March Madness Pizza Challenge: Collier County's champ is crowned
Editor’s note: In the closing hours of the final Naples Daily News bracket challenge polling, editors noticed suspect votes with international IP addresses from all over the world populating, and in some cases skewing, the results. It was determined by editors, in consultation with the polling company, that these were likely bogus votes. All international votes were filtered out of the championship matchup polls to determine the final results.
Four rounds, 16 pizzerias.
Crowdsignal, the independent auditing website, tallied more than 10,000 votes throughout our March Madness Pizza Challenge.
Week by week, most brackets were too close to call until each round's clock stopped.
But now we have a winner.
Recap: Collier County's Best Pizza Challenge championship
Collier County’s Sweet 16 round one pitted Luigi’s against neighboring Baci. Luigi’s handily won 60% to 40%. In a Cinderella upset, Twisted Sheep stunned LowBrow, the second most nominated pizzeria, by 39 more votes or 4%.
The Elite 8's round two pitted Luigi’s who bested Joey D’s in this bracket by just 20 votes. Twisted Sheep pulled a second upset over New York Pizza & Pasta: 3,447 votes were cast with Twisted besting its competitor by 3.98%.
To make the Final Four, Luigi’s earned 906 votes over La Trattoria’s 830. Twisted Sheep beat Zza Baby by 382 votes with 2,316 total votes in this bracket.
The last dance's marquee was narrowed to two East Naples joints: Luigi’s with a legacy steeped in tradition and its Southwest Florida family dynasty of pizzerias vs. the new-ish Twisted Sheep, best known for its chef-driven pizzas, innovative sides and salads.
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And the winner is
With 1,754 votes cast in the final round, the winner is Luigi's who scored 900 votes to Twisted Sheep’s 854.
“We work so hard in this business. My husband Carlo deserves it: he’s made over a million pizzas. It's been a wonderful adventure for all of us," said Luigi's co-owner Kelly Iantosca.
When visiting their restaurant March 24, it was obvious that she works extremely hard too. She also celebrates a birthday this week, so you can congratulate her on both accomplishments when visiting.
"When we started Luigi's in this location 48 years ago, there was nothing around us. That's changed and now everybody knows us."
Farther east on U.S. 41, we also visited Twisted Sheep's co-owners Calvin Joiner and Michael Voorhis to chat about going so far in the challenge.
“It's everything to us. This is a dream that we came up with together and it's been awesome to see it grow, to see people come in and eat your food, love it then come back,” said Voorhis.
Diana Biederman is NDN's restaurant & food reporter. Connect at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: March Pizza Madness Challenge: Naples winner is crowned
