Next spring, NoLibs’ Domani Developers are slated to open a pizza shop, Pizza Brain, Little Baby’s Ice Cream, and an indoor, year-round farmers market in the old B&B Dyers complex, selling goods from local vendors like Baker Street Bread. The planned renovation comes after the recent opening of Todd Braley and Daniela D’Ambrosio’s The Pickled Heron, a French BYO that uses fresh-farmed, seasonal ingredients.

In total, the dozen proposed projects include a hotel (pictured in it’s current state as an abandoned one-time pickle factory), a 300-seat theater for music and comedy, boutique motor-head shop, and a salon. So, move over Johnny Brenda’s. You’ve helped make a dark and shady lane into the hipster metropolis of the past ten years, but it’s time for the grass-roots stuff of childhood memories to come back.

[Photo by Peter Woodall via Hidden City Philadelphia]

For as far as we have come as a food city, sometimes it still feels like whole areas of town are Pizza Dead Zones, where good pizza is seemingly not an option within a certain block radius and out of the delivery zones of various more desirable pizza options. Color us surprised, then, when we realized that Trio’s Pizzeria & Traittoria, perched in what was once a Kentucky Fried Chicken at 4th and Girard, would deliver to parts of Center City (where we simply could not bear to order Old City Pizza yet again or get a very, very old slice at Gianfranco’s). Trio’s has won accolades in the past in various polls and competitions, but where they really shine is putting a better pizza in your door than what you have grown to expect from delivery pizza. It’s like the opposite of the DiGiorno effect.

Take, for instance, Trio’s Rustica pie (pictured), which has been our go-to Sunday night TV pizza for a while now. It’s got a perfect thin, square crust (as opposed to lots of square pizzas, which are usually bad wannabe Chicago-style knock-offs, goopy and regrettable through and through), and blessed with sausage, mushrooms, garlic and extra virgin olive oil. And to their credit. Trio’s aren’t stingy with any of it. With delivery, the pie comes in at less than $20, which some of you in the cheap-ass pizza hinterlands may declare too rich for your blood, but to this we say: You obviously haven’t been to Stella.

Trio’s Pizzeria & Traittoria, 342 West Girard Ave. (215) 627-1000

Let’s all be honest with ourselves. We’re going to want turkey for a little while after Thanksgiving, even after we run out of leftovers. Luckily, the culinary masterminds at Birra (1700 East Passyunk Avenue) have come up with Thanksgiving Pizza. You can see the making of the pizza in the video above, as Chef Andrew Fox combines roasted turkey breast, roasted red bliss potatoes, a bleu cheese béchamel, brown gravy, cranberry drizzle, mozzarella and fresh basil to create a holiday themed pizza feast. As the video says, the pie will be available into early December, or until they grow tired of turkey.

Alan Richman: Do you eat pizza as much as people say you eat pizza?

Herman Cain: No, because I’m very particular about the pizza that I eat. Godfather’s is still a premium-quality product, and I cannot always find that. It’s got to be as good as Godfather’s or I won’t eat it. [Ed. Note: We here at Phoodie have had Godfather's pizza, and wouldn't exactly describe it as premium-quality.]
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Herman Cain: The more toppings a man has on his pizza, I believe the more manly he is. … A manly man don’t want it piled high with vegetables! He would call that a sissy pizza.

Also, on a semi-related note, when we popped over to Herman Cain’s website to grab an image for this story, we saved the one above. The title of that image on his site? “Hero1.” Hero? Sorry Herman, we call them hoagies here. And hero1? Not Herman1, or Cain1. Hero1. At least the people at his website believe in him.

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and our next President Herman Cain has got a set of pipes on him, and he’s not afraid to show them off. In this video from the 1991 Omaha Press Club Meeting, Cain looks like some kind of pizza praising seraph, asking you to “Imagine there’s no pizza,” which is honestly a world we do not want to live in. So if a Joe Biden beer koozy is not really you’re style, hop aboard the Herman Cain train, where Healthcare comes with two free toppings and pepperoni is used as currency.

We told you about Birra (1700 East Passyunk Ave.) a little while ago, previously saying it was set to open around Labor Day. Well, Labor Day came and went without any news from the Birra camp, but today we found out that barring any unforseen circumstances, Birra will be opening its doors by the end of the month.

We also got a sneak peak at the opening menu, which features items such as:

Whole Scampi – with anchovy caper butter, fresh herbs, and lemon
Garlic and Pepper Steak – marinated NY strip, roasted garlic pesto, black pepper, and olive oil smashed potato
Porchetta Panini – wilted rapini, garlic pesto, roasted peppers, fontina, served in jus

And 14 different pizzas (along with make-your-own) including:
Mac and Cheese
Cheeseburger
Escargot
Truffle

We’ll have the opening schedule for you as soon as we get it, but we’re pretty much salivating already.

Dough Boys is a food blog on a mission. The mission is to try as many Philadelphia pizzas as possible and either praise or decry them, depending on their quality. The two guys who run the site, John and Jon, promise “to hit every place worth mentioning in our area and reviewing the pizza for you guys. We want you to get that perfect slice. We want you to be able to stand proud as you say “that pizza was amazing!” So sit back, relax and let us be the ones who get fat and suffer from high cholesterol.”

And they do not hold back. When discussing Mayfair Pizza, the review goes, “The rubbery texture of the cheese, along with the fact that my slice literally fell apart before I could hoist it into my mouth, led me to believe that even a homeless man wouldn’t eat their “pizza.” The only redeeming part of this visit was the cigarettes for sale and the hidden closet door in their wall. So if you’re into secret doors and cigarettes, check out Mayfair Pizza. But if you’re into good pizza, avoid it.”

So the next time you want to check out that pizza place you haven’t tried before, check out Dough Boys first and see if these true American Heroes have warned you to stay away.

Gordon Dinerman, proprietor of the soon-to-be-open Birra (1700 East Passyunk Ave.) has been hard at work getting Birra ready to open and testing out some of the menu items in his home kitchen. Check out the preview above and look for Birra to open its doors around Labor Day.

Food Network Magazine has named Osteria‘s (640 North Broad St.) Parma Pizza the best in Pennsylvania in its “50 States, 50 Pizzas” feature. The accompanying text said, “The owners of Osteria sampled pizza all over Italy before adding one to their menu. Food Network Magazine’s editors were won over by the Parma, a simple combination of razor-thin prosciutto, mozzarella, fontina and sherry vinegar-dressed arugula, often pulled from a nearby garden.”

The feature will be in the September issue of the magazine. We were gonna run an image of the cover so you guys could find it, but that pizza looks a lot more appetizing than Guy Fieri‘s stupid face.