In this week’s paper, restaurant critic Nick Williams reviews Bodega in Wake Forest. First, here’s Phil Griffin responding to Williams’s most recent review of Papa Shogun in Raleigh, a restaurant with a lot of potential and room to grow into it.

“Not a bad review of the place, but I would rate it much higher, particularly for such a bland town as Raleigh,” Griffin writes. “The menu evolves with the season as the local produce changes, so some of the familiar items are subject to change. What I really like most is that I can eat some combination of things I’ve never had before every time I visit. I’ve never had a bad meal there, and I can’t think of any place I like better in the Triangle. There’s nothing else like it around here.”

Jim Aulisio weighs-in on last month’s pizza issue, putting in a good word for Old Forge-style pie: “Thank you for all your research on pizza and admitting, upfront, that you have a Brooklyn prejudice. Since I was born and raised in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, I appreciate your recognition of Old Forge-style pizza in your evolutionary tree. I understand that New Yorkers know the New York way is always best. My wife agrees with you that New York pizza is the real deal. I have been giving her samples from ‘The Pizza Capital OF the World’ for twenty years. Several OF—Old Forge—restaurants registered that moniker in the early internet days. Since I’m from OF, I have to agree with that label.”

But Ronan Friedenberg says we missed a good (grease) spot: “Yes grease is not the best thing to ingest, but then again you weren’t eating pizza to lose weight or get in your daily amounts of vitamin C and B12. Some grease is kinda delicious. And so we come to know Randy’s, which may go hand in hand with the no grease rule you have foisted upon us. Randy’s is the best New York-style pizza I’ve found here in the Triangle.

”But the article “wasn’t all bad,” Friedenberg concedes. “I’m especially pleased to see there is a representative of New Haven-style pizza now in the Triangle. As a native New Havenite [I’m]looking forward to giving Capps a try.”

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