
Peg Town Station, Maple City
Sauce has a bit of a kick. Toppings are all fresh, including the mushrooms. And they let you substitute sausage for onions on the veggie pie without an extra charge. That’s wrong on several levels, and we love them for it.Diane Kolak, Art Director
My fave is Peg Town, too. I like the artichoke heart and spinach on the Greek pizza. We’ll make the drive in bad weather it’s so good. We have to eat in and ask them to run the train around the top a few times for [our daughter] Maddy.Rachel North, Marketing Director