Joe's Pizza, 1 Linden St.

Joe's Pizza, 30a Plympton St.

Pinocchio's Pizza and Subs, 74 Winthrop St.

24 Restaurant, 24 Holyoke St.

DURING ORIENTATION week freshman year, I did everything that all incoming freshmen do: I went to hear Dean Dunlop and Chase N. Peterson '52, then dean of Admissions, speak, attended a mixer in the yard, and ate pizza at Joe's.

Dunlop and Peterson nearly put me to sleep, the women from Radcliffe and Wellesley snubbed me, but by far the worst experience was Joe's plain cheese.

I didn't go back to Joe's until two weeks ago when I decided to sample the pizza in the Square, but it is still as bad as ever. The cheese is remarkably bland, the tomato sauce is no better, and the dough is much too thin.

If you believe the signs, Joe has opened another branch at the end of Plympton St. where the Pizza Pad used to be. However the "owner" of the second Joe's pizza swears Joe has nothing to do with the product he serves. He says that he has a "personal" arrangement with Joe whereby Joe's sign is hung over his store and an advertisement for the original Joe's pizzeria appears on his take-out boxes.

The pizza at the end of Plympton St. is a little better than the variety Joe serves up, but it smacks of his influence. Like Joe's the dough is too thin and the tomato sauce uninteresting, but the cheese here has a much more spicy taste. The prices here are the same as Joe's.

The 24 Restaurant, which took over Hazen's old location, serves probably the finest pizza in the Square. The pie here is a little smaller than either Joe's I or Joe's II, but the owners make up for it by serving a much thicker product. The mozzarella is the key. It is liberally sprinkled on the pie, and seems to be of a much higher quality than the variety Joe uses. The dough is also very thick, and my only complaint was that the person making the pie I had burned the crust a bit too much for my liking.

PINNOCHIO'S ALSO serves a passable pizza, but his pie does not have the flavor that the one at the 24 Restaurant does. The cheese here is also very good and again my complaint is that not enough tomato sauce and cheese are used in making the pie.

While the 24 Restaurant and Pinnochio's serve decent pizza, their pies cannot compare in quality to those served in Italian neighborhoods. In Boston, you probably can get the best pizza in town at Regina's in the North End. Over vacation, sampled pizza in New York City and recommend Patsy's and Cappola's in East Harlem as two of the best in the city.